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      Donald Trump’s cartoon-like chaos leaves US economy on unstable course | Heather Stewart

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      Ten days reporting from the US – in Pittsburgh, Washington DC, and just across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia – gave me a fascinating snapshot of what feels like the slow-motion unravelling of the world’s largest economy.So many conversations featured uncertainty and wariness; and weariness, too, as businesses and consumers weigh up every decision, against the backdrop of the chaos emanating from the White House.Even the president conceded last week that the economy was in a “transition period”, claiming he had warned of this during his campaign. (When challenged, the White House could not come up with any examples of when he had done so.)The problem for Trump and his supporters, many of whom remain staunchly loyal, is that the transition period in question is starting to resemble that felt by the classic Looney Tunes character Wile E Coyote between charging off a cliff into midair and plunging to the ground.So far, the hard data from the US economy is holding up well. Friday’s payrolls report was strong, and the negative first quarter gross domestic product reading, while worrying, was hard to take a clear reading from because of the rise in imports as companies stocked up ahead of tariffs.There is little sign of anything as dramatic as mass job cuts, or a sudden stop in consumer spending – although the recent crop of data mainly relates to the period before “liberation day”.Look at the forward-looking surveys, though, and there are clear signs of anxiety. The long-running Michigan consumer sentiment index just had its steepest quarterly decline since the 1990 recession.Spend any amount of time talking to US consumers and businesses, and it is abundantly clear why: there are so many sources of policy ambiguity as to make the future not just uncertain but completely unknowable.There is a cliche that “markets hate uncertainty”, but in truth the same applies to everyone in the real economy, too: the company wondering what size order to put in and how many people to hire and the family thinking about buying that fridge or booking that holiday.It is not surprising they are uncertain. No one, even inside the administration, can say with any confidence what the tariff rates on imports from specific countries will be in July.Even if the tariff policy was crystal clear, its impact on prices would be hard to gauge – depending, as it does, on how much of the cost companies are willing to bear (or “eat”, as the Americans have it) at the expense of reduced profits, and how much is passed on to consumers.For the moment, as the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has admitted, the tariffs on China, at 145%, are now so high as to amount to an effective trade embargo.Not every company will have the deep pockets and global reach of Apple to be able to bend its supply chain away from China to manufacture products for the US elsewhere (in the iPhone-maker’s case, India). Instead, many will be scrambling to find substitutes, which may be more expensive or not exist at all. Shortages of some products seem a distinct possibility.At the same time, sharp cuts in federal budgets, many of which have an ideological taint, including Robert F Kennedy Jr’s decimation of the National Institutes of Health, are raising short-term questions about unemployment and much longer-term worries about the US’s world-leading science base.Some of the most heartbreaking conversations I had were about aspects of Trump’s immigration policy: the man who said a Guatemalan friend’s six-year-old son had stopped going to school in case his mum was snatched by the authorities while he was there, and the restaurant manager who said it was becoming harder to hire Latinos because even fully documented workers feared they could face deportation anyway.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThese are first and foremost human tragedies, but clearly they also have an economic dimension. The credit rating agency Fitch warned in a report last week: “Risks associated with mass deportations could include potential worker shortages, production delays and increased wage inflation that hinders revenue growth, weakens profitability and lowers return on investment.”Of course, because the US economy’s abrupt gearshift has been driven by deliberate policy actions, it’s tempting to think: “It doesn’t have to be like this.”Much more of the real economy impact so far results from this widely shared uncertainty – or perhaps it is better to call it fear – than from the specifics of Trump’s policies.Business owners told me that if they just knew what the final tariffs on products from the various countries in their supply chain would be, for example, then over time they could adapt.It is not completely out of the question that a more settled policy position could arrive in the coming weeks.Certainly, Bessent appears to be trying to manoeuvre Trump towards striking a series of “deals” (in effect, promises of concessions in exchange for tariff carve-outs) with key economies.Yet the president appears to have such a love of political drama – and such an inability to choose a course and stick to it – that the unknowability of future policy seems to be the very essence of Trump 2.0.It seemed to be the mighty bond markets, driving up the cost of US borrowing, that checked Trump’s initial “liberation day” drive, prompting the “pause”.But if time drags on with no agreements in sight, the next wave of distress signals are likely to come not from Wall Street but from main street – in soaring prices and empty shelves. How Trump responds then is anyone’s guess. More

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      Geography has given the US unrivaled security. Trump is destroying it | Gil Barndollar and Rajan Menon

