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      2024 book review: the what-ifs of an election that took US closer to autocracy

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      Donald Trump is on a roll. The “big, beautiful bill” is law. Ice, his paramilitary immigration force, rivals foreign armies for size and funding. Democrats stand demoralized and divided. 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, is a book for these times: aptly named, deeply sourced.Kamala Harris declined to speak. Joe Biden criticized his successor in a brief phone call, then balked. Trump talked, of course.“If that didn’t happen … I think I would’ve won, but it might have been a little bit closer,” he says of the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, which set the race alight.Yet 2024 is about more than the horse race. It also chronicles how the elites unintentionally made Trump’s restoration possible, despite a torrent of criminal charges against him, 34 resulting in convictions, and civil lawsuits that saw him fined hundreds of millions of dollars.“Trump always drew his strength from decades of pent-up frustration with the American democratic system’s failures to address the hardships and problems the people experienced in their daily lives,” Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf write.“In 2024, [Trump’s] supporters saw institutions stacked against them … leading them to identify viscerally with his legal ordeal, even though they had not experienced anything like it before.”Dawsey is a Pulitzer prize winner, working political investigations and enterprise for the Wall Street Journal. Pager covers the White House for the New York Times. Arnsdorf was part of the Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer for coverage of the assassination attempt.Dawsey and Pager are Post alumni. With Arnsdorf, they capture the aspirations and delusions of Trump and the pretenders to his Republican throne, of Biden and Harris too.“In the weeks after the election, Biden repeatedly told allies that he could have won if he’d stayed in the race,” 2024 reports, “even as he publicly questioned whether he could have served another four years.”Really? Biden’s approval rating fell below 50% in August 2021 and never recovered. From October 2023, he trailed Trump. A year out, the authors reveal, Barack Obama warned his former vice-president’s staff: “Your campaign is a mess.”Biden’s aides privately derided Obama as “a prick”.“They thought he and his inner circle had constantly disrespected and mistreated Biden, despite his loyal service as vice-president.”As for Harris, Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf report that she “knew that the race would be close, but she really thought she would win”.Despite that, David Plouffe, a senior Harris adviser, admitted post-election that internal polls never showed her leading.“I think it surprised people because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw,” he said. Harris’s debate win never moved the needle.Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf contend that the outcome was not foreordained. Rather, they raise a series of plausible-enough “what-ifs”. One is: “If the Democrats got clobbered, as expected, in the 2022 midterms, and Joe Biden never ran for re-election.”Except, by early 2022, according to This Shall Not Pass, a campaign book published that year, Biden saw himself as a cross between FDR and Obama.A telephone conversation between Biden and Abigail Spanberger, a moderate congresswoman now the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia, captures Biden’s self-perception.“This is President Roosevelt,” Biden begins, before thanking Spanberger for her sense of humor.She replies: “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Mr President.”Back to 2024. Biden bristled at being challenged. Pushback risked being equated with disloyalty. His closest advisers were either family members or dependent on him for their livelihoods. He lacked social peers with incomes and personages of their own.Mike Donilon, a longtime aide, tells the authors: “It was an act of insanity by the Democratic leadership to have forced Biden out.“Tell me why you walked away from a guy with 81m votes … A native of [swing-state] Pennsylvania. Why do that?”Because Biden’s debate performance was a gobsmacking disaster. He also found navigating the stairs of Air Force One difficult and needed prompts to find the podium. In May 2025, Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer – a disclosure that came after 2024 went to press.The authors of 2024 pose Republican hypotheticals too. One: “If Trump never got indicted, or if Republicans didn’t respond by rallying to him, or if the prosecutions were more successful.”Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, demonstrated a lack of nerve. Glaringly, he failed to use the initial E Jean Carroll trial, over the writer’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her, to bolster his presidential ambitions. DeSantis didn’t dispatch his wife, Casey DeSantis, to Manhattan to offer daily thoughts and prayers for the plaintiff, or for Melania Trump. If you want to be the man, first you’ve got to beat the man.Another hypothetical: “If Trump and Biden didn’t agree to an early debate …”That question hangs over everything.Trump’s pronouncements leave Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf anxious. After the 2022 midterms, he mused about terminating the constitution. Later, on the campaign trail, he spoke openly of being a “dictator for a day”. When he was back in the West Wing, reporters asked: “Are you a dictator on day one?” “No,” he replied. “I can’t imagine even being called that.”Dawsey, Pager and Arnsdorf then catalog Trump’s unilateral actions on that first day, including stripping political opponents of security clearances. Later that month, he commenced his vendetta against law firms he deemed to be enemies. In February, Trump barred the Associated Press from the White House press pool unless the news agency referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.2024 contains no mention of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Perhaps it should have made space. Hungary’s leader is an autocrat in all but name, an elected leader who has removed freedoms regardless. Republicans adore him.

