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      Trump’s promised ‘golden age’ for the US economy is off to a chaotic start

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      Donald Trump promised to usher in a new “golden age” for the US economy – one with lower prices, more jobs and greater wealth. This week, his first quarter report card came in, and the new age is off to a chaotic start.Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank for the first time in three years during the first quarter, abruptly turning negative after a spell of robust growth as trade distortions and weaker consumer spending dampened activity.It took the US president all of 43 minutes to distance himself from the dismal reading, released on Wednesday morning.“Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang’,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. “This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”By Trump’s telling, any bad numbers are the fault of Joe Biden – but this attribution does not extend to the good ones.March’s strong jobs report demonstrated how “the private sector is roaring back under President Donald J. Trump”, according to a statement issued by the White House. “IT’S ALREADY WORKING,” the president declared the day it was published.But April’s less buoyant jobs report, released on Friday, prompted a more tepid response. He wrote: “Just like I said, and we’re only in a TRANSITION STAGE, just getting started!!!”So which is it? Is the “golden age” of America well under way? Or will it take a while?Growth in the first three months of the year – no matter how much Trump wants to blame the 19 or so days he was not yet in office – was significantly challenged by the new administration’s plans to overhaul the world economy. US goods imports surged 41% as companies scrambled to pre-empt tariffs, while consumer spending on durable goods fell 3.4% as sentiment came under pressure.And the first quarter figures raised troubling questions about the second. Activity weakened largely as firms braced for the lion’s share of Trump’s tariffs, which he only unveiled in early April. How those firms, and their customers, ultimately respond to those tariffs – and the confusion around them – is widely expected to have a greater impact on growth.Trump’s erratic rollout of 10% tariffs on goods from much of the world, and 145% on China, “have altered the picture dramatically” since the end of the first quarter, Oliver Allen, senior US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, observed. “Any support to spending from pre-tariff purchases will unwind soon now that substantial new tariffs have been imposed.“Consumers’ spending will also be weighed down by a hit to confidence and real incomes from higher prices, while intense uncertainty will put the freeze on business investment, and exports – especially to China – will suffer.”It is too soon to say whether tariffs, which the administration insists will revitalize the US economy, will, in fact, set the stage for a recession: two consecutive quarters of contraction. On Trump’s watch, the landscape shifts rapidly from one day to the next, let alone during an entire quarter.Trump is right, to a point: most of his tariffs are not to blame for the stunning reversal of growth in the first quarter. The US only hiked duties on China and imposed its blanket 10% levy on many other countries last month, days into the second quarter.The foundations of a potential Trumpcession were not laid in the early months of the year by the tariffs themselves, but by his administration’s execution of them.From repeated jerks and jolts around sweeping duties on Canada and Mexico to announcing “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of nations which were ultimately imposed for less than a day, widespread confusion and uncertainty is now embedded into the world’s largest economy. Businesses inside it and out are not happy.Scott Bessent, Trump’s treasury secretary, has coined an interesting term for this playbook of threats, theatrics and social media broadsides. “President Trump creates what I would call ‘strategic uncertainty’ in the negotiations,” he told a press briefing on Tuesday. “As we start moving forward, announcing deals, then there will be certainty. But certainty is not necessarily a good thing in negotiating.”However useful Trump and his officials find “strategic uncertainty” during trade negotiations, it has different consequences for those paying bills they were repeatedly assured would swiftly fall, trying to grow a business in a market with leaders locked in a war of words with the White House, or planting a crop without knowing what the economic realities will be by the harvest.Trump returned to office after winning the backing of rural and lower-income voters in significant numbers last November. He needs to preserve his base if Republicans are to maintain power in Washington during his second term.Polling suggests these groups are concerned. A PBS News/NPR/Marist survey, published this week, found 48% of rural voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy. The same was true for 57% of voters with a household income of less than $50,000.As apprehension grows, the US president has sought to play down the risks. In one of the more peculiar moments in another bizarre week, he appeared to play down the threat of empty store shelves.“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, y’know,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”China has “ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which – not all of it, but much of which – we don’t need”, he continued.It is typically up to the American consumer, not their president, to decide what they do and don’t need to buy. For a man whose fortune and image are built around conspicuous consumption, the comments seemed very off-brand. “Skimp on the Barbie” read the front page of the often Trump-friendly New York Post. It is still early days for Trump. But already the Biden “overhang” argument is wearing thin. It will be up to US voters, not their president, to deliver a verdict on his handling of the economy. More

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      Trump order targeting law firm Perkins Coie is unconstitutional, judge rules

