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More than 1,000 ‘Hands Off’ anti-Trump protests begin across the US
People across the US took to the streets on Saturday to oppose what left-leaning organizations called Donald Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.Organizers were expecting more than 500,000 people to demonstrate in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere.At Washington’s national mall, demonstrators from as far afield as New Hampshire and Pennsylvania gathered in the shadow of the George Washington memorial monument, in advance of the anti-Trump rally there.In overcast conditions, protesters displayed a vast array of placards and, in some cases, Ukrainian flags, expressing opposition to the policies of the administration which has sought cordial relations with Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine.Some protesters said they hoped the event – the first mass demonstration in Washington DC since Trump took office – would act as an example to inspire others to register opposition. “The aim is get people to rise up,” said Diane Kolifrath, 63, who had travelled from New Hampshire with 100 fellow members of New Hampshire Forward, a civic society organisation.“Many people are scared to protest against Trump because he has reacted aggressively and violently to those who have stood up,” Kolifrath said. The goal of this protest is to let the rest of Americans who aren’t participating see that we are standing up and hopefully when they see our strength, that will give them the courage to also stand up.”MoveOn, one of the organizations planning the day of protest they’re calling “Hands Off” along with dozens of labor, environmental and other progressive groups, said that more than 1,000 protests are planned across the US, including at state capitols.“This is shaping up to be the biggest single-day protest in the last several years of American history,” Ezra Levin, a founder of Indivisible, one of the groups planning the event, said on a recent organizing call.The largest event was expected to be the one at the National Mall, where members of Congress, including the Democrats Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are scheduled to speak to crowds.The scene in Hollywood, Florida, about an hour south of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, was lively as well. Referring to the White House’s billionaire business adviser Elon Musk and the government cuts he has overseen, predominantly white protesters chanted: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Trump and Musk have got to go.They jeered motorists in Tesla Cybertrucks manufactured by Musk’s electric vehicle maker – and wielded colorful placards that left little doubt as to where they stood with the Trump administration.“Prosecute and jail the Turd Reich,” read one. Some reserved special ire for the world’s richest person: “I did not elect Elon Musk.” Others emphasized the protesters’ anxieties about the future of democracy in the US. “Hands off democracy,” declared one placard. “Stop being [Vladimir] Putin’s puppet,” enjoined another, referring to Russia’s dictator.Many motorists driving past the assembled demonstrators honked their horns and flashed thumb’s-up gestures in solidarity. Broward county was one of only six counties in Florida that voted for Kamala Harris in November – she defeated Trump there by 16 percentage points – and it is host to one of the US’s most vibrant LGBTQ+ communities.“This is an assault on our democracy, on our economy, on our civil rights,” said Jennifer Heit, a 64-year-old editor and resident of Plantation who toted a poster that read: “USA: No to King or Oligarchy.” She added: “Everything is looking so bad that I feel we have to do all we can while we can, and just having all this noise is unsettling to everyone.”Heit attended a protest outside a Tesla dealership in Fort Lauderdale recently, and she has been outraged by the Trump administration’s frontal assault on the rule of law and the judiciary – including with respect to people who have been deported without due process. “We’re supposed to be a nation of laws and due process,” she said.Public health researcher Donna Greene, 62, came dressed as France’s beheaded queen Marie Antoinette and carried a placard that said: “Musk and Trump Say Let Them Eat Cake.”She said she is proud of the 65 missions that her father Sam Ragland flew for the US military during the second world war. But, she said, the country her dad fought for is not the same one she sees emerging under Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Everything my father fought for and everything we hold dear as a country is being dismantled,” Greene said. “I am beyond incredulous at how quickly our country’s institutions have been dismantled with no pushback from the Republicans who are currently in charge.”In Ventura, California, Sandy Friedman brought her eight-year-old graddaughter, Harlow Rose Rega, to demonstrate. Friedman said she was worried about her social security, remarking: “I worked my whole life and so did my husband. Now I’m afraid Trump will take it away.”Harlow held up a sign reading: “Save my future.”The protest’s website called Saturday “a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history”.“Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights – enabled by Congress every step of the way.“They want to strip America for parts – shuttering social security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid – all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam. They’re handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich. If we don’t fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.”The protests come after the stock market plummeted this week following Trump’s 1 April announcement of tariffs. Despite the economic fallout, Trump said on Friday: “My policies will never change.”Trump’s approval rating this week fell to 43%, his lowest since taking office, according to a Reuters poll.After Trump was first elected to the White House in 2016, at least 470,000 people – three times the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration – joined the Women’s March protest in Washington DC, and millions more rallied around the country, making it the largest single-day protest in US history. More
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Ted Cruz warns of midterm ‘bloodbath’ if Trump tariffs cause a recession
Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, has warned that his fellow Republicans risk a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs cause a recession.Cruz also warned that the president’s tariffs, if they stay in place for long and are met by global retaliation on American goods, could trigger a full-blown trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.“A hundred years ago, the US economy didn’t have the leverage to have the kind of impact we do now. But I worry, there are voices within the administration that want to see these tariffs continue for ever and ever,” he added.The Texan’s comments, made on his Verdict podcast on Friday, were a further sign that the imposition of global “reciprocal” duties on imported goods is causing unease among Republicans.The Republican US senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa introduced bipartisan legislation on Thursday to grant Congress more power over placing tariffs on US trading nations. The bill, co-sponsored by the Democratic senator Maria Cantwell, would “reaffirm” the role of Congress in setting and approving trade policy.The Republican senators Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, Jerry Moran and Thom Tillis have since signed on as co-sponsors. Though the legislation is considered largely symbolic, it telegraphs anxiety over the $5.4tn loss of stock market capitalization over two days and signs of an electoral backlash to Trump administration policies in the form of a defeat at the ballot box by a Wisconsin supreme court race candidate backed by Trump’s billionaire business adviser Elon Musk.In two Florida congressional races, the Republican winners also underperformed.On his podcast, Cruz warned that tariffs and trade retaliation over the long term could push the US into “a recession, particularly a bad recession – 2026 in all likelihood politically would be a bloodbath”.“You would face a Democrat House, and you might even face a Democrat Senate,” Cruz said.“If we’re in the middle of a recession and people are hurting badly, they punish the party in power,” Cruz warned, adding he did not share the White House’s position that the tariffs would usher in “a booming economy”.But if “every other country on Earth” hits the US with retaliatory tariffs and Trump’s so-called reciprocal levies remain in place, “that is a terrible outcome” that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.Cruz, nonetheless, held out an olive branch to the administration.“Look, I want this to succeed … but my definition of succeed may be different than the White House’s,” he said, adding that his definition of success “is dramatically lower tariffs abroad and result in dramatically lowering tariffs here”.“That’s success for the American workers, American businesses, American growth, American prosperity,” he continued. “That’s a great outcome.” More
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Barack Obama calls on Americans to defend democratic values in face of Trump agenda
Barack Obama has called on US citizens, colleges and law firms to resist Donald Trump’s political agenda – and warned Americans to prepare to “possibly sacrifice” in support of democratic values.“It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social justice or say you’re for free speech and not have to pay a price for it,” Obama said during a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday.The two-term former Democratic president painted a picture of the Trump White House looking to upend the international order created after the second world war – and a domestic political reconfiguration in which ideological disagreement falling within mutual respect for free speech and the rule of law being eroded.“It is up to all of us to fix this,” Obama said, including “the citizen, the ordinary person who says: ‘No, that’s not right.’”Obama said he disagreed with some of the president’s economic policies, including widespread new tariffs. But the former president said he is “more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech”.That referred to decisions by the Trump administration to pull federal funding for top universities unless they agreed to abandon student diversity programs and implement guidelines on what it considered to be the line between legitimate protest in support of Palestinians and antisemitism.Obama also said schools and students should review campus environments around issues of academic freedom and to be prepared to lose government funding in their defense.“If you are a university, you may have to figure out: ‘Are we, in fact, doing things right?’” he said during the conversation at Hamilton College. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say: ‘That’s why we got this big endowment.’”Columbia University, in New York, has become the centerpiece of administration efforts to crack down via federal funding on what it contends were campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war that strayed into antisemitism.Federal immigration agents have arrested and sought to deport one graduate student whom they claimed violated immigration rules by engaging in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Another student sued after immigration agents tried to arrest and deport her after she also engaged in such demonstrations.The university agreed to make policy changes, including hiring security officers with arrest powers and banning protests in academic buildings, after the Trump administration stripped it of $400m in federal grants. The administration says it may now reinstate the money.Harvard, Princeton University and other institutions are also under federal funding review over their policies on the issue.“Now we’re at one of those moments where, you know what? It’s not enough just to say you’re for something; you may actually have to do something,” Obama said.The former president went on to question deals between corporate law firms and the administration after they were hit by executive orders over their connection to attorneys involved in prosecution efforts against Trump during Joe Biden’s presidency – or for representing the current administration’s political opponents.“It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent now would have tolerated behavior like that from me or a whole bunch of my predecessors,” Obama said, going on to question a decision by the White House to restrict access of the Associated Press to official events over the news agency’s decision to reject Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. More
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‘False teacher’: Trump’s pick to head the ‘White House faith office’ roils some fellow Christians
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to “protect religious liberty”, and two weeks after his inauguration he acted: creating a “White House faith office”, which will be led by Paula White, a millionaire televangelist known to speak in tongues who called the Black Lives Matter movement the “Antichrist” and once encouraged people to buy “resurrection seeds” for $1,114.The move brought renewed focus on White, Trump’s longtime spiritual guru. And for White, not all of it will be welcome.In March, she was criticized over an alleged cash-for-blessings scandal, while other rightwing Christians are unhappy with her new government role, with one describing White as “100% a false teacher”.White will be “senior adviser” of Trump’s faith office, which Trump announced along with an executive order which created a “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias”.View image in fullscreen“While I am in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals, and in our public squares, and we will bring our countries back together as one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all,” Trump said in a speech announcing the creation of the faith office.The appointment of White suggests some of those methods of protection could be unorthodox. In March, as Easter approached, White was criticised for a video in which she appeared to offer “seven supernatural blessings” for the price of $1,000, including the assignation of a personal angel. White, whose preaching has been described as adhering to “prosperity gospel” theology – the belief that praying will result in financial gains – said the blessings would also include prosperity and “increase in inheritance”.White denied that people had to pay to receive the blessings, a spokesperson for Paula White Ministries telling the Christian Post: “This story is a deceptive smear. Pastor White specifically says in the very same video, ‘you’re not doing this to get something,’ and the solicitation, which was later in the program, makes it clear that any donation to the ministry should only be ‘as the Holy Spirit leads.’ Moreover, donations to the ministry do not directly benefit Pastor White.”Still, even some rightwing Christians were unimpressed with White’s appointment. Jon Root, a Turning Point USA contributor and conservative influencer who supports Trump, told Notus: “Anybody that you know holds true to strong biblical conviction and discernment wouldn’t be involved with Paula White. She’s 100% a false teacher.”In any case, the “seven supernatural blessings” was not the first time White has introduced finances into faith. In 2016, she offered “resurrection seeds” for sale for $1,144, claiming in a recorded speech that God had told her the price point.View image in fullscreen“There’s someone that God is speaking to, to click on that donation button by minimizing the screen. And when you do, to sow $1,144,” she said. “It’s not often I ask very specifically but God has instructed me and I want you to hear. This isn’t for everyone but this is for someone. When you sow that $1,144 based on John 11:44, I believe for resurrection life.”White said people could also pay $144 or $44 if they could not afford God’s suggested total. The money appeared to grant individuals a metaphorical, rather than physical, seed, and the price included a prayer cloth, which White said could bring “special miracles”, and recommended it be placed under a loved one’s bed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt is unclear how many seeds were sold. But it is known that there have been questions over White’s financial maneuvers. CNN reported that White’s former church, Without Walls International, received $150m between 2004 and 2006, and a three-year investigation by Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, described how the church and White’s personal ministry used tax-exempt funds to pay a million dollars in salaries to family members and spent money on a private jet. The investigation closed with no penalties – although investigators said they were stifled by lifelong confidentially agreements that had been signed by church employees.Other questions about White relate to her beliefs and statements on issues including race and immigration. The Grio reported that White had particular animus for the Black Lives Matter movement, and said in a 2020 speech: “Christ’s likeness is not found in my gender, it is not found in my culture, it is not found in my ethnicity, it is not found in KKK, it is not found in Antifa, and it is not found in Black Lives Matter. All of which are anti-Christ, and even terrorist organizations.”Trump, whose commitment to true freedom of religion has repeatedly been questioned, in January rescinded guidance that prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection from carrying out immigration enforcement in churches – more than two dozen Christian groups are suing the government over the policy – but that apparent lack of sympathy appears to match White’s views. During Trump’s first term, White, then the president’s spiritual adviser, raised eyebrows when she said Jesus would have been “sinful” and not “our Messiah” if he had broken immigration law.“I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like: ‘Well, Jesus was a refugee,’” White told the Christian Broadcasting Network.“And yes, he did live in Egypt for three and a half years. But it was not illegal. If he had broke the law, then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah.”From questionable financial accounting, to strident views on protests against the killings of young Black men, to a disdain for immigrants, it seems White could be a perfect match for Trump. More
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Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ could mean recession in the US and pain worldwide | Steven Greenhouse
With the huge and painful tariffs that Donald Trump announced on Thursday, “Tariff Man” is acting like a paranoid 12-year-old bully who is convinced that everyone has wronged him, and he wants revenge. But the president’s instrument of revenge – massive tariffs – is going to do serious damage to the US and global economies. Stock market investors are convinced that’s the case, with Wall Street and world stock markets losing trillions of dollars in value in recent days as a result of Trump’s obsession.The president has escalated his risky, vengeful trade war even though the US economy was in strong shape when he took office – the jobless rate was just 4.1%, inflation was below 3% and US economic growth was the strongest in the industrial world, with its stock market at record levels. So it’s unclear whether the US economy needed the shock treatment that Trump is inflicting. The price increases resulting from his tariffs – which are a tax on imports – will cost the average American family $3,800 a year, according to the Budget Lab at Yale.Trump is right that the number of manufacturing jobs is down substantially from decades ago, and he is intent on getting that number back up. But he’s taking a very high-stakes bet that he can significantly increase the number of factory jobs, even as many economists say the horses have left that barn, and it is too late or will be too painful to do much about it. In 1979, the US had a record 19.5m factory jobs. That number fell to 17m in 2001 and to 12.7m today (having risen by 600,000 during Joe Biden’s presidency).Trump’s new tariffs result from a combination of impulsiveness, impetuousness and ignorance, although some economists say that idiocy and economic illiteracy also play a big part. Paul Krugman says that Trump’s tariffs reflect the “whims of a mad king”, adding that the administration’s case for tariffs is “completely incoherent”, as it insists that the tariffs won’t raise prices but will still raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.The tariffs that Trump announced on Thursday are staggering – 50% on tiny Lesotho, 49% on Cambodia, 46% on Vietnam, 34% on China, 32% on Taiwan, 24% on Japan and 20% on European Union countries. These percentages were arrived at not by careful, probing analysis that took months, but by some slapdash, Keystone Kops math.It would be generous to say it’s the one-eyed leading the blind. Rather, it’s an economically blind, impetuous president leading a mum, intimidated Republican-controlled Congress. One of the tragedies here is that many congressional Republicans see the grievous damage Trump is doing, but they’re too craven to speak out and risk Trump’s and Elon Musk’s social media wrath.Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, is predicting disaster. He says that as a result of Trump’s tariffs a recession “will hit imminently and extend until next year”. Zandi says that economic growth could fall by 2 percentage points, while the jobless rate could leap to a very painful 7.5%. On Friday, the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, also sounded the alarm, saying that Trump’s tariffs could cause even slower economic growth and higher inflation than originally expected.With Trump’s 50% tariff rate on Lesotho, 46% on Vietnam and 37% on Bangladesh, those countries – with their export-dependent apparel industries – will suffer terribly. There will be huge layoffs and no doubt an increase in hunger and immiseration – just as Trump-Musk’s tremendous foreign aid cuts at USAID have already resulted in increased hunger and deaths. And one has to wonder: by pummeling poor, apparel-producing countries such as Lesotho, Cambodia, Vietnam and Bangladesh, what is Trump trying to achieve? Does he want to bring back to the US low-paying, garment-industry jobs making jeans and sneakers?Carefully crafted tariffs can be helpful. They can be used to help build important industries or prevent the wholesale destruction of industries due to other countries’ bad behavior, like China’s improperly subsidizing its industries or dumping goods on the world market far below the cost of production. Unfortunately, Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs are not a scalpel designed to help specific industries, but rather a blunderbuss mess, hitting everyone and everything, including US consumers and industries. Let’s not forget that the tariffs will raise costs at many US manufacturers and make them less competitive by, for instance, greatly increasing the price of imported steel and auto parts.The tariffs that Trump is imposing are even greater than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which are widely seen as having worsened the Great Depression. Krugman noted that Trump’s tariffs could also do serious damage because “imports as a share of the [US] economy are three times what they were in the 1920s”.Even if Trump’s tariffs were to do what he hopes – create another million or two factory jobs – the cost would be immense. A recession. Millions of families hurt by higher prices. Trillions and trillions in lost stock market value. Far worse relations with our close allies and other countries. Opening the door to Trump’s adversary, China, significantly improving its trade and economic relations with other countries. Plus, a severe economic shock to many poorer nations.And it’s not at all certain that Trump’s tariffs will create a million or more manufacturing jobs: US economic growth and jobs will be hurt by a possible tariff-induced recession, trade retaliation from other countries, a long-term loss of markets as traditional trading partners turn away from the US, and a possible long-term decline in US industrial competitiveness as tariff protections enable inefficient companies to succeed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s big hope is that corporations will build new factories and create more factory jobs in the US, but corporate executives won’t do that unless they’re convinced that there’s economic stability and predictability. They’re not blind to how capricious and unpredictable Trump is, and they know that he loves to play master dealmaker and win concessions from other countries and then immediately slash their tariffs. Trump’s team says these tariffs will be here for the long haul, but can corporate CEOs count on those claims when they’re deciding to spend $400m on a new factory?In announcing his huge new tariffs last Thursday, Trump proclaimed: “April 2, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.” As usual, Trump failed to note some extremely important things.Although he won’t admit it, the US is already very wealthy. If he were truly serious about fixing the economy and making it fairer, he wouldn’t be rushing to give massive tax cuts to the ultra-rich and sparking fears of vast cuts Medicaid and food stamps that struggling American families rely on.What Trump and his team will never admit is that 2 April 2025 may for ever be remembered as the day the US economy took a grievous, Trump-induced tumble toward recession and higher prices. And not that Trump cares, but 2 April 2025 may also be remembered overseas for creating tremendous pain for struggling workers from Bangladesh to Lesotho to Honduras.
Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More
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Trump news at a glance: tariffs inflict more pain amid warning of rising prices
Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are roiling global financial markets, with stocks tumbling across the board from New York to London.Wall Street suffered its worst week since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis five years ago as investors worldwide balked at the US president’s risky bid to overhaul the global economy with the vast tariffs.Experts are all but unanimous that the impact on global growth of Wednesday’s extraordinary Rose Garden press conference will be negative – but just how bad remains highly uncertain.Here are the key stories at a glance:Dow drops more than 2,200 pointsDonald Trump doubled down on his plan on Friday, insisting he would not back down even as the chairman of the Federal Reserve warned it would likely raise prices and slow down economic growth.A stock-market rout continued apace, with the benchmark S&P 500 falling 322 points, or 6%, and the Dow Jones industrial average retreating 2,231.07 points, or 5.2%, in New York. The Dow’s two-day slump has wiped out $6.4tn in value, according to Dow Jones market data.Read the full storyChina hits back hard at ‘bullying’ TrumpChina has hit back hard against the US president’s “bullying” tariffs, raising fears that the escalating trade war could trigger a global recession and prompting fresh turmoil in financial markets.Beijing retaliated on Friday with punitive 34% additional tariffs on all goods imported from the US, mirroring the US decision and exacerbating a sell-off on global stock markets.Read the full storyFed chair defies Trump and warns of higher pricesDonald Trump’s global tariffs assault is set to raise prices and slow down economic growth, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has warned, defying the US president’s demands for an immediate interest rate cut.Read the full storyDemocrats decry firing of national security chiefTop congressional Democrats are protesting against the firing of Gen Tim Haugh as director of the National Security Agency (NSA), with one lawmaker saying the decision “makes all of us less safe”.US defense department spokesperson Sean Parnell on Friday confirmed Haugh’s departure without elaborating on why.Read the full storySupreme court allows DEI cuts to teacher training grantsThe US supreme court is letting the Trump administration temporarily freeze $65m in teacher-training grants that would promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in a 5-4 decision.The ruling came down on Friday afternoon, with five of the court’s conservatives – justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh – in the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented.Read the full storyTikTok sale deadline movedDonald Trump said he would sign an executive order to extend the TikTok ban deadline. This is the second time the president will have delayed the ban or sale of the social media app, and will punt the deadline to 75 days from now.China put a possible deal on hold this week after Trump announced his sweeping tariffs, according to Reuters.Read the full storyUS ‘testing’ if Russia is serious about peace in Ukraine The US will know within weeks whether Russia is serious about pursuing peace with Ukraine, the secretary of state has said, warning that Donald Trump was not “going to fall into the trap of endless negotiations” with Moscow.“We’re testing to see if the Russians are interested in peace,” Marco Rubio told journalists in Brussels after talks with Nato allies. “Their actions – not their words, their actions – will determine whether they’re serious or not, and we intend to find that out sooner rather than later.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
Chevron has been ordered to pay more than $744m in damages for destroying parts of south-east Louisiana’s coastal wetlands over the years. The ruling, which came in the form of a civil jury verdict on Friday, marks the conclusion of the first trial among 42 lawsuits filed about 12 years earlier.
Texas on Friday reported another large jump in measles cases and hospitalizations, leaving the US with more than double the number of measles cases so far this year than it saw in all of 2024.
Los Angeles county has reached a $4bn agreement to settle nearly 7,000 claims of sexual abuse in juvenile facilities since 1959, officials said on Friday. The agreement, which still needs approval from the Los Angeles county board of supervisors, would be the largest of its kind.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 3 April 2025. More - in US Politics
Democrats decry reported dismissal of NSA director Tim Haugh
Top congressional Democrats are protesting against the firing of Gen Tim Haugh as director of the National Security Agency (NSA), with one lawmaker saying the decision “makes all of us less safe”.Haugh and his civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, have been dismissed from their roles, the Washington Post reported late on Thursday, with CNN reporting likewise, both outlets citing multiple unnamed officials and other senior sources close to the matter who had requested anonymity.US defense department spokesperson Sean Parnell on Friday thanked Haugh “for his decades of service to our nation, culminating as US cyber command commander and National Security Agency director”.“We wish him and his family well,” Parnell’s statement said, confirming Haugh’s departure without elaborating on why.The ousting had not been officially confirmed by the government or the individuals by Friday afternoon, but the NSA website had been updated with both Haugh and Noble no longer listed in their roles.Lt Gen William J Hartman is now listed there as acting director of the NSA and Sheila Thomas as his acting deputy.Haugh also headed US Cyber Command, which coordinates the Pentagon’s cybersecurity operations. Hartman has been appointed acting head of the command, according to its website.The NSA notified congressional leadership and top lawmakers of the national security committees of Haugh’s firing late on Wednesday but did not give reasons, the Associated Press reported, citing a source. Senior military leaders were only informed on Thursday, the news agency said.The NSA declined to comment and referred the Guardian to the Department of Defense, which said it would provide more information when it became available.Outrage from critics was fulsome. Senator Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement: “General Haugh has served our country in uniform, with honor and distinction, for more than 30 years. At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats … how does firing him make Americans any safer?”Representative Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, said he was “deeply disturbed by the decision”.“I have known General Haugh to be an honest and forthright leader who followed the law and put national security first – I fear those are precisely the qualities that could lead to his firing in this administration,” Himes added. “The intelligence committee and the American people need an immediate explanation for this decision, which makes all of us less safe.”Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said Donald Trump “has given a priceless gift to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea by purging competence from our national security leadership”.“In addition to the other military leaders and national security officials Trump has fired, he is sending a chilling message throughout the ranks: don’t give your best military advice, or you may face consequences,” Reed added.Earlier on Thursday, Donald Trump said he had fired “some” White House National Security Council officials, a move that came a day after far-right activist Laura Loomer raised concerns directly to him about staff loyalty.Loomer, during her Oval Office conversation with Trump, urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “make America great again” agenda, according to several people familiar with the matter. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel manner.Loomer posted on X in the first moments of Friday morning: “NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired.”She added a screed about how they were hired by Joe Biden during his presidency and were, she said, “hand picked” by Mark Milley, then chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the most senior uniformed officer in the military. Milley served Trump in his first term in the White House but has since turned fiercely critical, calling the president dangerous and “fascist to the core”, and was fired in the early days of Trump’s second term. The 47th US president then also revoked Milley’s security clearance. Biden, the 46th US president, had preemptively pardoned Milley in his final days in office, following threats from Trump that the veteran was treasonous and should face the death penalty.Loomer added Haugh was “referred for firing” and Noble was Haugh’s “Obama loving protégé” who was nominated by Biden and promoted diversity, equity and inclusion at the agency. Loomer noted: “This is called VETTING”.She also said Noble was a protege of James Clapper, director of national intelligence in Barack Obama’s presidency, and said Clapper should be in prison.Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One on Thursday afternoon after the earlier firing of six national security agency staffers below the level of Haugh and Noble, based on recommendations from Loomer, a extremist cheerleader for Trump and a white supremacist with an incendiary social media presence who has no political experience outside of unsuccessfully running for US Congress in Florida twice.“Always we’re letting go of people,” Trump said. “People that we don’t like or people that we don’t think can do the job or people that may have loyalties to somebody else.”The firings come as Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz continues to fight calls for his ouster after using the publicly available encrypted Signal app to discuss planning for the sensitive 15 March military operation targeting Houthi militants in Yemen.Warner said on Thursday night: “It is astonishing, too, that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan, experienced leader of the National Security Agency while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on a commercial messaging app – even as he apparently takes staffing direction on national security from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office.”Haugh met last month with Elon Musk, whose so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, has roiled the federal government by slashing personnel and budgets at dozens of agencies. In a statement, the NSA said the meeting was intended to ensure both organizations were “aligned” with the new administration’s priorities.Haugh had led both the NSA and Cyber Command since 2023. Both departments play leading roles in the nation’s cybersecurity. The NSA also supports the military and other national security agencies by collecting and analysing a vast amount of data and information globally.Cyber Command is known as America’s first line of defence in cyberspace and also plans offensive cyber-operations for potential use against adversaries. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered the office to pause some offensive cyber-operations against Russia, in another sign of how Trump’s administration is transforming the work of the nation’s intelligence community.Renée Burton, a cybersecurity expert previously working for the NSA, told CNN the removal of the personnel was “alarming” and the disruption would “expose the country to new risk”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More