      2024 is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      Donald Trump announces 30% tariffs on goods from the EU and Mexico

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      Donald Trump announced on Saturday that goods imported from both the European Union and Mexico will face a 30% US tariff rate starting 1 August, in letters posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.The tariff assault on the EU came as a shock to European capitals as the European Commission and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer had spent months hammering out a deal they believed was acceptable to both sides.The agreement in principle put on Trump’s table last Wednesday involved a 10% tariff, five times the pre-Trump tariff, which the bloc already described as “pain”.EU trade ministers will meet on Monday for a pre-arranged summit and will be under pressure from some countries to show a tough reaction by implementing €21bn ($24.6bn) in retaliatory measures, which they had paused until midnight the same day.In his letter to Mexico’s leader, Trump acknowledged that the country had been helpful in stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants and fentanyl into the United States.But, he said, the country had not done enough to stop North America from turning into a “Narco-Trafficking Playground”.“We have had years to discuss our Trading Relationship with The European Union, and we have concluded we must move away from these long-term, large, and persistent, Trade Deficits, engendered by your Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies, and Trade Barriers,” Trump wrote in the letter to the EU. “Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal.”Claudia Sheinbaum said on Saturday she is sure an agreement can be reached before Trump’s threatened tariffs take effect on 1 August.Speaking during an event in the Mexican state of Sonora, the Mexican president added that Mexico’s sovereignty is never negotiable.The higher-than-expected rate has dealt a blow to the EU’s hopes of de-escalation and a trade deal and could risk a trade war with goods of low margins including Belgian chocolate, Irish butter and Italian olive oil.The EU was informed of the tariff hike before Trump’s declaration on social media.In a letter to the EU, Trump warned that the EU would pay a price if they retaliated: “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs and retaliate, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 30% that we charge.”The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the 30% rate would “disrupt transatlantic supply chains, to the detriment of businesses, consumers and patients on both sides of the Atlantic”.She said the bloc was one of the more open trading places in the world, and still hoped to persuade Trump to climb down.“We remain ready to continue working towards an agreement by August 1. At the same time, we will take all necessary steps to safeguard EU interests, including the adoption of proportionate countermeasures if required,” she said.Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called for “goodwill  … to reach a fair agreement that can strengthen the west as a whole. It would make no sense to trigger a trade war between the two sides of the Atlantic.” She added that both sides should avoid “polarisation”.The decision to hike the tariffs will also be another test of Trump’s ability to act in good faith in negotiations.Brussels will view the latest threat as a maneuver by Trump to extract more concessions from the EU, which he once described as “nastier” than China when it came to trade.Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, said on Saturday that Brussels should react immediately with countermeasures against Trump’s “outrageous” threat to hike tariffs on imports from the European Union.The EU had been negotiating intensively with Washington for more than three weeks and had made concessions, said Lange.“It is brazen and disrespectful to increase the tariffs on European goods announced on April 2 from 20% to 30%,” Lange told Reuters.“This is a slap in the face for the negotiations. This is no way to deal with a key trading partner.”While Trump indicated earlier this week that his new rates, also levelled against big economies including Japan, South Korea and Brazil, will not apply until 1 August, his latest tactic will create much distrust.Europe should make it clear that these “unfair trade practices” were unacceptable, Lange said.“We have postponed the first stage of our countermeasures for the time being, but I am firmly convinced that they must now be implemented immediately,” he said.“The first list of countermeasures must be activated on Monday as planned, and the second list should also follow quickly.”Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, downplayed the impact of the threatened 50% tariff. Trump and Lula have indicated a willingness to negotiate, though Lula also said: “Trump could’ve called, but instead posted the tariff news on his website – a complete lack of respect which is typical of his behavior towards everyone.”Even if Trump had agreed to the proposal put on his table on Wednesday, further negotiations would have been needed in any case to create a legal text that can be formally registered by the US government, a process that is itself laden with risk.The UK took seven weeks to get its agreement registered with a promise included to reduce tariffs on car exports from 27.5% to 10%, but the agreed zero tariff for the British steel industry was omitted.Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former congressional budget office director and president of the center-right American Action Forum, said the letters were evidence that serious trade talks had not been taking place over the past three months. He stressed that nations were instead talking among themselves about how to minimize their own exposure to the US economy and Trump.“They’re spending time talking to each other about what the future is going to look like, and we’re left out,” Holtz-Eakin said.He added that Trump was using the letters to demand attention, but, “in the end, these are letters to other countries about taxes he’s going to levy on his citizens”.The new tariff ends a turbulent week for the EU with Trump announcing an extension for talks until 1 August on Monday, then on Tuesday announcing the EU would “probably” receive a letter setting its new US tariff rate within 48 hours, claiming the bloc had shifted from being “very tough” to “very nice”.But diplomats viewed it as a mixed message as Trump stressed that he was still talking to negotiators from the bloc, but that he was displeased with European policies toward US tech firms. More