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      The secret to American power and pre-eminence was best summed up more than a century ago.America, observed Jean Jules Jusserand, France’s ambassador to the United States during the first world war, “is blessed among the nations”. To the north and south were friendly and militarily weak neighbors; “on the east, fish, and the west, fish”. The United States was and is both a continental power and, in strategic terms, an island – with all the security those gifts of geography provide. No world power has ever been as fortunate. This unique physical security is the real American exceptionalism.Americans take this providential geography for granted: their country’s wars are always away games, and their neighbors are trading partners and weekend getaway destinations, not rivals or enemies. The ability of the United States to project power around the globe depends on technology and logistics, but it rests ultimately on the foundation of secure borders and friendly neighbors. But that may not be the case much longer. In threatening war with both Canada and Mexico, Donald Trump is obliterating America’s greatest strategic advantage.In normal times, one would be hard-pressed to find a pair of friendlier nations than the United States and Canada. Canadians and Americans share a common language (aside from the Québécois), sports leagues, $683bn in trade, and the world’s longest undefended border, more than 5,000 miles (8,000km) long. Americans and Canadians have fought side by side in both world wars, as well as in Korea and Afghanistan.Trump’s coveting of Canada is easy to mock and dismiss. Since returning to office in January, he has said repeatedly that he wants to make Canada the 51st state and taken to calling former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau “Governor Trudeau.” In what could be a satire of the post-9/11 ambitions of some American neoconservatives, Trump called the border with Canada “an artificial line” that “makes no sense”.But Canadians aren’t laughing. Living next door to a superpower that has fought multiple wars over the last 20 years and now practices a post-truth politics, they are angry and rattled.Liquor stores in Canada have pulled American-made alcohol from their shelves. The singing of the Star-Spangled Banner during hockey and basketball games has provoked boos from the stands. Airline travel from Canada to the United States has cratered, with ticket sales dropping 70%. Trudeau, not knowing he was on a hot mic, told his ministerial colleagues that Trump’s territorial avarice was “a real thing” and that they should not dismiss it as typical Trumpian bluster. Mark Carney, Trudeau’s successor, warned Canadians that the longtime partnership with the US, “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over”.Earlier this year, Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative party’s candidate in Canada’s national elections, enjoyed a huge lead in the polls and seemed destined to become the next prime minister. But Canadians’ dislike of Trump apparently helped Carney, a political newcomer and the Liberal party’s candidate (despite Trump’s criticism of Poilievre in a Fox News interview, perhaps because Poilievre, reacting to his falling poll numbers, pivoted to criticizing the American president). Carney’s poll numbers surged, Poilievre’s plunged, and this week, Carney won the election – but he’s not about to preside over Canada’s annexation. By Carney’s account, in conversations, Trump has brought up his vision of Canada as the United States’ 51st state, something Carney has dismissed outright.Americans are apt to find the idea of a security threat from Canada ridiculous. Some of Trump’s antipathy to Canada rests on its paltry defense spending, less than 1.5% of GDP, making Canada one of Nato’s laggards. But Canadian capabilities are critical for the defense of the American homeland. Canadian long- and short-range radars provide the bulk of the North Warning System (NWS), which guards against airplanes and missiles entering North America via the North Pole. A Canadian withdrawal from the jointly run NWS would diminish the United States’ capacity for strategic defense and deterrence. While such a move by Canada would normally be unthinkable, if it fears invasion, as it has reason to do now, it may take steps that have hitherto been beyond the realm of possibility.If Trump’s actions against Canada boggle the mind, his stance toward Mexico is more explicable, albeit far more dangerous. Trump came down that golden escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 and announced his first presidential bid with a diatribe against Mexican immigrants. In the decade since, the Republican party has come to view Mexican drug cartels, if not the Mexican state itself, as a major threat to the United States, even as Mexico has displaced China to become the US’s largest trading partner.With Trump back in power, the reality is starting to match the rhetoric. Active-duty US troops are now on the southern border and Mexican drug cartels have been officially labeled as foreign terrorist groups, providing the legal pretext for the president to order US soldiers to enter Mexican territory and destroy them. US surveillance drones are monitoring fentanyl labs in Mexico – by mutual agreement – but the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has ruled out their being used to strike drug cartels, something US officials have reportedly discussed.Although Trump issued an executive order on the first day of his second term, declaring an emergency on the US-Mexican border, the active duty troops he has deployed there aren’t currently engaged in law enforcement, which US law prohibits, only providing logistical support to Customs and Border Protection. But were Trump to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act at some point, that could change and the military could begin apprehending and detaining Mexican migrants.Any unilateral US military intervention in Mexico would be reckless. With some of the US’s largest cities just a few hours from the border, the cartels would have ample opportunities for retaliation, which in turn would provoke American escalation. Civilian deaths caused by US military strikes could unleash major domestic strife in Mexico, a country of 130 million people, to the point of creating a tidal wave of refugees. US geography shielded it from most of the consequences of its disastrous post-9/11 wars in the greater Middle East. But US luck would finally run out if Trump tried to rerun a version of the “war on terror” across the southern border.With wars raging in Europe and the Middle East and Trump toying with unprecedented tariffs on many US partners and allies, the fallout from Trump’s “America first” policies seem to be primarily in Europe and Asia. But the most gratuitous and serious threats to American security and prosperity lie closer to home.Barely three months into his second term, Donald Trump has damaged, perhaps even irrevocably, relationships with his country’s two neighbors and largest trading partners. Few US presidents have committed greater strategic malpractice. None have done it with such speed. If the president wants to identify something he has achieved that none of his modern-day predecessors have, this feat would certainly qualify.