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      A federal judge on Friday permanently struck down Donald Trump’s executive order that targeted the firm Perkins Coie, which once worked with his 2016 presidential election rival Hillary Clinton, after declaring in an extraordinary ruling that the order was unconstitutional and unlawful.The decision from the US district judge Beryl Howell, which criticized virtually every aspect of the order in a 102-page opinion, marks a major victory for Perkins Coie and could be used as a model by other judges weighing cases brought by other law firms in similar orders.“No American president has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue,” she wrote, adding: “In purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”Howell found in particular that the executive order violated the first, fifth and sixth amendments and permanently barred its implementation. She also raised alarm at other law firms that opted to strike deals with the Trump administration rather than face the possibility of being targeted themselves.Perkins Coie was the first law firm to end up in the crosshairs of Trump’s executive orders aimed at law firms that terminated any government contracts and barred federal employees from engaging with its attorneys or allowing them access to federal buildings, including courthouses.The administration said at the time that Perkins Coie was a national security risk principally because it had hired Fusions GPS on behalf of the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016, which produced the “dossier” that pushed discredited claims about Trump’s connections to Russia.Howell rejected that contention outright in her decision, citing Trump’s own attacks against Perkins Coie and the stunning breadth of everyone from the attorneys to the assistants at the firm facing restrictions as evidence that the executive order was retaliatory.The provision in the executive order that barred its lawyers from entering federal government buildings and engaging with government employees in particular was not speculative, Howell said, in part because the government had cancelled meetings within days of it being issued.The attempt by the administration to argue that it was limited to only when such access would threaten national security or in the national interest of the US was unconvincing, Howell said, since the executive order itself said working with Perkins Coie was not in the national interest.“That is unconstitutional retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple,” she wrote.Howell also rebuked Trump over the requirement in the executive order for any private companies that had government contracts to disclose whether they had ever worked with Perkins Coie, regardless of whether it was related to their government contract work.The requirement, Howell suggested, was at odds with the first amendment protection to freely use any lawyer, since the need to disclose any possible work with Perkins Coie could mean firms that contracted with the government would be dissuaded from using them at all.And the order was unlawfully broad, Howell said, since it required disclosure “whether the contract is for crucial classified military equipment costing millions of dollars per item delivered or for paper clips costing pennies, and no matter whether the disclosure of association with plaintiff had anything to do with a government contract”.The Trump administration is almost certain to appeal to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit. The ruling comes weeks after Howell previously issued a temporary restraining order that blocked Trump’s order from taking effect after a hearing last month in federal district court in Washington.That temporary injunction followed an emergency lawsuit filed by Perkins Coie on the advice of Williams and Connolly, another elite firm in the nation’s capital known for taking cases against government overreach.Perkins Coie had initially reached out to the firm Quinn Emanuel, which has previously represented people in Trump’s orbit, including Elon Musk, the Trump Organization itself, and the New York mayor, Eric Adams, whose corruption charges were dropped by the justice department last month.But Quinn Emanuel declined to take Perkins Coie as a client, as its top partners decided not to become involved in a politically sensitive issue that could make themselves a target by association just as they have been on the rise as a power center in Washington DC.While other law firms discussed whether to file amicus briefs or declarations supporting Perkins Coie, the firm was ultimately taken on by Williams and Connolly. They advised Perkins Coie to ask for an emergency hearing and temporary restraining order, both of which Howell granted. More

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      Trump news at a glance: president floats Pentagon budget boost; army may hold parade for his birthday

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      The Trump administration is considering cuts worth $163bn to departments including health and education as well as environmental schemes while increasing spending on defense, according to a White House budget blueprint.In contrast to the squeeze on discretionary social programmes, the administration is planning a 13% rise – to more than $1tn – in the Pentagon budget, a commitment at odds with Donald Trump’s frequent vows to end the US’s involvement in “forever wars” in the Middle East and elsewhere.The budget draft was circulated as reports emerged of a huge military parade planned to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US army as well as Trump’s birthday.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump plans $163bn cuts in non-defense spendingDonald Trump is proposing huge cuts to social programmes like health and education while planning substantial spending increases on defense and the Department of Homeland Security, in a White House budget blueprint that starkly illustrates his preoccupation with projecting military strength and deterring migration.Read the full storyUS army may hold parade on Trump birthdayDetailed army plans for a potential military parade on Trump’s birthday in June call for more than 6,600 soldiers, at least 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands and possibly a couple of thousand civilians, the Associated Press has learned.At the same time, Fox News reported that the parade was a definite go-ahead and would happen on 14 June, the 250th birthday of the US army as well as Trump’s own birthday, when he will turn 79.Read the full storyJudge rules Trump order targeting law firm Perkins Coie is unconstitutionalA federal judge on Friday permanently struck down Donald Trump’s executive order that targeted the firm Perkins Coie, which once worked with his 2016 presidential election rival Hillary Clinton, after declaring in an extraordinary ruling that the order was unconstitutional and unlawful.Read the full storySupreme court justice condemns Trump anti-law rhetoricThe US supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has condemned the Trump administration’s attacks on the judiciary in a cutting speech at a judicial conference.Without mentioning Donald Trump by name, Jackson spoke of “the elephant in the room” and rhetoric from the White House “designed to intimidate the judiciary”.“ Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” Jackson said on Thursday evening, according to the New York Times. “And the attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate  those of us who serve in this critical capacity.”Read the full storyTrump orders funding cut for public broadcastersThe US president has signed an executive order that seeks to cut public funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, accusing them of leftwing bias. The order, signed late on Thursday, directs the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which sends funds to NPR and PBS, to “cease federal funding” for the two outlets.Read the full storyTrump officials agree to halt school funding freeze in MaineThe Trump administration has agreed not to freeze funds to Maine schools, a win for a state that was targeted by the president over its support of transgender rights.Read the full storyTrump pardons cost public $1bn, ex-official saysThe justice department’s pardon attorney, who was recently fired, has claimed on social media that Trump’s recent wave of pardoning white-collar criminals has erased more than “$1bn in debts owed by wealthy Americans” to the public purse.Read the full storyUS jobs fare better than expected amid tariffsHiring in the US slowed in April, according to official figures, with the workforce adding 177,000 jobs as Trump’s aggressive trade strategy clouded the economic outlook. As the White House pressed ahead with sweeping tariffs on overseas imports, claiming this would revitalize the US economy, employers across the country continued to add jobs at a steady pace.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Marco Rubio is slated to keep his dual roles as secretary of state and national security adviser for at least six months and the positions could even become permanent, according to Politico. Rubio’s placement was not meant to be a temporary slot-in, reports Politico, which cites three senior White House officials.