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      Obama’s former press secretary recalls ‘emotional’ mood in White House after Trump win

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      The hardest day on the job for the White House press secretary for most of Barack Obama’s second term was right after Donald Trump was first elected president, he recently revealed during a fireside chat at a journalism convention.Speaking at the 2025 National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) conference in Chicago, Josh Earnest said it was grueling for the Obama administration to realize it would have to follow through on promises of a peaceful transfer of power despite spending the 2016 election cycle offering dire warnings “about what could or would happen if Donald Trump were given the keys to the Oval Office”.Those warnings stemmed in part from intelligence assessments that the US’s longtime geopolitical adversary Russia had interfered in the race in which Trump defeated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Earnest said the Obama administration suddenly found itself needing to defend the validity of those assessments while saying it would peacefully transfer over the nuclear launch codes – and other levers of power – to Trump.“Did [Obama] not mean how dangerous [Trump] could be?” Earnest asked rhetorically, referring to some of the questions he and fellow administration officials faced while briefing journalists at the time. “It was a tough message.”The remarks on Wednesday from Earnest – who was Obama’s press secretary from 2014 to 2017 – also offered a first-hand peek into the somber mood at the White House after Trump defeated Clinton. Like many, Earnest “was very surprised”. “I did not think he was going to win,” he said.Many Obama communications staffers were visibly demoralized, and Earnest said he and his aides decided to convene them, talk about Trump’s victory and try to refocus them for the final two months in office.During that conversation, Obama summoned Earnest to go over the logistics of a nationally televised speech he was planning to give in the White House’s Rose Garden. Earnest recalled Obama asking how it was going with the staff that morning – to which he replied that they were “emotional”.Obama then asked an assistant to call the staff into the Oval Office. He stood in front of the Resolute Desk near his vice-president, Joe Biden, who would later succeed Trump in the White House – and gave them an early version of the speech he ultimately delivered that day.“We have to remember that we’re actually all on one team,” part of that speech read. “We are Americans first. We’re patriots first. We all want what’s best for this country.”As Earnest noted, Obama’s official White House photographer, Pete Souza, captured the scene with his camera. He recalled how it was the first time many people in the room that day had been in the Oval Office.“It was very poignant,” Earnest told the chat’s host, the ABC7 Chicago news anchor Tanja Babich.One of Earnest’s most vocal critics in the aftermath of Trump’s victory was the president-elect himself. Trump called Earnest a “foolish guy” at a December 2016 rally.“He is so bad – the way he delivers a message,” Trump said of Earnest after the latter defended the US intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s interference.Earnest has been a top spokesperson for United Airlines at the company’s Chicago headquarters since 2018. He spent some time being a media pundit early during the first of Trump’s two presidencies. But Earnest told Babich he did not find it “particularly fulfilling” given the way Trump’s unpredictable, chaotic style of governing can often disorient news outlets.“The questions could all be boiled down to, ‘Isn’t this outrageous what Trump is doing?” Earnest said. “And it became about finding different ways to say, ‘Yes.’“I wasn’t doing journalism. I was doing commentary. And it was pretty close to entertainment.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: Trump tours Texas disaster zone as administration dodges questions over future of Fema

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      Donald Trump has defended the state and federal response to deadly flooding in Texas, while administration officials continue to dodge questions about his plans to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).Speaking at a round table in Kerrville, Texas, Trump said Fema deployed multiple emergency response units and praised all the officials involved in what he said was an effective and swift response.“Every American should be inspired by what has taken place,” Trump said. He called a reporter a “bad person” for asking a question about families of the dead who are saying that their loved ones could have been saved had emergency warnings gone out before the flooding. Trump said: “I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible, the job you’ve all done.”Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:Trump defends Texas flood handling as disaster tests vow to shutter FemaDuring a trip on Friday to look at the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Donald Trump claimed that state and federal officials had done an “incredible job”, saying of the disaster that he had “never seen anything like this”.The trip comes as he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.Read the full storyState department issues first termination orders to staffThe US state department has begun issuing the first of more than 1,350 termination notices as part of a huge reorganisation of US’s diplomatic corps under the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, according to internal documents and US diplomats at the state department on Friday.Career diplomats and other staff began to receive the notices on Friday morning, days after the supreme court lifted a ban on the Trump administration moving forward with mass firings of government employees that will affect hundreds of thousands of federal workers.