      Gil Barndollar is a non-resident fellow at the Defense Priorities Foundation. Rajan Menon is Spitzer professor emeritus of international relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and a senior research scholar at the Saltzman Institute at Columbia University. More

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      Trump feels tug of political gravity as economy falters and polls plunge

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      “Not just courageous” but “actually fearless”, said Doug Burgum. The “first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever”, said Pam Bondi. “Most” of the presidents whose portraits adorn the Oval Office – which include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan – were mere “placeholders” who were not “men of action”, mused JD Vance.Before the TV cameras on Wednesday, top cabinet officials took turns drenching Donald Trump with praise that some critics found evocative of politics in North Korea. Yet beyond the walls of the White House, the mood was shifting. New data showed the economy is shrinking. The national security adviser was about to be ousted. Opinion polls told of a president whose unpopularity is historic.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.”Trump took office on 20 January with huge political capital. He had beaten his election rival Kamala Harris in every swing state and won the national popular vote for the first time, albeit at less than 50%. Having survived four legal cases, his sense of vindication was absolute. Tech billionaires and media moguls came to his Mar-a-Lago estate to kiss the ring.He started fast and furious. As Trump signed a record number of executive orders – now more than 140 – Democrats looked like a boxer dazed by a flurry of punches at the opening bell. They struggled to find their feet and respond to a president who at breathtaking speed marginalised Congress, attacked judges and unleashed Elon Musk to eviscerate the federal government.Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Committee, said: “The reality is you do it fast, you do it furious, you do it at different times and levels and places and you wind up creating 100 rabbit holes at one time. People are stuck trying to figure out which is the most important rabbit hole to go down. That’s what you’ve seen play out.”Yet 2 April, which Trump dubbed “liberation day” as he announced sweeping global tariffs, may also come to be seen as overreach day. His haphazard trade war rattled allies and wiped trillions of dollars off the stock market. Only fears of a bond market catastrophe spooked him into hitting the pause button. But he left in place tariffs on China as high as 145% and Beijing has refused to blink.View image in fullscreenThe chaos has shaken the faith of Trump voters who felt that he would at least deliver economic competence and guarantee the bottom line. Food prices are rising and tariffs are expected to disrupt supply chains soon, leading to empty shelves reminiscent of the Covid-19 pandemic. On Wednesday Trump admitted children might “have two dolls instead of 30 dolls” at Christmas and sought to blame his predecessor Joe Biden.Meanwhile Musk has sown further discord. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs. The US development agency USAID, a crucial tool of soft power, was closed. The social security welfare system has reportedly been hit by regional office closures, website crashes and some recipients being declared dead. Yet Doge looks set to fall well short of its $1tn target in savings and Musk is preparing to step away.Trump is even losing public backing on his signature issue of immigration. He sent troops to the border and expanded deportation targets, leading to a steep drop in illegal border crossings. But efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act for rapid deportations have faced legal challenges and concerns about due process.The aggressive enforcement led to the mistaken deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland man with protected legal status, to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The supreme court ordered the administration to facilitate his return but Trump has refused.Trump promised to swiftly end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza but both conflicts continue. His national security adviser, Mike Waltz, mistakenly added a journalist to a sensitive Signal chat discussing military operations. On Thursday it emerged that Waltz would leave his post and be nominated as US ambassador to the UN instead.Trump vowed to be a “dictator” on “day one” but, critics say, his pretensions to authoritarianism have been undercut by the ineptitude that derailed his first term and led to a crushing defeat in 2020. He has the lowest approval rating at the 100-day mark of any president in the past 80 years.According to a poll published by the Washington Post newspaper and ABC News, only 39% of Americans approve of how Trump is conducting his presidency. About 64% of respondents said he was “going too far” in his efforts to expand presidential powers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother survey by the Decision Desk HQ survey showed 44% approval and 56% disapproval. It also found that 64% of respondents said tariffs hurt consumers, and 91% were worried about inflation, with 62% “very concerned”. The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) thinktank found that 52% agreed Trump was “a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy”.Opposition is manifesting itself in myriad ways and cutting Trump down to size. About 50 of his executive orders have been partially or fully blocked by courts, while about 40 have been left in effect, according to a count by the Associated Press.View image in fullscreenAnti-Trump demonstrations are growing in scale and frequency in cities and towns across the country. Democrats are holding raucous town halls in traditional Republican territory. After initially buckling under Trump’s “days of thunder”, law firms, non-profits and universities have found a spine and are feeding off one another’s resolve. Political commentators sense that the momentum is shifting.Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “What Trump had going for him was he created this sense that he was an irresistible force, that resistance was futile, that everyone had to accommodate his whims and his agenda.“But now you’re seeing the supreme court pushing back on him, the markets expressing alarm and his poll numbers going south. The shock and awe which seemed irresistible for so long now seems to be encountering much more resistance.”Trump is not the first president to feel the pinch of political gravity. Biden started positively but saw his approval rating dip below 50% for the first time in August 2021, following the botched US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to an NBC News poll, He never recovered.A sustained backlash against Trump could become a threat to Republicans who, while more devoutly loyal than ever, have to worry about their seats in Congress in the midterm elections in November 2026. Historically the party that holds the White House tends to suffer losses in the midterms. Republicans currently hold a narrow 220-213 majority in the House of Representatives.Patrick Gaspard, a former official in the Barack Obama administration, said: “I would not judge this presidency to be a success. More likely than not we’ll begin to see Republicans whose names are on the ballot in 2026 slowly but clearly moving away from this agenda. It’s very clear that many Trump voters already have buyer’s remorse.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: Rubio tangles with Germany; crackdown on campus protests continues