      Photographs taken at Trump’s cabinet meeting this week have revealed that top White House officials are now communicating using an even less secure version of the Signal messaging app than was at the center of a huge national security scandal last month.

      The Trump administration has ordered the closure of 25 scientific centers that monitor US waters for flooding and drought, and manage supply levels to ensure communities around the country don’t run out of water.

      Trump said again on Friday that he would be “taking away” Harvard’s tax-exempt status as a non-profit in a legally questionable move that escalates his ongoing feud with the elite university.

      The White House plans to cut staffing at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by 1,200 positions while other intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency (NSA) will also shed thousands of jobs, the Washington Post has reported.

      A mother deported to Cuba reportedly had to hand over her 17-month-old daughter to a lawyer while her husband, a US citizen, stood outside unable to say goodbye.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 1 May 2025. More

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      Trump white-collar criminal pardons cost public $1bn, says ex-DoJ official

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      The justice department’s pardon attorney, who was recently fired, has claimed on social media that Donald Trump’s recent wave of pardoning white-collar criminals has erased more than “$1bn in debts owed by wealthy Americans” to the public purse.In a TikTok video, Liz Oyer, who has said that she was terminated in March after refusing to comply with an order to restore the gun rights of the actor Mel Gibson – a supporter of Trump’s – explained that “when you’re convicted of a financial crime like fraud or embezzlement, the law requires you to pay back the money that you stole. It’s called restitution.”However, she said, “the president has the power to pardon which can wipe out your entire sentence including your obligation to pay back the money.”Oyer alleged: “In total, Donald Trump has granted pardons that have wiped out over $1bn in debts owed by wealthy Americans who have committed fraud and broken the law.”In the video, Oyer highlights the case of Michele Fiore, a former Republican politician from Nevada, who was convicted of wire fraud last year.She was accused of misusing more than $70,000 she raised to build statues in honor of two slain police officers. Instead of building the statues, prosecutors said that she used the funds on “personal and political expenses”.The White House pardoned Fiore, and according to Oyer, this released her from repaying those funds.In a different video, Oyer pointed to Trump’s pardon of Trevor Milton, the founder of an electric vehicle startup, who was convicted of fraud in 2023 and sentenced to four years in prison.The Washington Post reported that the judge had not yet determined the restitution amount, but that federal prosecutors estimated that Milton owed more than $680m to defrauded shareholders.Notably, Milton and his wife contributed more than $1.8m to a Trump re-election campaign.Oyer said his pardon erased the restitution being sought.The Post reported that Oyer added up the alleged restitution amounts for the relevant individuals convicted of stealing.The newspaper also noted that some of Trump’s pardon recipients had not yet been sentenced, so their owed amounts had not been finalized by the courts.Additionally, the Post reported that Trump pardoned the cryptocurrency exchange HDR Global Trading (BitMEX), which eliminated a $100m fine against the exchange for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. Trump also pardoned several company executives who had pleaded guilty to financial crimes.Oyer told the Post it was “unprecedented for a president to grant pardons that have the effect of wiping out so much debt owed by people who have committed frauds”.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.Last month, Oyer, who served in Joe Biden’s administration, testified before Congress about her termination and the Trump administration’s treatment of the justice department and law firms.According to Oyer’s lawyer, the justice department had planned to send armed US marshals to deliver a letter to her home warning her about testifying. More

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      One hundred days in, Donald Trump faces a problem: he can rage, but he can’t govern | Jonathan Freedland

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      He says it’s the “best 100-day start of any president in history”, but you can file that along with his boast about crowd sizes and his claim to have won the 2020 election. In truth, the first three months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been calamitous on almost every measure. The single biggest achievement of those 100 days has been to serve as a warning of the perils of nationalist populism, which is effective in winning votes but disastrous when translated into reality. That warning applies across the democratic world – and is especially timely in Britain.Start with the numbers that matter most to Trump himself. A slew of polls appeared this week, but they all told the same story: that Trump’s approval ratings have collapsed, falling to the lowest level for a newly installed president in the postwar era. He has now edged ahead of his only rival for that title: himself. The previous low watermark for a president three months in was set by one Donald Trump in 2017.Back then, 42% of Americans approved of the way Trump was doing his job. The latest Ipsos survey for the Washington Post/ABC News has Trump at just 39%. This, remember, is meant to be the honeymoon period, yet Trump is 10 points behind where Joe Biden stood at this point, 30 points behind Barack Obama and 44 points behind Ronald Reagan. Remember: US presidents tend to get less, not more, popular as time goes on.Perhaps most significant is that Trump is weak even in those areas where he’s meant to be strong. Confidence in his ability to handle immigration has tumbled and the same is true, even more critically, of his management of the US economy. On the latter, just 37% back Trump, a depth he never plumbed during his first term, even as the economy seized up under Covid. For the first time since 2001, a majority of Americans believe their economic situation is getting worse.With good reason. Because the economic data is almost as troubling for Trump as his poll numbers. This week, official figures showed that the US economy contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year, further fuelling fears of a recession. Trump wasted no time in blaming the shrinkage on Biden, who was in charge for just 20 days of the first three months of 2025, an argument only slightly weakened by the fact that the last quarter with Biden in charge saw growth of 2.4%.It’s a precipitous drop, and the cause of it is hardly mysterious. Economists agree that the culprit is Trump’s tariffs, which prompted a surge in imports, as companies scrambled to buy in goods from abroad before the president’s on-again-off-again levies kicked in. Because those imported goods and services are not produced in the US, they’re subtracted from the headline GDP figure. Hence the contraction. Meanwhile, the chaos and volatility unleashed by Trump’s tariff policy has dented consumer confidence, now down to its lowest level since the recession of 1990, leaving Americans hesitant to spend money amid so much uncertainty. Even though the latest job numbers look healthy, analysts say the underlying picture is alarming. As Bloomberg reports, “corporate investment plans and expectations for growth and jobs have all plummeted – and the key reason is Trump’s trade war.”Trump knows that the warnings from retail giants Walmart and Target, of empty shelves as supplies from heavily tariffed China dry up, have cut through. He addressed that anxiety this week, but in a way that should make even Trump’s admirers, those who usually praise his ability to connect with ordinary folk, worry that he’s losing his touch.Asked about potential shortages of toys at Christmas, Trump said, “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.” Bit late in his career for Trump to don the saffron robes and preach a Zen flight from consumerist materialism. His two-toys remark – which strangely did not feature as one of his campaign pledges in 2024 – has already cast him as the Grinch set to ruin Christmas.“BE PATIENT!!!” he urges on his social media platform, as he insists that the vertiginous downward slide of the stock market either doesn’t matter or is all Biden’s fault. But the whiff of desperation is strong as Trump begins to see why the one idea he actually believes in and has believed in for decades – tariffs – is an object of near-universal contempt among economists. Yes, tariffs may have succeeded in persuading Apple to shift manufacturing away from China. But those jobs are not about to move to the US. Apple has announced instead that it will assemble its US-bound iPhones in India. Better restitch those red baseball caps with a revised slogan: make India great again.By now, you’ll recall, Trump was meant to have ended the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, indeed he promised to do that by 21 January. But after a brief ceasefire, Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has resumed, the Trump administration having apparently lost interest. As for Ukraine, Trump got to brag of a breakthrough this week, with an agreement that gives the US a stake in Ukraine’s mineral wealth. But it’s far from the deal he sought.The case he always made was that the US had to be reimbursed for the billions it had given Ukraine in military support under Biden – plucking the entirely bogus figure of $350bn out of the air. But this week’s arrangement includes no such payback. On the contrary, the deal is one Kyiv can look on with quiet satisfaction. It seems the Ukrainians could smell Trump’s need to have something to shout about in time for his 100th day, and they leveraged that eagerness to their advantage.As for his expansionist threats to gobble up Panama, Greenland and Canada, the only concrete result those have brought is defeat in Canada’s general election for the pro-Trump Conservatives and a back-from-the-dead success for the Liberal party that vowed to defy him. Such is Trump’s narcissism that he even boasted about that, citing it as evidence of how much he matters in the world. As he put it, just before Canadians voted: “You know, until I came along, the Conservative was leading by 25 points,” he mused. “I was disliked by enough of the Canadians that I’ve thrown the election into a close call.”The promise was that this second Trump term would be different, that the chaos and churn of Trump 1.0 would be gone. But on Thursday, we were back to the good old days, with the firing of his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, partly for his accidental admission of a journalist into a Signal group chat that discussed attack plans for Yemen, partly for advocating a tougher stance on Vladimir Putin, and partly for earning the hostility of far-right conspiracist Laura Loomer, who has the ear of the president.So it’s fair to say the 100 days have not gone as Trump would have wished. And thanks to those serial failures, you can see the first, small signs that his power to terrify is fading. Witness the handful of senate Republicans who voted with Democrats against his tariff policy. And note how the reliably rightwing editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is now a fierce critic, slamming Trump as a “bully” and denouncing tariffs as “the biggest economic policy mistake in decades”. For a few short hours, even Jeff Bezos seemed ready to take a stand, amid reports that Amazon was about to itemise the cost of tariffs to US customers, before the company backed down.Of course, none of this should be a surprise. Trump’s conman promises and delusional dreams of turning the clock back were always bound to fail. This is the nature of nationalist populism, whether it wears a red cap in Michigan or a turquoise rosette in Runcorn. It is expert at turning grievance, division and nostalgia into votes. But when it comes to governing, it will always fail. It offers an outlet for complaint – and has no answers at all.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      ‘He loves us and he’s doing it’: Trump fans’ faith undimmed by first 100 days

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      In Trump they trust. While pundits and protesters have called it 100 days of hell, talk to Donald Trump’s most faithful supporters and you will hear them use words such as “amazing”, “fantastic” and “ecstatic” about his presidency.The Trump base, that amorphous group that has long intrigued pollsters, remains rock solid in its support for the 78-year-old and quite ingenious in finding new ways to eulogise his leadership.Interviews with 10 Trump fans at a campaign-style rally in Warren, Michigan, on Tuesday seemed to occupy a different planet from opinion polls that give him the lowest 100-day job approval rating of any president in the past 80 years.Seen through the lens of Maga, Trump is steering the economy to a new golden age, making streets safer by expelling illegal immigrants and protecting rather than undermining democracy. Short-term pain, his supporters insist, is a price worth paying for long-term gain.“The first 100 days have been fantastic,” said Dave Bono, a construction manager. “He’s gotten so much done in that amount of time, more than any other president for sure. I know there’s differences on his policy positions but overall, as somebody who’s supported him, I think he’s spot on.”View image in fullscreenThe 60-year-old added: “He’s done what he promised he’d do in the campaign, which is far and away different from most politicians. Like it or not, he’s doing what he said he would do and that’s all anybody can ask for.”Elsewhere at the rally Matt Ball, 53, a commercial driver, was wearing a red “Make America great again” cap and a “Fight, fight, fight” T-shirt showing Trump with fist raised after last year’s assassination attempt. He said: “A lot of things I don’t think can be accomplished in a hundred days but what I’ve seen the first hundred days is what I voted for.”The US economy shrank in the first three months of the year, according to official data. Despite acknowledging the potential for short-term price increases, Trump’s supporters generally back his use of tariffs as necessary for the return of manufacturing jobs to the US in general and Michigan in particular.Ball commented: “It can’t be any worse than the chaos we lived through with Joe Biden for four years so I’m willing to take a chance.”Suzanne Jennings, 65, wearing a “Trump 2024 The Sequel” cap, agreed. “I trust him and I totally trust his cabinet,” she said. “People just need to have a bit of patience. Our country was ruined over the past four years. I totally believe he loves America. He loves us and he’s doing it.”Jennings described Trump’s first 100 days as “fantastic because he’s delivered everything he said he would and he’s making our country great again”.All those interviewed by the Guardian expressed admiration for Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, which has taken a chainsaw to federal departments.Lynn Mills, 70, said: “Find the waste. Cut it out. I’m not allowed to run my house with money flying out the windows. Close the window. Turn down the air conditioning. Do you have a budget in your household? We have to adhere to the budget and let’s run this country efficiently.”Trump’s personality cult endures. He is no longer running for office yet Tuesday’s rally came with the familiar paraphernalia. A truck parked outside Macomb Community College proclaimed “Trump won” and “Make America great again” and was adorned with a motorbike, mini Statue of Liberty and signs such as “Build the wall” and “I’m voting for the convicted felon”.Blake Marnell, 60, known as “Brick Suit”, from San Diego, California, has attended numerous Trump campaign events and wore his distinctive brick suit again at Tuesday’s rally. He described himself as “ecstatic” about Trump’s first 100 days.“He’s done an excellent job under the limitations that have been placed upon him. And by that I mean if you look at an area in which he has had unfettered ability to implement his policy, such as reducing the influx across the border, the results are night and day versus the Biden administration, with up to 95% fewer people crossing.”View image in fullscreenTrump has been widely condemned for a draconian immigration policy that has seen alleged gang members snatched off the streets and sent to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador without due process. The president has suffered a series of rebukes and setbacks from judges. But followers such as Marnell are willing to accept this as collateral damage.He added: “The concerns about due process and deportations are largely coming from the political left and what I would consider to be judicial overreach and unnecessary injunctions. But let’s be realistic. We’ve got 10 million people top end and 8 million people low end that probably should be deported who are here illegally. Statistically, there will be people where there are problems. To expect absolute 100% perfection in 8 million people leaving United States is probably unrealistic.”More than one interviewee contended that the standard of due process is lower for noncitizens. And support for Trump’s approach to border security and immigration was overwhelming. That included Amy Lee, an immigrant from Vietnam who works in insurance and was wearing a Maga hat, a Trump badge and a Stars and Stripes dress that said: “Big tech fake media are the virus.”The 63-year-old said: “Of course you want to vet those people that come in. You want to welcome everyone but then do you want criminals, do you want terrorists to be in your country? You want them to be in your home? Do you want them to be taking over? The crime rate is unbelievable.”View image in fullscreenTrump has sought to expand presidential power at the expense of Congress and the courts and hinted that he could seek a third term in violation of the constitution. This week the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) released a survey of more than 5,000 Americans that found 52% agree Trump is “a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy”.Attenders at the rally scoff at such criticism. RJ Fishman, 26, who works for a property acquisitions and advisory firm and rates Trump’s start as “amazing”, said: “A dictator doesn’t tell you what he’s going to do and then do it. President Trump said everything he planned to do, from using the Alien Enemies Act, tariffs, down the list, you name it, so to suddenly be surprised?“What dictators do is lock up their political opponents. One party’s been locking up their political opponents. I don’t see President Trump – as much as they accuse him of wanting to – locking up people other than federal judges and state judges who are harbouring illegal aliens. He’s not locking up political opponents.”Ball, the commercial driver, concurred. He said: “I know Donald Trump didn’t force anyone to get a vaccine so, if you’re going to talk about a dictator, then I would say he didn’t force me to get a vaccine when he was president. I haven’t seen any dictatorship.”And noting the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, Lee recalled her family’s experiences under communism to contend that such comparisons are misplaced. “How could people call him a dictator? Look at Mao Zedong from China. Look at Hitler and Fidel Castro. If people lived in a communist country then they would know what dictatorship is. I escaped communism and I know what communism is like.“They dictate how you live your life, where you can go, what you can eat. Rice, sugar and salt: you are limited to buy so much in a month. That’s dictatorship. Here President Trump is wanting to get freedom for the people to live the American dream. If we don’t fight to restore it we’re going to lose it and, once we lose it, kiss it goodbye.” More

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      Pam Bondi turning DoJ into Trump’s ‘personal law firm’, top experts warn

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      Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has taken radical steps to target his political foes, back a harsh agenda against undocumented immigrants and help business allies – steps which underscore its politicization under the attorney general Pam Bondi and undermine the rule of law, say ex-prosecutors and legal experts.Some even say that the department has in effect become Trump’s “personal law firm”.Since taking office a second time, Trump has relied on staunch loyalist Bondi and an elite group of justice department lawyers to investigate critics from his first administration plus political opponents and curb prosecutions of US business bribery overseas.Ex-prosecutors point to how Bondi and the department’s top lawyers have halted some major prosecutions, fired or forced out lawyers who didn’t meet Maga litmus tests, and were instructed by Trump to investigate a key Democratic fundraising vehicle as examples of how Trump and Bondi have politicized the justice department.Critics note that once Bondi became attorney general, she issued a memo establishing a “weaponization working group”, which pushed a false narrative that investigations by a special counsel into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election and his improperly retaining classified documents were politically motivated.The transformation of the Department of Justice under Bondi has put a premium for staff on “personal loyalty” to Trump, say ex-prosecutors, which has damaged the rule of law and provoked multiple rebukes from courts and the resignations or firings of veteran prosecutors.“The steps Trump and Bondi have taken using DoJ to punish enemies and reward allies while firing those who object radically transforms and politicizes DoJ in a way that not even the worst who have gone before them ever contemplated,” the former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig said.“Trump’s transmuting DoJ into his personal law firm is, in effect, a rejection of the founding principle of the rule of law.”Other ex-prosecutors see the department marching in dangerous legal lockstep with Trump’s agenda and damaging its mission to protect the rule of law.“Bondi and DoJ lawyers have certainly tried to make personal loyalty to Trump the justice department’s guiding principle,” said the Columbia law professor and ex-federal prosecutor Daniel Richman.Critics note Bondi has also echoed Trump’s dangerous rhetorical blasts against judges who have ruled against his administration’s sweeping and haphazard drive to deport undocumented immigrants by labeling them “low-level leftist judges who are trying to dictate President Trump’s executive powers”.After the FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge for allegedly obstructing the arrest of an undocumented immigrant, Bondi went on Fox News to threaten other judges who may defy their agenda. “They’re deranged. I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not. We will come after you and we will prosecute you,” she said.Hundreds of lawyers and staff in the justice department’s civil rights division are now leaving the storied unit as its focus has shifted to Trump priorities such as pursuing cases against elite universities and student protesters, while curbing some civil and voting rights cases it has traditionally pursued, say critics.Other actions by the department under Bondi, an ex-Florida attorney general who later worked on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020, and some elite justice department lawyers reflect its strong allegiance to Trump and have sparked strong criticism.They include an investigation of two officials, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who served in his first term and clashed with him for, respectively, not backing his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and for voicing strong concerns in a 2018 New York Times op ed about how Trump threatened democracy.In another radical move, Trump issued an executive order in April telling the justice department to investigate unverified allegations that ActBlue, a major Democratic online fundraising vehicle, had engaged in improper fundraising schemes.Trump also reportedly prodded the Department of Justice to drop a five-count criminal fraud prosecution of the New York mayor, Eric Adams, that the elite justice department southern district had worked on for months, as Trump was eager to secure public support from Adams for his immigration agenda in the city.Some actions also appear aimed at helping allied business interests. In April, the justice department abruptly closed a cryptocurrency unit that was launched in 2022 and had successfully prosecuted dangerous criminal schemes involving North Korean hackers and other fraudsters, but which had come under fire from cryptocurrency leaders who helped fund Trump’s campaign last year.Trump’s justice department also has paused for six months prosecuting businesses that have been charged with violating the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which bars paying bribes to win deals abroad.Other moves seem to reflect Trump’s enmity towards journalists who report critically about his administration. In a reversal of recent department policy, Bondi revoked journalists’ free-speech protections by greenlighting authorities to force journalists to reveal confidential sources in leak investigations. Meanwhile, Bondi also seems willing to protect political allies, such as when she declined to open an investigation into “Signalgate” despite extensive documentation that top national security officials had improperly shared classified information as an attack was imminent in Yemen against the Houthis.Ex-prosecutors say that Bondi and the justice department’s willingness to make personal loyalty to Trump paramount damages the rule of law.Critics note the justice department has been rebuked by federal courts for stonewalling court orders and questions about some of its deportation actions and for not bringing home a Maryland man originally from El Salvador who was sent to a notorious Salvadorian prison as a result of what Ice has called an “administrative error”.“Never in history has DoJ broken so defiantly from respecting, as it’s obligated to do, the decisions of federal courts,” said the former prosecutor Ty Cobb, who was a counsel in the White House during Trump’s first term. “This is a war that Trump and Bondi are waging against the rule of law.”Richman noted more broadly that “outside the immigration area, most of what Bondi has actually done so far, however, has been negative – like dropping the case against Mayor Adams and cases against FCPA defendants and firing prosecutors”.Richman added: “We will soon see how this administration fares when it actually seeks a result in court, even if it’s only defensive. As the proceedings in the recent Maryland deportation case highlighted, courts demand a candor and respect for law that the justice department’s leadership finds inconsistent with the loyalty it demands.”Some veteran prosecutors who quit the department after Trump and Bondi took office say that the pair’s first moves raised red flags that prompted their departures.“Bondi has made clear – before becoming attorney general, and since – that she wants the Department of Justice to support President Trump unconditionally,” said Mike Romano, who resigned from the department in late March.Before he quit, Romano spent almost four years working on the prosecutions of Trump allies who stormed Congress on 6 January 2021 in an effort to thwart Joe Biden’s certification by Congress.Romano said that the night Bondi was confirmed “she issued a memorandum to all justice department employees in which she threatened to fire employees who refuse to defend the Trump administration’s actions, advance its arguments or sign its briefs. She and her subordinates have made good on those threats by firing people and forcing them to resign.”Romano stressed that “some of my colleagues were fired, and others were demoted, because they prosecuted people who rioted at the Capitol. At the public integrity section, four of my managers resigned, in lieu of being fired, when they refused to sign a motion to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams. These actions send a clear message to people still at the department: if you want to keep your job, disagreement won’t be tolerated.”Similarly, Barbara McQuade, a former prosecutor for Michigan’s eastern district who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, warned that Bondi’s memo setting up a “weaponization working group” actually “weaponizes law enforcement and undermines public confidence in government” because it pushes a “false narrative” about the two investigations of Trump by the former special counsel Jack Smith.McQuade emphasized that “in fact federal grand juries returned indictments in both cases, meaning that they found probable cause that the crimes were committed. DoJ’s Principles of Federal Prosecution prohibit prosecutors from making charging decisions on the basis of partisan politics.”Pointing to a further symbol of the justice department’s politicization under Bondi, McQuade cited her statement that a federal judge “supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans” and charged he “cannot be objective” because he issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportation of Venezuelan men to El Salvador without due process.“There is no evidence to suggest that the judge did anything other than apply the law to the case,” McQuade stressed. “He was applying the law to a highly suspect use of the Alien Enemies Act, a statute to be used during wartime.”Assessing Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice, Rosenzweig said the department was betraying its historic mission to protect the rule of law.“DoJ isn’t just another department like agriculture or HHS. It has a unique place in the US government as the home of the ‘rule of law’ and the guardian of what makes America special,” he said.“Thomas Paine said: ‘In America, the law is king.’ Trump wants to make his word the law and himself the king.” More

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      Canada has long been seen as the cool cousin next door. Here’s the truth | Noel Ransome

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      Canada has been canonized – safely, predictably.It’s the great, grave story we’ve exported – retold in economic rankings, stitched into tourism ads, held up in classrooms and cable news panels. We’re the cooler, mellower cousin nextdoor. The country that has it figured out. Where healthcare is universal, democracy is calm and diversity is politely managed.This image has been shared like a TikTok meme for decades – forwarded, favourited, lightly interrogated. Over time, we’ve become more vibe than nation; contradictions, history and horrors flattened into brand energy. Place that flag in your Twitter bio, mention how “we’ll never become like America,” and you’ve bought into the sauce. You’re not the problem, you’re proof the problem lives somewhere else.This kind of deception has always been fundamental to our story. But we need only a glimpse at our neighbour’s constitutional preamble – “We the people of the United States” – to get a hint of the delusion. Canada’s constitutional language, by contrast, never used the populist “we”. From the start, there was no sweeping assertion of collective identity. Instead, the Constitution Act, 1867, opened with:
      Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland …
      Granted, Canada’s constitutional framework evolved. But from the beginning, the difference in language spoke to the shaping of our identity – through agreements, compromises, legal frameworks, not a people-centered vision. This historical nuance, while subtle, now echoes in modern politics.All that to say: times are spooky for the average Canadian forced to define and defend Canada’s sovereignty. Spooky in ways that can cause one to reflexively feed into a myth, rather than confront the truth of who we are. The gap between our negotiated past and our branded present has never been more plain. Our current leaders are no exception.To any Canadian progressive, it’s stating the obvious to say that Justin Trudeau, the figure most associated with Canada’s progressive identity, was more committed to feeding the myth than confronting it. With his well-timed, photogenic smile – post-blackface, naturally – Trudeau was the perfect mascot. Our self-image personified: tolerant, polished, unthreatening. But branding aside, his government sidestepped moral clarity at home – from pipeline expansions and broken promises to Indigenous communities, to a foreign policy on Gaza that rarely strayed from Washington’s script. In moments that demanded progressive definition, he was formless.It would have been naive to think many Canadians would take Donald Trump seriously when he half-jokingly suggested in November 2024 that Canada become the 51st state. After all, those words came from someone familiar to us – a man and a Maga movement forged in the belief that something sacred was always being stolen. The enemy, the fuel for his fervor, shifted with the news cycle: migrants, trans youth, teachers, climate scientists, Muslims, Black Americans, DEI initiatives, and the very idea of truth.But the speaker of those words wore the same jacket as Pierre Poilievre, who, just before Trump’s threat, was the undeniable favourite among Canadians to become the next prime minister.His rhetoric tapped into the same fears and scapegoating, presenting itself as the antidote to a broken system. Poilievre ticked off his own list of Trump-style grievances: DEI initiatives? “Garbage.” Trans women in women’s spaces? “No place at all.” Immigration policies? “Destroying” a system that requires caps over compassion to curb economic and social pressure. It’s as if he were part of the same tired flock – one that targets the marginalized while promising to fix what he claims is broken. The popular sentiments of a supposedly morally superior land.And this isn’t new. In 2008, as the country prepared to confront the brutal legacy of residential schools, Poilievre dismissed the moment sanctimoniously, arguing that Indigenous people needed to learn “the values of hard work” more than they needed compensation for past abuses. That’s who was in line to lead the country, as anointed by our polls.In the end, his opponent Mark Carney was victorious. But it should be clear that a shift toward the Liberal leader isn’t clarity about who we are, as much as it is a hedge against a man who seeks to claim us from afar.Carney is no antidote – just a bandage. Cutting ministries for gender equality and disability rights isn’t healing; it’s harm. His economic nationalism is safer than the far-right’s bluster, but it’s closer to US centrism than a remedy.As one union representing more than 80,000 educators put it, the move signals “an unwise change of direction” for a country where vulnerable groups are already living in fear. And while Carney served as an executive at Brookfield Asset Management, the company faced accusations of violating Indigenous rights.What Canadians and others need to confront is that the Trump machine wasn’t purely fueled by cultural resentment. It was powered, in no small part, by the United States’ historic desire to promote and believe the best of itself – even when the evidence said otherwise.For me, as a Black Canadian, home has rarely been the gentle myth so many sing about. Always polite and tolerant it wasn’t. I’ve seen just as much of the opposite: unmarked graves, flickers of grief, and then silence. I’ve seen headlines and acknowledgments of systematic racism turn to indifference: police brutality, missing Indigenous women, gone like breath during our winters. And yes, I’ve seen the Proud Boys, too. Their founder, Gavin McInnes? Canadian.Canada holds beauty, but it harbours moral rot just as much as the neighbour it claims to rise above. Myth-making can’t save us. If we want to hold onto our sovereignty in this moment, maybe it’s time we stop lying like them – to others, and most of all, to ourselves.

      Noel Ransome is a Toronto-based freelance writer More