“Hearing ‘I got mine!’ around the floor,” one current state department employee told the Guardian.Read the full storyWorker dies after chaotic immigration raid at California farmA farm worker died on Friday from injuries sustained a day earlier in raids on two California cannabis farm sites as US immigration authorities confirmed they arrested 200 workers after a tense standoff with authorities.Jaime Alanis’s death was confirmed in a social media post by the United Farm Workers advocacy group. “We tragically can confirm that a farm worker has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action,” the post read.Read the full storyUS border czar doesn’t know fate of men deported to South SudanTom Homan, the US border czar, has said he does not know what happened to the eight men deported to South Sudan after the Trump administration resumed sending migrants to countries that are not their place of origin, known as third countries.“They’re free as far as we’re concerned. They’re free, they’re no longer in our custody, they’re in Sudan,” Homan told Politico on Friday. “Will they stay in Sudan? I don’t know.”Read the full storyTrump to resume weapons deliveries to Ukraine through Nato alliesDonald Trump appears poised to deliver weapons to Ukraine by selling them first to Nato allies in a major policy shift for his administration amid frustrations with Vladimir Putin over stalling negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.Read the full storyTrump yanks $15m in research into Pfas on US farmsThe Trump administration has killed nearly $15m in research into Pfas contamination of US farmland, bringing to a close studies that public health advocates say are essential for understanding a worrying source of widespread food contamination.The administration’s move is “not just stupid, it’s evil”, a former EPA attorney said.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Myanmar’s military leader praised Trump and asked him to lift sanctions, as the junta sought to capitalize on a tariff letter from the US president believed to be Washington’s first public recognition of its rule.

      Trans teenagers who say gender-affirming care saved their lives are protesting as two leading US hospitals halt their treatments.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 10 July 2025. More

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      Trump tours Texas flood damage as disaster tests vow to shutter Fema

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      During a trip on Friday to look at the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Donald Trump claimed that state and federal officials had done an “incredible job”, saying of the disaster that he had “never seen anything like this”.The trip comes as he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Trump administration has backed away from plans to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but administration officials continue to dodge questions about the agency’s future and many are still calling for serious reforms, potentially sending much of its work to the states.Since the 4 July disaster, which has killed at least 120 people, the president and his top aides have focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred and the human tragedy involved rather than the government-slashing crusade that has been popular with Trump’s core supporters.Speaking at a roundtable in Kerrville, Texas, Trump said that Fema deployed multiple emergency response units and he praised all the officials involved in what he said was an effective and swift response.“Every American should be inspired by what has taken place,” Trump said. He likened the flooding to “a giant, giant wave in the Pacific Ocean that the best surfers in the world would be afraid to surf”.Trump called a reporter a “bad person” for asking a question about families of the dead who are saying that their loved ones could have been saved had emergency warnings gone out before the flooding. Trump said: “I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible, the job you’ve all done.”In an NBC News interview on Thursday, Trump said: “Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming.” He added: “This is a once-in-every-200-years deal.” He has also suggested he would have been ready to visit Texas within hours but did not want to burden authorities still searching for the more than 170 people who are still missing.Trump’s shift in focus underscores how tragedy can complicate political calculations, even though the president has made slashing the federal workforce and charging ally turned antagonist Elon Musk with dramatically shrinking the size of government centerpieces of his administration’s opening months.The president traveled to Texas on Air Force One with Melania Trump, the first lady; Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary; Scott Turner, the housing secretary; the small business administrator, Kelly Loeffler; and senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, among others. Trump is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas.Before arriving at the Happy State Bank Expo Hall in Kerrville, where he delivered remarks, the president and his motorcade stopped at an area near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville next to an overturned tractor-trailer and downed trees. Damage appeared to be more extensive near the riverbank. Trump, his wife and the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, took a briefing about flooding there from local officials.Trump has used past disaster response efforts to launch political attacks. While still a candidate trying to win back the presidency, Trump made his own visit to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene last year and accused the Biden administration of blocking disaster aid to victims in Republican-heavy areas.During his first weekend back in the White House, Trump again visited North Carolina to survey Helene damage and toured the aftermath of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. But he also used those trips to sharply criticize the Biden administration and California officials.During Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Trump praised the federal flooding response. Turning to Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, which oversees Fema, he said: “You had people there as fast as anybody’s ever seen.”Noem described traveling to Texas and seeing heartbreaking scenes, including around Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 people were killed.