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      Germany’s foreign ministry has pushed back after Marco Rubio criticised the country’s decision to designate the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force incompatible with its constitution.“This is democracy,” the ministry said in a post on X, adding that the courts would have the final say and that “we have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped”. The US secretary of state had called the move “tyranny in disguise”.The spat unfolded as the US continued its crackdown on pro-Palestinian free speech, with nine activists arrested at an encampment at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.Here are the key stories at a glance:Germany pushes back after Rubio defends AfDGermany’s foreign ministry has hit back at the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, after he called on Berlin to reverse course over a decision to label the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party a “confirmed rightwing extremist group”.On Thursday, Rubio took to X and wrote: “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise.”The German foreign ministry pushed back in its own statement, saying: “This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough and independent investigation to protect our constitution and the rule of law.”Read the full storyNine arrested as police disband pro-Palestinian encampment at SwarthmoreThe Swarthmore borough police department disbanded a four-day pro-Palestinian encampment on Swarthmore College’s campus and arrested nine activists.The demonstration calling on the Pennsylvania college to divest from the tech company Cisco due to its ties to the Israeli government was a rare uprising in an academic year where higher-education institutions have been quick to quash them.Read the full storyCourt backs Trump administration over VoA employeesA federal appeals court has foiled a plan to return more than 1,000 Voice of America (VoA) workers to their desks after an earlier court ruling granted a temporary stay on Donald Trump’s executive order dismantling the US taxpayer-funded news service for overseas listeners.Read the full storyMass resignations at labor department threaten US workers, staff warnA “catastrophic” exodus of thousands of employees from the US Department of Labor threatens “all of the core aspects of working life”, insiders have warned, amid fears that the Trump administration will further slash the agency’s operations.Read the full storySpaceX employees vote to create own town called ‘Starbase’Voters in a small patch of south Texas voted on Saturday to give Elon Musk a town to call his own, officially creating a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds rocket launches.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, signed a law on Saturday making more than 5 million students eligible to use state funds for private schools, a watershed moment in the conservative campaign to remake public education in the US.

      A Guatemalan immigrant who crossed the US border eight months pregnant and gave birth in Arizona has avoided fast-track deportation after intervention by the state’s governor.

      Donald Trump posted an AI-generated photo showing himself as the pope ahead of this week’s gathering of cardinals to choose a new leader, drawing instant outrage on X.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 2 May 2025. More

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      ‘What is left of our democracy?’: freed Palestinian human rights advocate warns of US authoritarian rule

