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      The Guardian view on Trump’s shock therapy: warehouse and transport workers are the first victims of a class war | Editorial

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      The White House, eager to win a trade war it barely understands, has yanked the emergency brake on China-US trade without checking who’s inside the vehicle. Donald Trump’s early April trade decree has taken a month to hit the economy – that’s how long Chinese containers need to reach Los Angeles. And on cue, US pacific ports registered a 45% drop in container bookings this week from China. When warehouses fall quiet and trucks idle in California, the silence will creep eastward. Unemployment will surely tick upwards.Even if Washington reverses course by the end of May, and Beijing plays nice, the best-case scenario is delayed damage. Some goods are being rerouted to avoid charges, but you can’t reboot global logistics overnight. This isn’t strategic decoupling – it’s economic self-harm. By the time the Trump administration notices, it will be too late. The consequences of the US president’s rash tactics will reverberate through Main Street. Mr Trump offers a flippant excuse: blame 11-year-olds with too many dolls – not his own tariffs – for rising hardship.US gross domestic product just shrank for the first time in three years – despite Mr Trump’s promise of a “golden era”. His tariffs are steering the world toward a downturn. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) knows it. According to its latest modelling, the fund now sees the probability of global growth falling below 2%, a threshold widely seen as equivalent to a global recession, as approaching one in four. That’s double the risk it estimated six months ago. Escalating US tariffs, says the IMF, are the main reason behind the darkening skies.What does this mean for the world? Below 2% global growth, much of the per capita gains vanish. Most of what’s left is soaked up by expanding giants in Asia and Africa – places with the people and industrial catch-up capacity to grow even in a weakened global economy. The UK does not have this. Britain is an ageing, post-industrial economy in a productivity slump without the momentum of demographics or the slack of underdevelopment. That’s why Labour can’t afford to sit back. Rising living standards and real economic security require government to invest, build and redistribute – because the market alone won’t.Commentators still blindly cling to David Ricardo’s 1817 theory of comparative advantage – as if today’s global capitalism mirrors Georgian England’s trade in wine and cloth. It doesn’t. Ricardo assumed nations specialise based on domestic costs. But in a world of mobile capital, it’s companies that specialise, not countries. That’s what the economist Dani Rodrik warned in the late 1990s: free capital flows undermine comparative advantage. Development now depends not on obeying trade patterns, but on shaping them – through industrial policy.But Maga protectionism isn’t rebuilding US industry – it’s shock therapy. Mr Trump engineers a trade crisis to hike prices, kill off “uncompetitive” firms and clear the way for a leaner, capital-heavy economy. Meanwhile, tax cuts hand America’s oligarchic tendency even more power to reshape markets in its image. Mr Trump’s narrative promises a revival for US workers – particularly the unionised holdouts in places such as Detroit – but what they will get is higher costs, stagnant wages and patriotic slogans. This isn’t industrial policy. It’s class politics disguised as economic nationalism – a controlled demolition of what remains of US labour’s bargaining power, sold as a populist renaissance.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Trump says Biden caused the economic downturn. That’s malarkey | Steven Greenhouse

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      While Donald Trump delusionally asserts that “we’re celebrating the most successful first 100 days of any administration in American history”, last week’s economic news emphatically refutes that. Trump’s commerce department reported on Wednesday that the US economy – in a sharp and dismaying reversal – shrank in the first quarter of this year.That of course is when Trump returned to the White House, but Trump, true to form, denied that he was in any way responsible for the surprisingly bad economic news. Trump, who has spent his life blaming others and refusing to admit mistakes, was quick to blame Joe Biden for the downturn. The nation’s gross domestic product declined at a 0.3% annual rate in the quarter, after adjusting for inflation.At Wednesday’s cabinet meeting – where cabinet secretaries sounded like North Korean officials obsequiously extolling Kim Jong-un – Trump noted the bad first-quarter report and said: “This is Biden, and you can even say the next quarter is sort of Biden.” Later in the day in a speech to corporate executives, Trump continued to try to dodge responsibility, saying: “This is Biden’s economy.”Even the very careful New York Times said that Trump was full of it. The Times wrote that Trump “blamed his predecessor for handing him a bad economy, despite data showing that growth was strong when he took office”.When Biden left office, many economists had glowing words about the economy. “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The US economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than pre-pandemic.”With regard to the bad first-quarter GDP report, economists overwhelmingly agree that there was one overriding cause, and that cause was not Joe Biden. Rather, it was the huge uncertainty and fears stirred by the prospect of Trump’s tariffs. Eager to stock up on foreign goods before Trump imposed his wave of tariffs, US businesses rushed to increase their imports, and according to the formula used to calculate GDP, soaring imports have a downward effect on economic growth.Like the boy who would never admit he broke the cookie jar, Trump refused to admit that his tariffs had anything to do with the first-quarter downturn. For Trump, truth is a distant galaxy. It’s a foreign enemy that he is forever trying to repel. He stubbornly refuses to admit that the economy was in strong shape when he took office, just as he shamelessly refuses to admit that “MS-13” was Photoshopped on to the knuckles of Kilmar Ábrego García, an immigrant who was wrongly deported to a brutal prison in El Salvador. Far too often, Trump seems allergic to the truth. During an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News, he brazenly insisted that Moran accept Trump’s falsehood about Ábrego García, telling him: “Why don’t you just say: ‘Yes, he does’” have MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles.It’s as delusional for Trump to claim that “we inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe”, as he did in a speech to a joint session of Congress in March, as it is for him to insist that Ábrego García’s knuckles say “MS-13”.When Biden left office, no economists were forecasting a recession anytime soon – that’s why Wednesday’s report that the economy shrank in the first quarter was such a surprising reversal. During last year’s fourth quarter, Biden’s last full quarter in office, the nation’s GDP grew at a solid 2.4% rate. Indeed, ever since the Covid-19 pandemic ended, economic growth in the US was considerably stronger than in Britain, Germany, France, Japan and other G7 nations. Several weeks before election day, the Economist magazine ran headlines saying the US economy was “the envy of the world” and had “left other rich countries in the dust”.When Biden’s term ended, the jobless rate was a low 4.0%. Not only that, during Biden’s four years, the average unemployment rate was lower than for any president since the 1960s. Trump won over many voters by attacking high inflation under Biden – and it was a serious problem – but by the time Biden left office, inflation had slid to just 2.9%, far below its 9% peak in 2022 and nearly down to the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal.As part of his economic disinformation efforts, Trump has repeatedly said that job growth was a disaster under Biden. Sorry, Donald, that’s a lie. The fact is that during Biden’s four years, the US added 16.6 million jobs, more than during any four-year term of any previous president. (Trump will never tell you this, but during his first term, the nation lost 2.7 million jobs overall, making his first-term presidency the first presidency since Herbert Hoover’s to suffer an overall loss in jobs. The pandemic was largely responsible for that.)As part of his never-ending effort to dodge responsibility, Trump blamed Biden for the stock market’s recent troubles. During Trump’s first 100 days, the S&P 500 fell 7%, making it the market’s worst beginning to a presidential term since Gerald Ford took office in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal.Devious as ever, Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday: “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th.” What Trump failed to say was that the stock market didn’t begin to plunge until 2 April, when he announced his steep, worldwide “liberation day” tariffs. That was more than two months after Biden left office – so it’s absurd for Trump to blame him for that decline. And don’t expect Trump to ever acknowledge that Wall Street soared during Biden’s four years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 39% and the S&P 500 soared by 55.7%, including a 28% jump during 2024.Jared Bernstein, who was chair of the council of economic advisers under Biden, said on MSNBC on Thursday that it was ludicrous for Trump to blame Biden for the first-quarter downturn. “I have never seen a more direct connection to what we’re seeing in the economy and stock market to the action of one person, which is to President Trump and his trade war,” Bernstein said.Many economists warn that the US economy may sink further in the second quarter due to Trump’s tariffs as some supply chains break down, some imports dry up, prices rise on many goods and many consumers and business pull back on spending due to all the uncertainty and anxiety.John Kasich, a Republican and former governor of Ohio, sneered at Trump’s efforts to weasel out of responsibility. “You can’t blame Biden,” he said. “It’s like saying the dog ate my homework.”

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

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      Trump’s tariffs get one thing right: capitalism is changing | Avram C Alpert

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      Trying to understand Donald Trump’s across-the-board tariffs based solely on economic theory won’t work. As the US president himself said: “Chronic trade deficits are no longer merely an economic problem, they’re a national emergency that threatens our security and our very way of life.” That may be why, as many economists have pointed out, there’s simply no good economic case for his plans.But few commentators have understood that facts and figures aren’t the whole point of the tariffs. As always, economics is part of a broader political vision. The tariffs help Trump make his claim that a way of life is under threat and he alone can protect it.Indeed, the political meaning of Trump’s tariffs is in the idea itself: “protectionism”. He is not just telling people that he’s going to improve the economy. He’s signaling that he’s going to protect a way of life, even – or especially – if it hurts others, by creating, in theory, good-paying factory jobs that could sustain local communities. (Never mind that the key to any industry’s ability to sustain communities are the practices of labor organizing Trump opposes.) On the campaign trail, he said: “Whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them.” He’s now saying the same thing to the country as a whole.Such non-economic justifications for economic policy are nothing new. They are part of what the sociologist Max Weber called “the spirit of capitalism”. Weber argued that capitalists had to justify a claim unique in human history: profit is good. For millennia before, philosophers had argued the opposite. Jesus, for example, told his disciples that it was likelier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.But with capitalism, the pursuit of profit became good. How did it justify this? Weber said that’s where “spirit” comes in. He pointed to notions of work as a holy value in Protestantism and Calvinist ideas about how monetary success proved you were among God’s chosen few. These spiritual views engendered a work ethic and made capitalist excess palatable. At least for a time.When capitalist greed becomes unpalatable, new spirits emerge. To understand Trump’s protectionist spirit, we have to understand this preceding history.After the Great Depression, people saw that they might lose everything no matter how hard they worked and so the work ethic spirit lost its power. In its place, social democratic states gave a new collectivist spirit to capitalism. Social democracy limited excess and provided a moral logic by offering stability to all through a linked system of jobs and life-long public services.This collectivist spirit began to break down in the 1960s under the pressures of stagflation, oil shocks, and criticisms of a conformist, consumerist lifestyle. In response, capitalism’s spirit transformed itself again. According to two scholars of this transitional period, Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, it did so by ingeniously incorporating the criticisms: it became about nomads, connections, flexibility, creativity.It was no longer the staid cubicle office man; it was now the exciting creative entrepreneur who knows no allegiances and is at home in the chaos of disruption. Hence Silicon Valley. Hence the destroyed manufacturing bases where jobs were converted to low-wage poverty traps and where Trump now finds many of his most loyal supporters. Hence his protectionist vision of a new spirit of capitalism.There is some merit in this desire to help those who lost out, but, as Weber noted, the spirits of capitalism can mask more sinister desires. By also pushing massive tax breaks for the wealthy, Trump is hoping that tariffs can provide rhetorical appeal without radically changing the social order.The tariffs say: we will protect your community by hurting those who profited off your pain and became rich through globalization. That’s why Trump blamed “globalists” for the dip in the stock market after the tariffs were announced: “A lot of [those selling stocks] are globalist countries and companies that won’t be doing as well … Because we’re taking back things that have been taken from us many years ago.” But that ignores the real ways in which jobs have been lost and communities upended. What the tariffs leave unsaid is that they won’t address the real issues underlying today’s economic pain: gutting welfare, failing to retrain workers, under-utilizing technology, and letting inequality rise relentlessly.Trump is right that capitalism, in a period of untrammeled greed and injustice, needs a new spirit to show it the way. But the trouble with a protectivist spirit is that it implies that some get protected while others get hurt. That will just create new cycles of dismay – as we are already seeing with the tariff whiplash and draconian immigration policies.What we need is a democratizing spirit, one that isn’t about protecting some and hurting others, but instead guides us to work collectively to ensure that all people can lead decent and meaningful lives even in a chaotic world. There are economic policies for this, such as fair trade, meaningful industrial policy, more worker representation on corporate boards, and more cooperatively owned businesses.But Democrats also need to learn from Trump and emphasize the spirit. They need to show that their democratic vision is not just technocratic, but as powerful and affirming as the feeling of being protected.The desire for this spirit may be why the rallies of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have drawn record crowds. Most attenders say they aren’t there to hear the policies, which they already know. They’re there for the “community”, and to experience the “closest thing to a version of America you actually want to live in”, one that works for all of us. If the Democratic party can catch that spirit, they will not only win elections; they might just bring an end to decades of destruction.

      Avram Alpert is a lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program. His most recent book is The Good-Enough Life More

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      Trump says he will reopen Alcatraz prison for ‘most ruthless offenders’

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      Donald Trump has said he is directing his government to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the notorious former prison on an island off San Francisco that has been closed for more than 60 years.In a post on his Truth Social site on Sunday evening, Trump wrote: “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”He added: “That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”Trump’s directive to rebuild and reopen the long-shuttered penitentiary is the latest salvo in his effort to overhaul how and where federal prisoners and immigration detainees are locked up.But such a move would likely be expensive and challenging. The prison was closed in 1963 due to crumbling infrastructure and the high cost of repairing and supplying the island facility, because everything from fuel to food had to be brought by boat.Bringing the facility up to modern-day standards would require massive investment at a time when the Federal Bureau of Prisons has been shuttering prisons for similar infrastructure issues.The island is now a major tourist site that is operated by the National Park Service and is a designated national historic landmark.The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat whose district includes the island, questioned the feasibility of reopening the prison. “It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction. The President’s proposal is not a serious one,” she wrote on X.The prison – which was considered inescapable due to the strong ocean currents and cold Pacific waters that surround it – was known as “the Rock” and housed some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, including Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.In the 29 years it was open, 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes, according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or did not survive.The fates of three inmates – the brothers John and Clarence Anglin, and Frank Morris – are the subject of some debate, with their story dramatised in the 1979 film Escape from Alcatraz starring Clint Eastwood.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that the agency “will comply with all presidential orders”. They did not immediately answer questions from the Associated Press regarding the practicality and feasibility of reopening Alcatraz or the agency’s possible role in the future of the former prison given the National Park Service’s control of the island.The order comes as Trump has been clashing with the courts as he tries to send accused gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, without due process. Trump has also floated the legally dubious idea of sending some federal US prisoners to the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT.Trump also directed the opening of a detention centre at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, to hold up to 30,000 of what he has called the “worst criminal aliens”. More

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      ‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks

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      The lead plaintiff in a lawsuit fighting Donald Trump’s order to dismantle Voice of America has said the media has to resist as the administration becomes increasingly aggressive against the press.“I never in a million years thought I would have to fight for freedom of the press in the United States of America. And yet here we are,” says Patsy Widakuswara, the White House bureau chief for the broadcasting network. “As journalism is under attack, it feels empowering to fight back. We need more people to resist and fight back.”Kicked out of press conferences on multiple continents for asking pointed questions, Widakuswara is not the type to balk at challenging powerful leaders. In her three decades as a journalist those instincts have served her well, and perhaps at no better time than now.The White House reporter is now leading the charge to save VOA, which the US president has described as “anti-Trump” and “radical”. In March, Trump signed an executive order that effectively cut off its funding via its parent company, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).Launched in 1942, initially to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA is a federally funded international broadcasting network, produced in dozens of languages that reach about 350 million people around the globe.View image in fullscreenFor decades it has been seen as a form of soft power, encapsulating the values of liberal America. But after Trump’s order its operations have been suspended, with virtually all of VOA’s staff of 1,300 placed on immediate administrative leave and about 600 contractors terminated.The lawsuit filed by Widakuswara and several of her colleagues follows lawsuits the Trump administration has taken out against ABC News and CBS’s 60 Minutes in the US, and attempts to expel some press from the White House. Those backing the case argue that VOA has for decades provided an important source of objective information, especially in illiberal environments.“These are not just women in Afghanistan or farmers in Africa,” said Widakuswara of VOA’s audience. “They’re also activists in Russia and decision makers all around the world who are also facing the onslaught of disinformation and propaganda from Russia, Iran, China, and extremist organisations like [Islamic State] and al-Qaida.”At home having a quiet Saturday when she received the email about VOA’s demise, Widakuswara says to do nothing was inconceivable. In a matter of days she had rallied a team to fight against it, and by Friday morning had filed a lawsuit.“It’s just the way I’m wired,” she says over the phone from Washington. “Congress gave us a mandate to tell America’s story to the world through factual, balanced and comprehensive reporting. If they want to change the size, structure or function of VOA, they can’t just shut us down. They must go through Congress. That’s the law.”View image in fullscreen‘Holding autocratic governments to account’Starting her career in Jakarta in the late 90s, just as Indonesia’s decades-long dictator Suharto was being toppled, the Indonesian-born journalist has seen first-hand the impacts of authoritarian regimes.Widakuswara worked at a campus radio station, and later as a fixer for foreign journalists when they flooded in to cover the event, as mass student protests inundated the parliament building and forced Suharto to step down.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That was my first taste in media,” she says. “Holding autocratic governments to account.”The experience led to a career in television, and a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office scholarship to obtain her master’s in journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. After stints at the BBC and Channel 4, she was named VOA’s White House bureau chief in 2021.Now, she finds herself pushing against fascistic tendencies in her adopted home. “I grew up in 80s Indonesia where there was no press freedom and newspapers had to be careful what they printed to avoid government closure,” she says. “Could the US backslide that far? Not if enough people resist, and that’s why I’m fighting back.”Her lawsuit, backed by Reporters Without Borders and four unions, argues the Trump administration, through the actions of the defendants, USAGM, and the government’s special adviser Kari Lake, are attempting to unlawfully dismantle VOA’s operations because they deem it contrary to the government’s agenda.Widakuswara argues that Trump’s executive order is a violation of press freedom, the first amendment, and laws to prevent executive overreach, with VOA funding approved by Congress, not the president.Another motivating factor is to support her 47 colleagues at VOA on J-1 or journalist visas in the US, who could be sent back to countries such as Russia, Belarus, Vietnam and Myanmar which have previously jailed journalists.Widakuswara’s efforts to save VOA appeared to score an early win, with a judge in April ordering the Trump administration to restore funding to VOA and other US-funded media. But the preliminary injunction was only a temporary measure.On Saturday, just as VOA staff were preparing for a “phased return” to work, a court of appeals issued a stay on that ruling, saying the court did not have the authority to block Trump’s executive order regarding employment matters.Keenly aware of the unfavourable political climate she is up against, Widakuswara says it is hard to know if their case will ultimately prevail, but the only choice is to try. “Even if it’s just like a 5% chance or even a 1% chance, that’s better than a 0% chance, which is what happens if we do nothing.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: President says he will not seek a third term

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      Donald Trump has said he sees himself as leaving office at the end of his current term and not seeking a third one – something he has not previously always been consistent on even though a third term is widely seen as unconstitutional.“I’ll be an eight-year president, I’ll be a two-term president. I always thought that was very important,” Trump said, acknowledging the constitutional constraints preventing him from seeking a third term. But he added that some people want him to serve a third term, which is prohibited by a constitutional amendment passed in 1947.“I’m looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody, ideally a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward,” he added.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump says he doesn’t know if he needs to uphold constitutional due processUS President Donald Trump has said that he does not know whether he must uphold the US constitution, the nation’s founding legal document.In a wide-ranging NBC News interview Meet the Press, moderator Kristen Welker asked if people in the United States – citizens and non-citizens alike – deserve the due process of law, as the US constitution states. Trump said: “I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”Pressed more generally on whether he believes he needs to uphold the supreme law of the land, Trump repeated: “I don’t know.”In the same interview the US president also said he saw himself as leaving office at the end of his current term and not seeking a third oneRead the full storyTrump ‘doesn’t rule out’ using military force to control GreenlandDonald Trump would not rule out using military force to gain control of Greenland, the world’s largest island and an autonomous territory within Denmark, a fellow Nato member with the US.Since taking office, the US president has repeatedly expressed the idea of US expansion into Greenland, triggering widespread condemnation and unease both on the island itself and in the global diplomatic community. Greenland is seen as strategically important both for defence and as a future source of mineral wealth.In his interview with NBC’s Meet The Press, Trump was asked whether he would rule out using force against the territory.“I don’t rule it out. I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything. No, not there. We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security,” Trump said.Read the full storyNPR and PBS push back against Trump’s order to cut fundingThe heads of embattled US public broadcasters, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), defended themselves against efforts by the Trump administration to cut off taxpayer funding, with both telling a Sunday political talkshow they were looking at legal options.PBS’s chief executive, Paula Kerger, told CBS News’s Face the Nation that Republican-led threats to withdraw federal funding from public broadcasters had been around for decades but are “different this time”.Kerger said: “They’re coming after us on many different ways … we have never seen a circumstance like this, and obviously we’re going to be pushing back very hard, because what’s at risk are our stations, our public television, our public radio stations across the country.”Read the full storyTrump announces 100% tariffs on movies ‘produced in foreign lands’Donald Trump on Sunday announced on his Truth Social platform a 100% tariff on all movies “produced in Foreign Lands”.In his post, he claimed to have authorised the Department of Commerce and the US trade representative to immediately begin instituting such a tariff, although he gave no details on how it would be implemented.“This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat,” Trump said in the Truth Social post. “It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”Read the full storyArts agency terminates dozens of grants after Trump proposes eliminating NEADozens of US arts organisations have been notified that offers of government grants have been terminated, hours after Donald Trump proposed eliminating federal agencies that support arts, humanities and learning.The cancellation of grant offers were reported from organisations across the US, including a $25,000 offer to a playhouse in Portland, Oregon, hours before the opening of a new production, August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.Read the full storyTrump feels tug of political gravity as economy falters and polls plungeThe president started his second term fast and furious with a flurry of activity – much of it legally dubious – but analysts say the honeymoon is over, writes the Guardian’s David Smith.After a hundred days in which Trump at times appeared invincible, political gravity is exerting itself. A majority of Americans regard him as both a failure and a would-be dictator. From the courts to the streets, from law offices to college campuses, revolt is swelling. Republicans are eyeing next year’s midterm elections with nervousness.“The honeymoon is over,” said John Zogby, an author and pollster. “He actually squandered his hundred days, perhaps you can argue, by doing too much, not succeeding with much of it and overplaying his hand. At the end of the 100 days his polling numbers reflect an unsuccessful quarter. Every poll that I know of, including mine, has him upside down.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Trump said on Sunday that he was directing the Federal Bureau of Prisons to rebuild and reopen the infamous Alcatraz prison in the San Francisco Bay to “house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

      Trump said he was considering naming his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller as national security adviser and expects to appoint a successor to Mike Waltz within six months. Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters on Air Force One.

      An ultranationalist who opposes military aid to Ukraine, has vilified the EU’s leaders, and calls himself Donald Trump’s “natural ally” has won the first round of Romania’s rerun presidential vote.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 3 May 2025. More