“The parents that were looking for their children and picking up their daughter’s stuffed animals out of the mud and finding their daughter’s shoe that might be laying in the cabin,” she said.Noem said that “just hugging and comforting people matters a lot” and “this is a time for all of us in this country to remember that we were created to serve each other”.But the secretary is also co-chairing a Fema review council charged with submitting suggestions for how to overhaul the agency in coming months.“We as a federal government don’t manage these disasters. The state does,” Noem told Trump on Tuesday.She also referenced the administration’s government-reducing efforts, saying: ”We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old Fema. Streamlining it, much like your vision of how Fema should operate.”Pressed this week on whether the White House will continue to work to shutter Fema, Karoline Leavitt would not say.“The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,” the White House press secretary said. “Whether that assistance comes from states or the federal government, that is a policy discussion that will continue.”Before Trump left on Friday, Russell Vought, director of the office of management and budget, similarly dodged questions from reporters at the the White House about Fema’s future – instead noting that the agency had billions of dollars in its reserves “to continue to pay for necessary expenses” and that the president has promised Texas: “Anything it needs, it will get.”“We also want Fema to be reformed,” Vought added. “The president is going to continue to be asking tough questions of all of us agencies, no different than any other opportunity to have better government.” More

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      Netanyahu flies home without a Gaza peace deal but still keeps Trump onside

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      Benjamin Netanyahu arrived back in Israel on Friday without a ceasefire in the Gaza war despite heady predictions from US and Israeli officials that this week could provide a breakthrough in negotiations. But he did not come home completely empty-handed.The Israeli PM’s visit was his third since Donald Trump’s inauguration, with several high-profile meetings at the White House, a nomination for Trump to receive the Nobel peace prize, and suggestions from Trump and the special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, that peace could be achieved in a week.But as Netanyahu’s trip ended, no clear results had been achieved. Witkoff postponed a trip to Doha on Tuesday as it became clear that the negotiations had not reached a point where they could produce a ceasefire agreement.While Netanyahu repeated a refrain that a ceasefire could be announced within days, a deal to bring peace to more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remained elusive.“I hope we can complete it in a few days,” Netanyahu said during an appearance on Newsmax, a conservative, pro-Trump news network on Wednesday. “We’ll probably have a 60-day ceasefire. Get the first batch [of hostages] out and then use the 60 days to try to negotiate an end to this.”By Thursday, when he attended a memorial service for two Israeli embassy staff killed in Washington, Netanyahu said Israel would not compromise on its demands for Hamas to disband. “I am promoting a move that will result in a significant liberation, but only on the conditions Israel demands: Hamas disarm, Gaza demilitarise,” he said. “If it is not achieved through diplomacy, it will be achieved by force.”Several officials suggested during the week that only a single sticking point remained between negotiators in Doha: the extent of a withdrawal by the Israel Defense Forces that would follow the release of some of the hostages being held by Hamas. The White House had pushed back against an initial map that would have left Israel with significant zones of control in Gaza, which Witkoff had compared to a “Smotrich plan”, referring to the hardline Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Israel reportedly redrew that map to make it more palatable to the US administration.But Hamas has said there were other disagreements, including negotiations over whether the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, an Israeli and US-backed logistics group, would be allowed to continue to deliver food to the territory (the UN said on Friday that 798 people had been killed trying to reach GHF sites since its introduction in May) and whether Israel would agree to a permanent truce, which it has said it would not. US mediators sought to bridge the gap by telling Qatari intermediaries they would guarantee the ceasefire’s continuation after 60 days as negotiations continued.The upshot is that while Netanyahu leaves the US without a ceasefire, he has managed his relationship with Trump through high-profile assurances that he is seeking a peace in Gaza, while maintaining a status quo that members of his rightwing coalition, including the ministers Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said is preferable to a peace deal.For Netanyahu, the trip produced images that reinforced Israeli claims there was “no daylight” between him and Trump, and came as the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced a decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, for urging the international criminal court to investigate Israeli officials and US companies over the Gaza war.Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu appeared to be boiling over a month ago as the US president sought to negotiate a truce between Iran and Israel, which had been trading airstrikes and missile barrages as Israel sought to dismantle the Iranian nuclear programme.“I’m not happy with Israel,” he said on the White House lawn. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”That recalled remarks by Robert Gates, a former US secretary of defence, about successive White House administrations’ difficulties in managing an ally in the region that also had considerable political influence in the US.“Every president I worked for, at some point in his presidency, would get so pissed off at the Israelis that he couldn’t speak,” Gates said.But a full breach with the US would have been disastrous for Netanyahu, who is managing his own difficult coalition and has been targeted in a graft investigation at home that was again delayed as a result of his international travel. And, after joint strikes against Iran, the Israeli PM was keen to show that the two men were in lockstep, while giving the Trump administration an opportunity to show it was working toward a Gaza peace.Elliott Abrams, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said the Trump administration had sought, as it did during the first short-lived ceasefire, to bring “pressure to bear on Israel directly” through discussions with Netanyahu and his chief lieutenant, Ron Dermer, and “trying to bring pressure on Hamas mostly through the Qataris, when there are these talks in Doha”.He added: “Whether that pressure is effective is unclear.” More