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      Mohsen Mahdawi, the Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia University student freed on Wednesday after more than two weeks in immigration detention, has issued a stark warning about the US’s descent into authoritarianism.“Once the repression of dissent, in the name of security, becomes a key objective of a government, authoritarian rule and even martial law are not far off. When they look at my case, all Americans should ask themselves: what is left of our democracy, and who will be targeted next?” said Mahddawi in an op-ed for the New York Times.Mahdawi, a Palestinian human rights advocate based in Vermont, was detained and ordered deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being prosecuted of any crime – and without due process. The philosophy student was arrested by masked Ice agents in Colchester, Vermont, during what should have been his citizenship naturalization interview.He is among a growing number of international students who have been ordered deported for their Palestinian rights advocacy by the Trump administration, which is using an obscure law to accuse these individuals of posing a threat to US foreign policy interests. Unlike the others, Mahdawi avoided being sent to a Louisiana detention facility after the Ice agents narrowly missed the flight, allowing his attorneys to challenge the deportation order in Vermont.“Despite spending 16 nights in a jail cell, I never lost hope in the inevitability of justice and the principles of democracy. I wanted to become a citizen of this country because I believe in the principles that it enshrines,” writes Mahdawi.“The American government accuses me of undermining US foreign policy, a patently absurd pretext for deportation for political speech that the Trump administration dislikes. The government is scraping the bottom of the barrel in its attempts to smear me. My only ‘crime’ is refusing to accept the slaughter of Palestinians, opposing war and promoting peace. I have simply insisted that international law must be respected. I believe the way to a just and long-lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis is through diplomacy and restorative justice.”Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, where as a child he bore witness to the death of his brother after he was denied access to medical care, and the detention and imprisonment of multiple close relatives including his grandfather and father by Israeli forces.Moving to the US in 2014 was his first experience of freedom, he said.“Ultimately, I sought American citizenship not only because I did not want to lose the freedom I enjoyed as a permanent resident but even more so because I believe in the principles and values of democracy, which this country stipulates in its founding documents,” he wrote in the Times.“These very freedoms are under attack today, both for me and for others like me. The Trump administration is hewing to Israel’s playbook: Under the thinly veiled guise of security, rights are being denied and due process eliminated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“By seeking to deport me, the Trump administration is sending a clear message: There is no room for dissent, free speech be damned. It seems willing to shield an extremist Israeli government from criticism at the expense of constitutional rights, all while suppressing the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis, a future free of trauma and fear.”Israel’s war on Gaza since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack has killed at least 52,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Thousands more people are missing and feared dead, while tens of thousands have suffered injuries and preventable diseases including acute malnutrition.In the ruling ordering Mahdawi’s release on bail on Wednesday, Judge Geoffrey W Crawford wrote: “Legal residents not charged with crimes or misconduct are being arrested and threatened with deportation for stating their views on the political issues of the day.” He likened the Trump administration’s crackdown on students and free speech to the red scare and the McCarthy era.Upon his release, Mahdawi told supporters and the media: “I am saying it clear and loud. To President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you.” More

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      Voice of America to resume airing after court halts Trump’s dismantling of broadcaster

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      Voice of America (VoA), the US-taxpayer funded news service for overseas listeners, could be back on the air as soon as next week, after a federal appeals court granted a temporary stay on an executive order dismantling the broadcaster.VoA was effectively shut down after Trump signed an order on 14 March dismantling or shrinking seven agencies including the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).The USAGM is an independent government agency that oversees VoA and distributes congressionally appropriated funds to several non-profit broadcasters which provide news and information in almost 50 languages in countries with limited or no access to independent media sources.After nearly every affected network sued, US district judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, granted a preliminary injunction in late April, ruling that the executive order was arbitrary and likely exceeded the president’s authority.The Department of Justice appealed. On Thursday, a Washington DC federal appeals court, which included two Trump appointees, partly upheld the lower court ruling that will enable VoA to resume broadcasting while the appeal plays out.VoA staff can begin a “phased return” to the office and resume programming next week, according to an email from the justice department shared with the Washington Post. Some VoA and USAGM staff have had access to their government email accounts restored.But the latest court ruling was bad news for the other publicly funded broadcasters.The Trump administration’s freeze on congressionally approved funds for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks will remain in place while the lawsuit makes its way through the court.While VoA is a federal entity, the other broadcasters are private non-profit organizations. The funding freeze has already forced them to make staffing cuts and reduce content.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe USAGA had, until now, enjoyed bipartisan support, due to the vital role VoA and the other foreign-news broadcasters play in advancing democracy and US interests by reaching about 360 million people in countries that have little to no independent press.The Guardian has contacted both the USAGA and VoA for comment. More

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      Mass resignations at labor department threaten workers in US and overseas, warn staff – as more cuts loom

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      A “catastrophic” exodus of thousands of employees from the US Department of Labor threatens “all of the core aspects of working life”, insiders have warned, amid fears that the Trump administration will further slash the agency’s operations.The federal agency has already lost about 20% of its workforce, according to employees, as nearly 2,700 staff took retirement, early retirement, deferred resignation buyouts or “fork in the road” departures earlier this year.Remaining workers fear further cuts are on the way, as the threat of a mass “reduction in force” firing looms large after a February order from the White House for agencies to draw up “reorganization” plans.“The department has gotten 20% smaller, before any formal reductions in force are announced. A lot of people headed for the exits because so many different components of the Department of Labor have been threatened by reduction in forces [Rifs],” said an employee at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a key government data agency, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “God only knows how much smaller it will be when the Rifs are announced.”A spokesperson for the labor department said they could not confirm the number of employees who have taken retirement or resignation offers, or are now on administrative leave. They did not provide further comment on the impact on operations.Last month Jihun Han, chief of staff to the US secretary of labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, sent a staff-wide email warning they could face criminal charges for speaking to journalists about agency business.“All of the core aspects of working life can no longer be assumed, because the Department of Labor was chronically underfunded for a long time, and eliminating half the staff, or whatever their goals are, will cause it to be absolutely dysfunctional,” the BLS employee said. “I think it’s catastrophic.”The cuts will have ripple effects for workers throughout the US economy, such as for wage and hour enforcement and safety protections, and state and local governments that rely on funds from the labor department, they cautioned.An attorney at the labor department, who also requested to remain anonymous, said attrition has forced attorneys to take on more administrative tasks, such as picking up mail and taking on workloads that deter from their job duties. Office cleaning and maintenance has also decreased, they claimed.“They’ve cynically exempted a lot of frontline positions, such as wage and hour investigators or safety inspectors, but of course those people will have to do a ton more work. If you cut one place, it doesn’t work as well as it did before as all of the support those people had is no longer there,” the attorney said. “We’re doing a lot more work, work that there is no reason attorneys should be doing. What it means is workers are going to get fewer services.”International labor grants totaling $577m were cut at the labor department in March, eliminating work and research being done over several years and cancelling about $237m in funds yet to be disbursed.An employee at the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) said about half the bureau’s staff have taken buyout offers in the wake of the grant cuts and threats of terminations. In addition to grants, the agency also ensures basic labor rights are upheld in free trade agreements and conducts research, including congressionally mandated reports on forced and child labor in other countries.View image in fullscreen“The bottom line is it’s worse for workers overseas. It will harm workers in the US because it will make it easier for foreign companies to unfairly compete with businesses in the US, by making it easier and cheaper to outsource to other countries,” the ILAB employee said. “And it’s worse for American consumers and US businesses that would rather not products made by child slaves.”Overall, cuts to grants, contracts, office leases at the labor department enacted by the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – led by the billionaire tycoon Elon Musk – total $455m, including $23m from shutting down offices, and $192m for other contracts and services.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite the small fraction of federal spending allocated to the labor department, Doge has listed the department as fourth for the highest claimed savings among all departments in the federal government. Funding for the labor department had already significantly decreased in recent decades, from $119bn in 1980 when adjusted for inflation to $54.3bn last year.Workers inside the department say attrition and cuts have undermined or hampered operations, increasing workloads on those still there.“It’s become a hostile environment for folks,” said an employee working in a civil rights division. Trump issued an executive order in January characterizing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as discriminatory.“There have been leads and supervisors who have left, so there’s nobody to do that work, except for those of us who are still there,” they added. “Generally, I would say civil rights enforcement is going to be extremely delayed.”A worker who recently left the women’s bureau at the labor department said staff leaving, coupled with grant cuts and lack of direction and leadership, had severely diminished the work of the bureau.“This administration is showing they don’t care about the over 70 million working women in the US,” they claimed. “Without the work of the women’s bureau, we’ll lose valuable data and research about how women are faring in the workforce, as well as initiatives that help women enter and succeed in good paying jobs.”Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint drawn up ahead of Trump’s re-election, called for sweeping changes at the labor department, including the ability to make it easier to decertify unions, offer states waivers for exemptions from federal labor laws, maximize hiring of political appointees, freeze recruitment of career personnel and significantly reduce the department’s budget. The Heritage Foundation, which organized Project 2025, has in the past called for the department to be shut down.“The anticipated drastic cuts to the [labor department] are anti-worker,” Julie Su, secretary of labor under Biden, wrote in a report last month. “They are part of the administration’s war on workers that includes obliterating union protections, stripping workers of collective bargaining rights, and attacks on federal employees and the workers who depend on them.” More

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      From ‘fiasco’ to ‘fantastic’: Americans weigh in on 100 days of Trump

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      “I’m not a fan of Trump, but he’s delivering a long-overdue kick in the pants to the bloated bureaucracy of the US federal government,” said Martyn, a marketing executive from California. “Seems odd to ask Trump to focus on eliminating corruption, but sometimes you need a crook to catch a crook. It’s been, however, way more chaotic than I thought was possible.”Martyn was among thousands of Americans who shared with the Guardian how they felt about the first weeks of Donald Trump’s second term, painting a picture of voters who felt disoriented and maximally alarmed on one side, and exhilarated, hopeful or positively surprised on the other.The president has spent the first 100 days since his inauguration issuing a flurry of executive orders and making a series of policy moves that have dominated the global news and politics agenda and raised fears of autocracy in America and a fundamental shifting of the international order.View image in fullscreenHundreds of Americans who were opposed to Trump said they felt his first few weeks in office had been “a nightmare”, “absolute chaos”, “a dictatorship” and “an embarrassment to the American people”, among many similar verdicts.Those who supported Trump felt overwhelmingly that his second term had so far been “fantastic”, “energizing”, “an impressive success”, “a beacon of change” and had shown the president to be “a man who keeps his promises and truly delivers”, among similar sentiments.Scores of people who felt outraged about the Trump administration said they could not comprehend why Americans were apparently broadly “accepting” or “tolerating” Trump’s policies, with various people decrying the absence of mass protest or concerted efforts to have Trump removed from office.A number of people who said they remained broadly sceptical of the Maga movement said they had embraced some of the president’s policies, such as deep cuts to federal spending and foreign aid, attempts to expose corruption in government agencies and a harsh crackdown on illegal migration.Many felt that Trump was disrespecting America’s system of checks and balances between the executive, the judiciary and the legislative branch of the US government.Scores felt that Trump had not used his first weeks in office to focus on the needs of the American population, as promised, such as cheaper groceries and housing. Many respondents expressed shock about Trump’s expansionist rhetoric on Greenland, Canada, Gaza and Panama, and what they considered assaults on free speech.Many others, however, pointed out that Trump had begun to deliver multiple policy pledges from his campaign, among them Doge, tariffs, ramped up deportations of migrants, the dismantling of DEI and efforts to end the war in Ukraine.“This is a fiasco,” said Maritza, a Hispanic woman from Florida in her 40s who had come to the US as a refugee from Colombia in the 1990s.“It’s been overwhelming and confusing. Here we are, drowning in executive orders, with a spineless Congress. There’s no rhyme, no reason, they’ve created chaos on all levels. All we’re seeing is the fallout domestically and internationally from their approach – the constant reversals, the radical dismantling of government institutions.View image in fullscreen“I’m disgusted that life-saving aid has been cut to vulnerable populations with zero regard for human life. As a person of color in this country, I’m concerned for what comes next in the crusade Musk and Trump are waging on democracy. The tariffs are another shit show.”“It’s been devastating and far worse than I imagined,” said Mary, 58, a physician from Seattle. “Watching Ukraine get served up to Putin, watching tens of thousands of faultless federal employees be summarily fired. He wants to be a dictator.“In his first term, he had reasonable people around him who held to norms of governance. Now, he’s pushing every boundary. It’s not the executive’s place to close the Department of Education. It’s out of Trump’s purview. He doesn’t have the authority per the constitution, because we have three co-equal branches of government.”Mary pointed to the deportation of more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan drug gang who were rapidly deported to El Salvador by the administration – possibly in defiance of a court order blocking the deportation – after Trump invoked a law last used during the second world war.“That’s not due process,” Mary said. “He’s doing these things in ways that have never been done before.” For others, however, that was exactly the point.“The people who say Trump is authoritarian and acting illegally – they’re essentially saying that it’s unconstitutional when a democratically elected president delivers the drastic change people voted for,” said Ron, a 36-year-old worker in a manufacturing workshop and father of two from Detroit. “I voted for almost all of this.”“Trump is doing a lot by executive order, because he knows that what he wants to do is not going to get through Congress, and America is kind of in an emergency situation, running out of time,” said Matthew DeLuca, 55, a data scientist from Atlanta, Georgia.“I’m still happy I voted for Trump. I think he’s doing the right thing. I don’t agree with every detail of what he’s doing, such as how he’s treating Canada and Denmark. I think it’s very counterproductive to suggest to Canada that it may be our 51st state, and I don’t think we need to take Greenland or, you know, buy it against their will.“But Trump is the first president in my lifetime who is actually trying to do something about our biggest problems. I’m not confident he will be successful, but just the fact that he is trying gives me hope.”View image in fullscreenDeLuca was particularly impressed with both Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration as well as with the ‘“department of government efficiency” or Doge.“You can’t have a country without borders. My wife is a federal worker, she’s facing losing her job. That would be a bad thing for us, but she voted for Trump knowing this was a risk. I hate for anyone to lose their job, but something has to give.“We have $36tn in debt. If we don’t make radical changes, this country will go under. We don’t have a choice, we’ve got to straighten this out.”“Even though I’m an opponent [of Trump], I understand the appeal of action, after we’ve had a long period of stagnation due to our structure of government,” said Brian, a university professor in his 60s from Tulsa, Oklahoma.“Over the last decades, Congress has been increasingly paralyzed and focused simply on obstruction, and so they’ve done very little. As somebody on the other side, I’m deeply frustrated by the inaction, too. Even when Democrats win the presidency and have control of both houses, they do very little.“This contributed to the rise of Trumpism, but also to dissatisfaction on the left. The realization that the federal government really was not responding to things that people want – the housing crisis, homelessness, the escalating cost of higher education – we have a whole variety of things that are never addressed.“I’m not persuaded, however, that the things that Trump is ramming through are actually the things his voters wanted.”Trump, Brian felt, was determined to break “the accomplishments of generations”, from the social safety net to collective security abroad.“I’m dismayed by the absence of a meaningful response from the Democrats, who seem to have given up, and by the capitulation of the legacy media and institutions like Columbia University, which appear to have made peace with Maga. That concerns me, as we are witnessing the final unraveling of checks and balances,” he added.“The only check and balance on the Trump train I see is the bond market and its view on the health of the US economy,” said Patrick, 51, a finance professional and father of three from New York.View image in fullscreen“The conversation in the streets and offices is astonishingly positive. Only soundbites [about the political situation] are making it through. People are generally onboard with Doge and cutting government waste here, except those directly impacted. Colleagues and others in my social circle, including West Village neighbours and working-class people, are looking for reasons to say ‘it’s fine’, and this is New York!“This administration is not going to be brought down by social issues [such as mistreatment of migrants]. All people care about is their pay and the economy.“There is nothing that he and his administration are doing that I didn’t expect, but the lack of outrage, the general apathy and calm acceptance have been terrifying and extremely depressing,” said Daniel, a former teacher and translator from San Diego, who is currently taking care of an elderly parent.“I have been paralyzed by fear. Friends who weren’t born here are terrified. We look over our shoulders when talking in public.”Mindy*, a 59-year-old homemaker from Maryland, said she had experienced “constant anxiety” since Trump had taken office.View image in fullscreen“Anxiety over whether Immigration Control Enforcement (Ice) will randomly arrest a friend, or their kid at nursery, about whether my federal government worker husband will have a job when he comes home, about whether they’ll allow my Guatemalan foster son and me back into the country if we go and visit his grandparents,” she said.“Egg prices have come down, I paid $4.97 a dozen this week, but they’re still higher than they used to be. I have anxiety about losing freedoms – are you going to be able to express an opinion that the administration disagrees with?”While many respondents said that Trump had been much better prepared than they had expected, many said the administration’s “Flood the Zone” strategy had created much of the chaos engulfing the White House in recent weeks, but had also succeeded in overwhelming the opposition.“Trump is obviously trying to push as much through as he can in one fell swoop. The result has been chaotic,” said Wyatt, a college student from Tacoma, Washington.“I don’t think his administration has the knowledge nor ability to actually curb inflation. I think if prices continue to go up it could create an opening for the Democrats, but they would really have to get it together.“I think the Democrats have done a lousy job with messaging and never really innovated like the right has done with social media and the internet. This left a big opening which the right has capitalized on, and they now seem to dominate the cultural narrative.”Various respondents felt hopeful that Trump would revive the fortunes of America’s declining industries, among them Howard Trenholme, a bakery and cafe owner from Moab, Utah, who hoped that Trump would be “making the US strong in terms of being the manufacturing juggernaut of the world again, as well as confronting China’s growing dominance”.“Trump [claims] that he will bring factory jobs back to the USA, but I don’t think that the US has the infrastructure or the interest in doing so,” said Joel, an epidemiologist from Chicago in his 30s. “Young people do not want factory jobs. The US cannot compete on the global market as a producer of goods. It is a nonsense concept that will not work.”The actions taken to halt USAID-related activities, Joel warned, would put the health of Americans at risk, for instance by failing to provide foreign countries like Sudan and Uganda with the means to screen travelers for infectious diseases that could then spread in US cities.Eileen, 72, a retired English teacher from New York, said her son’s and daughter’s government-funded jobs in oversees humanitarian aid and education were affected by Elon Musk’s sweeping cuts, meaning she had stopped all discretionary spending to be able to support them financially.View image in fullscreen“I’m horrified at the vicious means Trump is using to dismantle this country,” she said. “The ambush of President Zelenskyy was disgusting beyond belief, and I never dreamed our government would do an about-face and side with Russia, treat our allies so badly.“It shakes you at your core, watching these values being trampled into the ground. I do hope that the tide will turn.”*Name has been changed More