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      We’re becoming inured to Trump’s outbursts – but when he goes quiet, we need to be worried | Jonathan Freedland

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      In the global attention economy, one titan looms over all others. Donald Trump can command the gaze of the world at a click of those famously short fingers. When he stages a spectacular made-for-TV moment – say, that Oval Office showdown with Volodymyr Zelenskyy – the entire planet sits up and takes notice.But that dominance has a curious side-effect. When Trump does something awful and eye-catching, nations tremble and markets move. But when he does something awful but unflashy, it scarcely registers. So long as there’s no jaw-dropping video, no expletive-ridden soundbite, no gimmick or stunt, it can slip by as if it hadn’t happened. Especially now that our senses are dulled through over-stimulation. These days it requires ever more shocking behaviour by the US president to prompt a reaction; we are becoming inured to him. Yet the danger he poses is as sharp as ever.Consider the events of just the last week or so, few of them stark enough to lead global news bulletins, yet each one another step towards the erosion of democracy in and by the world’s most powerful country.On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs – yes, he’s climbed back on that dead horse – on Brazil, if the judicial authorities there do not drop the prosecution of the country’s Trump-like former president Jair Bolsonaro, charged with seeking to overturn his 2022 election defeat and leading a coup against the man who beat him, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. As concisely as he could manage, Lula explained, via social media, that Brazil is a sovereign country and that an independent judiciary cannot “accept interference or instruction from anyone … No one is above the law.”This is becoming a habit of Trump’s. He made the same move in defence of Benjamin Netanyahu last month, hinting that Israel could lose billions in US military aid if the prime minister continues to stand trial on corruption charges. In both cases, Trump was explicit in making the connection between the accused men and himself, decrying as a “witch-hunt” the efforts to hold them to account. “This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent,” he posted, of Bolsonaro’s legal woes. “Something I know much about!”It’s easy to make light of the transparent effort by Trump to forge an international trade union of populist would-be autocrats, but he’s not solely moved by fraternal solidarity. He also wants to dismantle a norm that has long applied across the democratic world, which insists that even those at the top are subject to the law. That norm is an impediment to him, a check on his power. If he can discredit it, so that a new convention arises – one that agrees that leaders can act with impunity – that helps his animating project in the US: the amassing of ever more power to himself and the weakening or elimination of any rival source of authority that might act as a restraint.He is being quietly assisted in that goal by those US institutions that should regard themselves as co-equal branches of government – Congress and the supreme court – and whose constitutional duty is to stand up to an overmighty executive. Republicans in Congress have now approved a mega bill that they know will leave future generations of Americans drowning in debt and deprive millions of basic healthcare cover. Even so, they put aside their own judgment and bowed to the man who would be king.Less discussed was the bill’s extraordinary expansion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or Ice. Its budget has been increased by a reported 308%, with an extra $45bn to spend on detention and $29.9bn for “enforcement and deportation”. It will soon have the capacity to detain nearly 120,000 people at any one time. And, remember, latest figures show that about half of all those detained by Ice have no criminal record at all.No wonder even conservative critics are sounding the alarm. The anti-Trump Republicans of the Bulwark warn that within months, the “national brute squad” that is Ice will have twice as many agents as the FBI and its own vast prison system, emerging as “the primary instrument of internal state power”. In this view, Trump has realised that corrupting the FBI is a tall order – though still worth trying – so he is supplanting it with a shadow force shaped in his own image. As the Bulwark puts it: “The American police state is here.”Those most directly threatened might share clips of masked Ice agents snatching suspected migrants off the streets and manhandling them violently, just as reports circulate of appalling conditions in Ice premises, with people held in “dungeon-like facilities”, more than 100 crammed into a small room, denied showers or a chance to change clothes, and sometimes given only one meal a day and forced to sleep on concrete benches or the floor. But it is hardly a matter of national focus. Because it is not accompanied by a neon-lit Trump performance, it is happening just out of view.The same could be said of a series of recent decisions by the supreme court. They may lack the instant, blockbuster impact of past rulings, but they accelerate the same Trump trend away from democracy and towards autocracy.On Tuesday, the judges gave Trump the green light to fire federal workers en masse and to dismantle entire government agencies without the approval of Congress. Earlier, the supreme court had ruled that Trump was allowed to remove Democrats from the leadership of government bodies that are meant to be under politically balanced supervision.More usefully still for Trump, last month the judges limited the power of the lower courts to block the executive branch, thereby lending a helping hand to one of the president’s most egregious executive orders: his ending of the principle that anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen of the US, a right so fundamental it is enshrined in the constitution. In ruling after ruling, the supreme court is removing restraints on Trump and handing him even more power. Small wonder that when one of the dissenting minority on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked on Thursday what kept her up at night, she answered: “The state of our democracy.”Meanwhile, Trump is succeeding in his goal of cowing the press, extracting serious cash from major news organisations in return for dropping (usually flimsy) lawsuits against them, a move that is having the desired, chilling effect.It all adds up to the steady erosion of US democracy and of democratic norms whose reach once extended far beyond US shores. Even if it is happening quietly, by Trump’s standards, without the familiar sound and fury, it is still happening. The work of opposing it begins with noticing it.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is the ultimate betrayal of his base | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”, which will eviscerate the living standards, healthcare and aspirations of his white, working-class base, conclusively draws the curtain down on his Maga populist conceit, the most elaborate charade in recent American political history.The price will be staggering: $1tn in cuts to Medicaid; throwing 17 million people off health coverage closing rural hospitals and women’s health clinics; battering food assistance for families, children and veterans; the virtual destruction of US solar and wind energy manufacturing; limiting access to financial aid for college; and, according to the Yale Budget Lab, adding $3tn to the national debt over the next decade, inexorably leading to raised interest rates, which will depress the housing market. These are the harsh, brutal and undeniable realities of Trumpism in the glare of day as opposed to his carnival act about how he will never touch such benefits.The president’s Maga populism has been a collection of oddities reminiscent of PT Barnum’s museum on lower Broadway before the civil war that exhibited a 10ft tall fake petrified man, the original bearded lady and the Fiji mermaid, the tail of a large fish sewn on to a bewigged mannequin. Trump attached plutocracy to populism to construct the Maga beast. But after the passage of the bill, the Fiji mermaid that is Maga has come apart at the seams, the head separated from the tail.“I just want you to know,” Trump said as he signed the bill, “if you see anything negative put out by Democrats, it’s all a con job.” He claimed the law was the “single most popular bill ever signed”. It is, in fact, the most unpopular piece of legislation since George W Bush proposed partial privatization of social security, which he abandoned without a single congressional vote. A Quinnipiac poll showed 53% opposing Trump’s bill, with only 27% support – 26 points underwater.At a meeting where Trump lobbied Republican House members to vote for his bill, he told them it would not cut Medicaid because that would damage their electoral prospects. “But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one Republican member complained to the publication Notus. In response to the obvious contradiction, a White House spokesperson issued a statement that the bill would “protect Medicaid”. Problem solved.Even if Trump didn’t actually know what was in his bill, too bored to pay attention to minute details or even if he was pulling a con, he coerced the Republicans into walking the plank. If he didn’t know, they certainly knew what was in the bill and they hated it. But they feared his retribution if they did not vote for it, even though it would severely harm their base and trample their own principles. The Freedom Caucus of far-right House members who boldly declared that the debt was the hill they would die on simply folded.The Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri strenuously objected to the Medicaid cuts he warned would devastate rural hospitals: “I am confident it will not be put on the floor as it is currently. Something will change.” Then, after some minor changes, he said: “I’m going to vote yes on this bill.”The Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, up for re-election in 2026, decried the Medicaid cut to his constituents. Trump threatened to primary him. Tillis all but said: you can’t fire me, I quit. “Great News!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Tillis’s seat would likely be lost to the Democrats, but the offender was dispatched; another problem solved.The final holdout, the Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, teetered until the last minute as the decisive vote. “We are all afraid,” she said in April about the Republican senators’ fear of Trump’s retaliation. “Retribution is real … I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.” If she had voted against the bill, it would have failed. She used her exquisite position to gain some protection for rural hospitals and food assistance in Alaska, as well as tax credits to about 150 Alaskan whaling captains. Yet one-third of Alaskans receive healthcare under Medicaid and 35,000 would lose coverage, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Murkowski was willing to trade small pieces to lose the larger ones. “Did I get everything I wanted? Absolutely not,” she said. She voted in favor. “Do I like this bill? No,” she said, adding with a passive-voice euphemism that, “in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.” She acted like an alderman, exclusively focused on her tiny district, the rest be damned. Even then, her vote helped strip tens of thousands of her constituents of basic necessities, food and healthcare above all.Murkowski’s capitulation affirmed Trump’s view of human nature, that in the end the narrowest selfishness will win out over everything else. At the signing ceremony, Trump singled her out for getting “something”: “Right, Lisa? … You are fantastic!” He had succeeded in getting her to betray her fundamental beliefs on his behalf. He harpooned her for a whaling crew.Trump lies constantly, but has never concealed his intentions. Since 12 January 2016, at a rally in Iowa, Trump has recited a song dozens of times called The Snake, about a kindly woman who nurses back to health a frozen snake, who responds by biting her. When she asks why the snake has poisoned her:
      Oh shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin
      You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.
      Trump explained that the song is part of his demonization of immigrants and Muslims, initially aimed at Syrians, whom he suggested on a talkshow a few months later might commit a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. “Bad things will happen – a lot of bad things will happen. There will be attacks that you wouldn’t believe. There will be attacks by the people that are right now that are coming into our country, because I have no doubt in my mind.”Trump apparently ignored a cease and desist letter from the children of the author of the song’s lyrics, an extraordinary artist, composer, music producer, playwright and civil rights activist, Oscar Brown Jr, who meant it as a parable for the danger of not recognizing evil for what it is. His poem was turned into a minor Motown hit by the soul singer Al Wilson.Time and again, rally after rally, Trump told his worshipful acolytes that he would betray them. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in. When they heard him recite those words, they interpreted them to mean that he would be their protector. But the story is of deception in plain sight. The snake will betray the one who takes him in, who does not understand that the snake’s nature is to be a snake.Trump appears to believe everyone betrays everyone all the time. It is evidently his rule for living. If he didn’t betray, he would have to be trustworthy. For him to behave in a trustworthy way would undermine his apparent understanding of reality: everyone cheats, lies and steals. If they haven’t, it’s because they either would like to but are inhibited by foolish moral or ethical constraints, or they are too stupid or fearful to grasp that it is the only way to act in their interest. Those people are losers, chumps and marks.The wrong question is: whom has Trump betrayed? The right question is: whom hasn’t he betrayed?The story of Trump’s betrayals is an epic, covering his entire career, encompassing his private life and his public one. He betrayed the Polish immigrant construction workers who cleared the way for Trump Tower by underpaying them – or not paying them at all, just as workers have said he stiffed them on many other projects. He has betrayed his brother and nephew, cutting off the sick child’s health insurance. He appears to have betrayed his personal physician, after a bodyguard and Trump lawyer showed up at the doctor’s office to take Trump’s medical records, leaving the doctor feeling as if he had been “raped”. Trump University betrayed its students, who sued him for false advertising, resulting in a $25m settlement. The Trump Foundation was dissolved by court order amid accusations of self-dealing.Trump’s betrayals of the law and the constitution are innumerable. Now, he appears to betray the emoluments clause rapaciously using the presidential office for self-enrichment to the tune of untold billions.Who wouldn’t he betray? He cut off Roy Cohn, who taught him the tricks of intimidation, when he was dying of Aids. Trump, said Cohn “pisses ice water”. Once he betrayed Cohn, there was no one he would not and did not betray. It was inevitable that he would betray Elon Musk, the richest person in the world who thought he was also the cleverest.Trump’s compulsion is to compound his betrayals. He glories in the humiliation of others as the proof of his domination. His fervent fans bask in his acts of degradation against the weak, the powerless, the Other. They cheer his cruelty, his calls for violence, his insults. They think he’s doing it on their behalf. But Trump does nothing on anybody else’s behalf. He has no benevolent, philanthropic or idealistic motives. “I hate them, too,” he said at an Iowa rally on 3 July about Democrats after his bill passed. “I really do. I hate them.” His Maga devotees may love him for the objects of his hatefulness. They don’t register that someone whose nature is to betray everyone will surely betray them. They may not even grasp that their betrayal has already happened. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

      Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast More