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    The Guardian view on Britain’s new aid vision: less cash, more spin. The cost will be counted in lives | Editorial

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    Last week, the government justified cutting the UK’s development budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of gross national income – the lowest level in more than 25 years – by claiming Britain’s role is now to “share expertise”, not hand out cash. With a straight face, the minister responsible, Jenny Chapman, told MPs on the international development committee that the age of the UK as “a global charity” was over. But this isn’t reinvention – it’s abdication, wrapped in spin. No wonder Sarah Champion, the Labour MP who is chair of the committee, called Lady Chapman’s remarks “naive” and “disrespectful”. Behind the slogans lies a brutal truth: lives will be lost, and Britain no longer cares. Dressing that up as the “new normal” doesn’t make it less callous.Kevin Watkins of the London School of Economics analysed the cuts and found no soft-landing options. He suggests charting a sensible course through this wreckage, noting that harm from the cuts is inevitable but not beyond mitigation. Dr Watkins’ proposals – prioritising multilateralism, funding the global vaccine alliance (Gavi) and replenishing international lending facilities – would prevent some needless deaths. Ministers should adopt such an approach. The decision to raid the aid budget to fund increased defence spending was a shameful attempt to cosy up to Washington. The cuts were announced just before Sir Keir Starmer’s White House meeting with Donald Trump, with no long-term strategy behind them. It’s a deplorable trend: globally, aid levels could fall by $40bn this year.The gutting of USAID, the world’s biggest spender on international development, by Elon Musk, was less fiscal policy than culture-war theatre. Foreign beneficiaries don’t vote, and liberal-leaning aid contractors lack clout, so dismantling USAID shrinks “globalism” while “owning the establishment”. But the real casualties lie elsewhere. Memorably, Bill Gates said the idea of Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, “killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one”. Countries that built health systems around USAID now face a reckoning. It wasn’t just cash – it sustained disease surveillance, logistics and delivery. Ironically, much of it never left American hands, absorbed by US private interests.In the UK, University of Portsmouth researchers say aid increasingly serves foreign policy, not development. It’s not just ineffective – it’s cynical. Aid should change lives, not wave flags. All this as poor nations’ debt crisis deepens. Without global reform, the Institute for Economic Justice warns, African nations face a cycle of distress blocking investment in basic needs. The UK recasts withdrawal as progress – holding up Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as model partners. But Georgetown University’s Ken Opalo makes a cutting point: in diplomacy, when the music stops, those who outsourced ambition get exposed. Aid dependency, he argues, has hollowed out local ownership. With little planning, many governments now face a choice: take over essential services or cling to a vanishing donor model.Politicians should choose their words carefully. The former Tory development secretary Andrew Mitchell rightly criticised Boris Johnson’s “giant cashpoint in the sky” remark for damaging public support for aid. Labour ministers are guilty, too. Britain has replaced moral leadership with metrics, and compassion with calculation. The policy’s defenders call it realism. But without vision, it’s just surrender – leaving the world’s poor to fend for themselves, forced to try to survive without the means to do so. More

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      Elon Musk shows he still has the White House’s ear on Trump’s Middle East trip

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      Over the course of an eight-minute interview, Elon Musk touted his numerous businesses and vision of a “Star Trek future” while telling the crowd that his Tesla Optimus robots had performed a dance for Donald Trump and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, to the tune of YMCA. He also announced that Starlink, his satellite internet company, had struck a deal for use in Saudi Arabia for maritime and aviation usage; looking to the near future, he expressed his desire to bring Tesla’s self-driving robotaxis to the country.“We could not be more appreciative of having a lifetime partner and a friend like you, Elon, to the Kingdom,” Saudi Arabia’s minister of communications and IT, Abdullah Alswaha, told Musk.Although Musk has pivoted away from his role as de facto leader of the so-called “department of government efficiency” and moved out of the White House, the Saudi summit showed how he is still retaining his proximity to the US president and international influence. As Musk returns to his businesses as his primary focus, he is still primed to reap the rewards of his connections and political sway over Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStarlink diplomacyMusk’s Starlink announcement comes after a spate of countries have agreed to allow the satellite communications service to operate within their borders. Several countries that have approved Starlink did so after US state department officials mentioned the company by name or pushed for increased satellite services in negotiations over Trump’s sweeping tariffs, according to internal memos obtained by the Washington Post.Concerns over whether Musk and the Trump administration are leveraging their power to force countries into adopting Starlink has prompted calls for a state department inspector general investigation into whether there is undue influence at play in these agreements. On Wednesday, a group of Democratic senators issued a letter requesting a broad review of the state department’s alleged efforts to assist Starlink.“These reports indicate that Mr Musk may be using his official role and his proximity to the President as leverage for his own personal financial benefit – even if it comes at the expense of American consumers and the nation’s foreign policy interests,” the senators wrote.Musk’s empire expands in Saudi ArabiaThe Saudi-US Investment Forum summit was held in Riyadh and featured top ministers from the kingdom’s government as well as US cabinet secretaries Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick. Saudi Arabia has been sinking billions into tech and artificial intelligence in recent years as it expands its portfolio of investments, in addition to its already extensive deals in industries such as defense and energy. The White House and Saudi government announced an arms deal worth $142bn following the event.Musk was one of a long list of Silicon Valley moguls and top executives of major US companies to attend the summit. The CEO of Palantir and Musk ally, Alex Karp, took part, as did the OpenAI CEO and Musk rival, Sam Altman. Amazon’s chief executive, Andy Jassy, and Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, were some of the other tech leaders present. The list also included CEOs from a range of boldface names such as Boeing, Coca-Cola and Halliburton.Earlier on Tuesday, Musk talked with Trump and Prince Mohammed inside the Saudi Royal Court and warmly greeted both leaders. Weeks before Musk’s arrival in Riyadh, his Twitter/X social media platform had managed to refinance some of its billions in debt with help from a Saudi fund. Tesla also launched in Saudi Arabia last month, opening a new showroom in the capital. More

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      The Cybertruck was supposed to be apocalypse-proof. Can it even survive a trip to the grocery store?

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      View image in fullscreenThe Cybertruck answers a question no one in the auto industry even thought to ask: what if there was a truck that a Chechen warlord couldn’t possibly pass up – a bulletproof, bioweapons-resistant, road rage-inducing street tank that’s illegal to drive in most of the world?Few had seen anything quite like the Cybertruck when it was unveiled in 2019. Wrapped in an “ultra-hard, 30X, cold-rolled stainless steel exoskeleton”, the Cybertruck was touted as the ultimate doomsday chariot – a virtually indestructible, obtuse-angled, electrically powered behemoth that can repel handgun fire and outrun a Porsche while towing a Porsche, with enough juice leftover to power your house in the event of a blackout. At the launch, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, said the truck could tackle any terrain on Earth and possibly also on Mars – and all for the low, low base price of $40,000. “Sometimes you get these late-civilization vibes [that the] apocalypse could come along at any moment,” Musk said. “Here at Tesla, we have the best in apocalypse technology.”Six years on, Covid and Musk’s political alignment with Donald Trump have kicked up the apocalypse vibes, and Tesla’s good sense has only become more questionable as the Cybertruck has been reduced to an object of universal scorn and derision further raising a host of questions: is the Cybertruck even a decent doomsday chariot? Could it really survive end times? Will it survive Musk himself? “There’s no doubt it’s a heavy-duty vehicle that can take some punishment, even from small arms fire,” says Arthur Bradley, a prepping expert who oversees the building of satellite systems at Nasa’s Langley research center in Virginia. “But you can’t weigh the pros without also asking: ‘Are people shooting at me because they think I’m an idiot or a bad guy, or they don’t support my political views – or they don’t support me supporting this company?’”View image in fullscreenPost-armageddon transport has a simple but specific brief: be tough, durable and drive through anything – and no vehicle ticks those boxes more reliably than trucks. Fictional concepts such as Mad Max’s tanker-based War Rig are often the inspiration for real-world creations like Ford’s custom-built F650 Supertruck, a tractor-trailer sized monstrosity that can carry 120 gallons of fuel, tow 30,000lb, and be reinforced with bulletproof armor. The truck is how insurgent fighters get around war zones and what storm chasers use to run down tornadoes. “They’re certainly pretty good for prepping purposes,” says Sean Gold, a former air force emergency manager who has worked in the prepping industry for nearly a decade. “They’re large, off-road-capable, able to get off roads that might be congested – that sort of thing.”The Cybertruck, however, broke from a century’s worth of truck-building orthodoxy, eschewing the typical three-box layout for a wedge-shaped silhouette that took inspiration from the movie Blade Runner and cyberpunk motifs. It mocked the F-150, the US’s top-selling vehicle for the last 47 years, as prehistoric tech. On its website, Tesla featured imaginative images of the Cybertruck crawling around Mars. Few knew what to make of it. Simone Giertz, a DIY robotics inventor who built a Tesla truck on her popular YouTube channel, was among a select group invited to Tesla’s Hawthorne, California, studio for the Cybertruck unveiling. “I have never physically felt the air leave a room in the way that it did when the Cybertruck rolled out on stage,” she recalls. “People were so confused.”Since Musk’s hard-right turn, however, the Cybertruck’s design has gone from aesthetically polarizing to politically so. A recent Slate article nods at the truck’s uncanny resemblance to the Casspir, the apartheid-era military transport that patrolled South African townships in Musk’s boyhood. “As violence and flames engulfed the streets of the nation, Black South African children drew and wrote about the apartheid security forces and its tools – dogs and Casspirs – chasing and shooting at them in their schools, streets, and homes,” the article says. “By the 1990s, the Casspir had become an iconic global symbol of apartheid oppression.”View image in fullscreenIt’s no surprise then that the Cybertruck would become a status symbol for security forces. One California police department spent $153,000 on a Cybertruck for “community outreach efforts” (though it didn’t rule out using it to “respond to emergencies” as needed), and a Chechen warlord showed off a machine-gun mounted Cybertruck he claimed was purpose-built to help his army fight alongside Russia in the Ukraine war. “I am sure that this ‘beast’ will bring a lot of benefit to our fighters,” Ramzan Kadyrov said while heaping praise on “the respected Elon Musk”, who has denied making the vehicle for Kadyrov. Ultimately, the Cybertruck had to be towed from the battlefield after randomly shutting down on Chechen forces, and Kadyrov accused Musk of switching it off remotely – a nagging concern among Tesla owners.In Tesla’s early days, the catastrophe thinking was small – a “bioweapon defense mode” button on each vehicle’s climate control, something Musk reckoned might come in handy “if there’s ever an apocalyptic scenario of some kind”. But even as Musk’s winking references to the apocalypse manifested into a bulletproof rig made of stainless steel, there was no denying that he may have been right to think the Cybertruck could be a hit with consumers. After the 2019 unveiling, Tesla received about 2m preorders from customers plonking down $100 each. But in the end the enthusiasm wouldn’t last because Musk couldn’t keep his promises.The Cybertruck came to market two years too late, which was time that allowed Tesla’s rivals to get in the game; more Cybertruck reservation holders might have hung in there if Musk hadn’t marked the truck’s base price up to $99,000. Perhaps most detrimental for Tesla: the Cybertruck’s purported utility appeared to be worse than advertised. The average truck is undergirded with a steel frame to handle the rigors of hauling and towing – but the Cybertruck’s underbody is made of aluminum, much lighter metal that can bend and even break under heavy strain. Stainless steel is also susceptible to rust – which is to say the Cybertruck is an iffy proposition to survive regular winter, let alone nuclear winter.The internet teems with video of the Cybertruck spinning its wheels in a snowy parking space, on the beach and farther off the beaten path; meanwhile the Rivian R1T, a legitimately capable electric vehicle rival to the Cybertruck, was apparently no worse for wear after being tossed around during Hurricane Helene. (“What a dream marketing opportunity for Rivian,” Giertz says. “Your truck actually survived a natural disaster.”)Dan Neil, the Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer prize-winning car critic, slid off a hill while test-driving the Cybertruck with his teenage daughter. “We took it on class three and class four trails, which it is technically capable of,” he says. “But it’s also 2ft wider than any trail at any national park could generally accommodate. That’s the part I don’t get. It’s definitely an on-road car.”View image in fullscreenThat makes the Cybertruck an even tougher sell to doomsday preppers – many of whom already had their doubts about the viability of EV technology during and after a major disaster, says Gold, the former air force manager. The Cybertruck’s 300ish-mile range in particular becomes a much riskier proposition when plugs stop working. “The beauty of EVs is you don’t have to hunt for fuel,” says Bradley, the Virginia-based prepping expert. “But the drawback is most people don’t have a large solar power generation system. If you get a little too far out, or run into a situation that causes you to use up your energy, you might not get back home.”Daisy Luther, a former automotive service manager who went into the prepping business after the 2008 financial collapse, wonders how anyone in the post-apocalypse would go about fixing a Cybertruck (which has already been recalled eighttimes) – especially in the event of an electromagnetic pulse or similar event. “I generally recommend that if someone is getting a vehicle to last them through some kind of apocalyptic situation that it have as few computer chips and electronics as possible,” says Luther, who drives an old Jeep. “I can do small repairs on something mechanical, but I can’t do anything that requires a computer flash or a satellite upgrade because I don’t have the equipment.”Last month I rented a Tesla Cybertruck to get a feel for it as a family vehicle and found it to be ill-equipped for these times, let alone the end times. (And I say that as the owner of a Model Y, an exceedingly versatile family hauler that’s also massively fun to drive.) At over 6ft wide, 18ft long and 3.5 tons, the Cybertruck was a bear to maneuver around Atlanta’s narrow streets; its obtuse-angled shape made identifying traffic hazards through the car’s windows and mirrors a virtual impossibility. Even when I find myself considering the Cybertruck just for its potential as a standby home generator, I was soon reminded that Hyundai and Kia EVs offer similar capability for a fraction of the cost.For my toddler boys the Cybertruck is what the Lamborghini Countach was to me in my youth, the apogee of poster cars – but the truck isn’t what I would call kid-friendly. Mostly, it kept me worried about them gouging out an eye, losing a finger or getting static shock from touching the steel doors as they explored.“You’re driving a meme car!” Ezra Dyer, the Car and Driver columnist, helpfully reminds me. “You have to buy into the idea that it’s kind of funny, wink-wink.” When my wife asked if the children would be safe inside, I hesitated to tell her that Alijah Arenas – the highly regarded USC basketball recruit and son of former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas – had to be put into a coma after losing control of his Cybertruck and crashing into a fire hydrant in Los Angeles. Suffice to say, had Alijah Arenas been driving a Rivian (the safest pickup on the road full stop) or Tiger Woods’s 2009 Escalade, he would have been able to walk away from the accident; but somehow, bystanders managed to pry open the Cybertruck’s doors, which don’t have exterior handles (!), and pull him away from a fiery scene made scarier by the truck’s tough to extinguish high-voltage battery – the last thing you’d want to deal with when the world’s already burning.View image in fullscreenUnlike modern cars, the Cybertruck was expressly not designed to deform on impact – further ratcheting up the safety risks during and after a cataclysmic disaster. (This is also why Cybertrucks are banned in the UK, EU and China, the world’s largest EV market.) Gold, who drives a Model 3, could envision a bad actor hacking into the truck remotely or even Musk himself shutting them down out of spite as may or may not have been the case with the Chechen warlord. “I know it doesn’t really make sense [for him to do that],” Gold says, “but the possibility is concerning”.Then there’s Gold’s point: the Cybertruck is such a ripe target, it sticks out so much. Early on the Ford CEO, Jim Farley, dismissed it as the kind of status mobile you might find “parked in front of a hotel”. In its relatively short life, the Cybertruck has gone from being a status mobile for Kim Kardashian, Pharrell Williams and other tastemakers to the ultimate meme-mobile – a Maga hat on wheels. (SNL’s Colin Jost called it the answer to the question: “What if Kanye was a car?”) When the truck isn’t being flipped off in traffic (although that wasn’t my experience driving it in Atlanta, a saturated Tesla market), it’s being used as a slate canvas for political protests against Musk. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to drive one around town today,” Bradley says.Read more from The Armageddon complex series

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      The irony of Tesla’s apocalypse machine is it couldn’t even overcome Musk’s worst nature, or even live up to the Earth-saving principles that Tesla used to espouse. “Maybe this explains it: he’s working really hard on bringing down civil society; maybe that was just to increase the market?” Giertz jokes. “It’s interesting because when the environmentalists turned on Elon, he immediately pivoted to another target group: the preppers who want to be self-sufficient. But at this point when civility is out the window and we are even more pissed at the guy who brought the apocalypse in, I’d rather be in a Toyota Prius than a Cybertruck.”On the company’s earnings call last month Musk vowed to step back from running the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to devote more time to Tesla amid speculation that he could be replaced as CEO – but the catastrophe may be unsalvageable. “I don’t think that [Doge] is the issue,” Ross Gerber, a major Tesla investor, told CNN. “Actually, it’s that people despise Elon Musk even more than they hate Trump. And that’s not something that he can solve at this point.”Despite being the world’s top selling EV pickup, Cybertruck sales are still so poor that the company doesn’t even bother reporting them – but record high inventory and steep depreciation curves give the game away. Quietly, Tesla shifted marketing strategies for the Cybertruck, pivoting away from the Martian imagery to more classic pickup truck iconography – but it’s too little, too late, and now just gaslighting the public. In recent months Tesla’s board chair made $198m unloading the company’s stock amid falling profits. Ford, Rivian and other competitors are fast gaining ground in the market. “It’s really interesting to see how far Tesla has fallen,” says Benoit. “At this point it’s beyond political.”If anything, the Cybertruck becoming the Titanic of cars is the fate we actually should’ve prepared for. History tells us anytime a vehicle is touted as future-proof, it’s all but doomed to become a monument to unchecked hubris. “My guess is this incarnation of the Cybertruck has a very limited life,” Bradley says. “I think there will be another Cybertruck, but it will probably be more modern-looking – like a regular pickup truck.” More

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      Trump’s dangerous projects follow a predictable pattern

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      Soon after Elon Musk slapped the air with a double Nazi salute, his brother Kimbal went on X to say: “This is what success feels like.” And three months ago, he seemed to have a point.The Trump administration, which appeared to have been co-led for a time by big brother Musk, is now in a period of retrenchment. Initiatives focused on Gaza, tariffs, spending, deporting millions of migrantand “government efficiency” have all deflated somewhat.We are admittedly only a small fraction of the way through this second Trump term, but a pattern appears to be emerging: the president proclaims a big policy goal, Maga appointees scramble to interpret his objectives, and then the whole thing is abandoned in paroxysm. Which isn’t to say that real harm isn’t being caused – just less than might otherwise be.First, the Gaza riviera. Trump’s response to the genocide in Palestine was to envision a grand ethnic cleansing embellished by Carrara marble and rickrack. Questions the president didn’t seem to have asked in advance: where would the Palestinians go? Why would Egypt or Jordan risk regime-ending instability? Who would pay for it all? Faced with the difficulty of implementing a complex plan,which only 3% of Israeli Jews regard as immoral, Trump retreated.But not before facilitating harm. His explicit endorsement of the majority view in Israel that Palestinian residents of Gaza should relocate has only permitted the leadership in that country to accelerate their Biden-era policy. Now, Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, openly speaks of using starvation as a tool in Gaza, something the Israelis were shy about admitting only seven months ago. And since Benjamin Netanyahu’s government broke the ceasefire with Hamas in March, Israeli troops have murdered more than 2,100 Palestinians – the majority of them children. Again, an extension of the Biden policy, but without the chintzy gilt.The tariff debacle, meanwhile, showcased the administration’s inability to shoot straight. A Forbes analysis counts nine flip-flops on tariff policy. Bad policy is bad – whiplash makes it worse.One of the arguments explaining the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency – the tender most countries use for trade and global finance – is that the US is a big and stable country that pays its bills and honors its commitments. That trust in America’s ability to manage an economy confers lots of benefits to Americans, such as lower borrowing and transaction expenses. Demand for the US dollar allows the US to finance deficits, seemingly indefinitely.But there are signs that the erratic tariff policy has caused other countries – who buy US debt – to question old assumptions about stability and growth. It turns out that, like addressing Palestine, trade policy is hard.But it didn’t have to be like this – a measured tariff policy could have helped enhance American industry. Coupled with prohibitions on stock buybacks – a Reagan-era concession to corruption that allows CEOs to inflate their stock prices and “performance” bonuses – a sensible tariff policy could have helped facilitate the investment of corporate profits domestically, reinvigorating the labor movement to produce better jobs. But policy requires a clear statement of goals and an understanding of how to get there – neither of which the Trump administration was able to articulate. Economic growth has almost certainly been dented by the bizarre trade war and myriad reversals – so we’ll probably see more deficit spending at higher borrowing rates.And then there’s Yemen, where the Houthi government has harassed Israeli-affiliated boats in response to the genocide. The catastrophic effort to bomb the Yemenis into submission, again, an extension of Joe Biden’s Israel policy, was preceded with bluster. In March, Trump issued a message on his website that read, “To all Houthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!”But nearly two months into America’s bombing campaign, which has killed hundreds in Yemen at vast expense, the effort to open trade routes in the Red Sea has resulted in a negotiated detente which falls far short of achieving Trump’s goals. The deal commits the Yemenis to leaving American ships alone, but says nothing about Israeli-affiliated vessels. The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal took the Israelis by surprise.Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) dramatically overestimated its potential and overstated its accomplishments: at a meeting last month, Musk said he expected Doge cuts would save $150bn, or 85% less than the promised $1tn. Now Musk is returning to Tesla – whose weak quarterly results have caused the stock price to crash back to earth.All of it a bad joke, played on the American people.Trump’s inability to follow through on his big initiatives is probably attributable to lots of things, but the quality of the man, and the people around him, stick out. Pete Hesgeth, the secretary of defense, appears unfocused and unbalanced in interviews. Kristi Noem, head of the US Department of Homeland Security, seems obsessed with pageantry and appearances, while the attorney general, Pam Bondi, exhibits sycophantic tendencies. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and JD Vance spent a lot of time explaining how dangerous Trump was – Vance compared Trump to Hitler – before joining his administration. All seem to have been hired for their ability to flatter and prostrate themselves, which is not the same as competence or executive experience.So now, a bigger picture is emerging. The operating moral principle directing the Trump presidency seems to be that people are generally worse than they proclaim to be. And the president has gone out of his way to hire people with limited talent and ability, whose main qualification is Maga, people who can’t follow through on big pronouncements and goals. It is indeed government by the worst.

      Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace More

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      Federal workers in limbo amid whiplash White House firings and court-ordered rehirings

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      In the 100 days since Donald Trump returned to power, the new administration has driven tens of thousands of federal workers from a civil service it has denigrated as “bloated” and “corrupt”. Among its first targets: probationary workers like Cindi Hron.Hron, a landscape architect with the US Forest Service, was one of thousands abruptly fired across the agency on 14 February, in an action some now refer to as the Valentine’s Day massacre, executed by Elon Musk’s newly empowered “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.“As much as I could see it coming, it was still a gut punch,” she said. Hron was given just two hours to return her equipment before losing access to her government email.In the weeks that followed, similar scenes played out across the government – nurses at the Department of Veterans Affairs, food safety regulators at the Department of Agriculture, scientists at the Department of Health and Human Services. Employees, along with unions and legal groups, challenged the legality of the widespread terminations. At least 24,000 of those dismissals led to court-ordered reinstatements, which have since been paused.Whiplashing court orders have left probationary workers in a fragile state of limbo. Some have been rehired, while others remain on administrative leave. Some have received backpay and benefits, while others have not. Some were returned to work, put on administrative leave and then fired again, after an intervention by the supreme court.“There is a state of confusion as to anybody’s status,” said Jeffrey Grant, a former deputy director at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.Hron had already moved back to Pennsylvania, where she had relocated from to accept the Forest Service job in Utah, when she learned that she would be reinstated, in compliance with a ruling by the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency responsible for protecting federal employees. The reversal was welcome but the return to work felt precarious. When her department extended a second “deferred resignation” offer, she decided to take it.“Doge has just taken a baseball bat and it’s just breaking things,” she said. “It’s certainly not the way I ever anticipated leaving a job.”Probationary workers are employees who generally have less than a year in their role after being hired or promoted, though they are often highly skilled and have years of prior experience in the federal government. While they lack the full job protections of longer-tenured civil servants during this period, probationary workers can only be removed for poor performance or conduct.In late April, a federal judge in California said the administration’s suggestion that tens of thousands of probationary workers were dismissed because of their performance was “a total sham” and order several agencies to provide a retraction in writing.View image in fullscreenBut in a blow to efforts to challenge their removals, the office of special counsel, an independent watchdog agency, announced it was dropping its inquiry into a torrent of complaints that the Trump administration had unlawfully terminated probationary workers. The decision was a reversal of the conclusion reached by the previous head of the agency, Hampton Dellinger, who was fired by Trump.Craig Becker, senior counsel for the AFL-CIO, which is challenging the administration’s firings of probationary employees, said a legal defense network established to provide assistance to federal workers has fielded many calls from employees struggling with questions over benefits and job status.“It’s been a hellish way of treating people,” said Tom Di Liberto, a public affairs specialist and climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) who was among the probationary employees dismissed in February, rehired and put on administrative leave in March and dismissed again on 10 April.Di Liberto’s probationary period would have ended before he was refired on 10 April, but the termination was backdated to 27 February.“They didn’t want us basically to be able to say that we had employment,” he said. “I’m sure that’s not legal, but I’m sure that’s what the courts will decide.”It is not clear how many federal employees were in a probationary status when Doge began its mass firings earlier this year. An analysis by the Partnership for Public Service estimates the number was roughly 250,000. At the time Trump won the election in November, the federal workforce employed just over 3 million people, excluding the roughly 1.3 million active-duty military personnel.Musk initially promised Doge would slash $1tn – a sum so large he and Trump suggested some of the savings could be distributed to taxpayers. This month, Musk revised his target to $150bn – just 2% of the federal budget. A tracker of the savings Doge claims to have achieved is riddled with well-documented errors, duplications and inaccuracies.The Doge team’s efforts have also cost billions of dollars. The Partnership for Public Service estimated Doge’s firings, rehirings, lost productivity and paid leave will cost upwards of $135bn this fiscal year, not including costs associated with court battles their actions have incited.View image in fullscreenAmericans broadly support Doge’s stated mission – tackling waste and inefficiency in government. And experts on the federal bureaucracy as well as workers themselves acknowledge that reforms are needed.But the stories of fired workers, shared at town halls and protests, have helped rally raucous – and even poignant – opposition to Musk’s government-slashing initiative. Polls show Musk and Doge are increasingly unpopular. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll, 56% of respondents agreed that Trump was “going too far” in laying off government employees.“Efficiency is a cloak for a Project 2025 operation to gut the federal workforce and replace career civil servants with Trump loyalists,” said Rob Shriver, the former director of the office of personnel management, referring to the far-right blueprint for overhauling the federal government.Shriver, who now serves as managing director of the Civil Service Strong initiative at Democracy Forward, a legal group contesting the administration’s sweeping dismissals of government employees, expressed concern that Doge’s brute-force approach to government cost-cutting could have lasting repercussions on the civil service.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration’s treatment of federal workers risked eroding longstanding expectations of job security and confidence in its public service mission – advantages that help the government recruit new talent.“I think that the stability has been completely undermined by these antics,” Shriver said. “And I think folks have a lot of questions about what they would be asked to do were they to come in and work for a federal agency – whether what they would be asked to do would be in line with their values as somebody who wants to serve the public and takes an oath to the constitution.”Even after Musk said recently he would step back from leading Doge, the administration has made clear its government-shrinking crusade is far from complete. And probationary workers say they feel more vulnerable than ever. Last week, Trump signed an executive order making it easier to fire probationary employees by expanding agency discretion over whether they attain full status.Doge did not reply to multiple requests for comment.“President Trump is the chief executive of the executive branch and reserves the right to fire anyone he wants,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement.The day-to-day stress brought about by the administration’s demonization of federal workers as “deep state” bureaucrats working to thwart the president’s agenda has left the workforce deeply demoralized.One reinstated probationary employee with the US Forest Service in Alaska, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal, said some days she feels so “downtrodden” that she can’t stop crying. At the same time she feels a deep sense of resolve to “hold the line” and “not comply in advance”.“We are the indicator species in this situation,” she said. “This is happening to us first, but the ripple effects of not having us – and not having all of those protections that the federal government provides for the resources that people care so much about, and the lands that they subsist on – will be absolutely enormous.”View image in fullscreenThe anxiety and fatigue is by design. A destabilized civil service was central to the vision laid out by Russell Vought, head of the office of management and budget and chief architect of Project 2025, who once said: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.”Multiple probationary employees told the Guardian they expect to be targeted in future rounds of layoffs. Several said they were pursuing other opportunities or had accepted their agency’s buyout offer, while some remained hopeful they would prevail in court.The mass exodus of probationary workers has already disrupted government functions and services – and is raising alarms about the loss of scientific and technical expertise.“The US has been a leader in hurricane science and in weather forecasting,” said Andy Hazelton, a physical scientist who worked on hurricane modeling at Noaa. “We have so much talent, so much knowledge and data. But everything that’s happened, it’s kind of threatening that.”Hazelton, who was among the probationary employees caught in the chaotic cycle of being fired, reinstated and dismissed again, said Noaa staff were already stretched thin. Staff reductions, coupled with proposed budget cuts, could affect work on the agency’s lifesaving forecasts just as hurricane season approaches, he warned.“I worry that the forecasts, perhaps the improvements we’ve come to rely on, may not be as reliable going forward,” he said.As Hron prepares to leave the Forest Service, she has been thinking about the oath she took nearly one year ago.During a security training as part of her onboarding, Hron remembers incorrectly answering a question about the type of threat facing the agency. She assumed the answer was “foreign”, but the correct response was “domestic”. At the time, she found it surprising.Now she has come to believe that the Trump administration’s war on federal workers is the very kind of domestic threat the agency warned of: “We just departed from the ethics, the guidelines and policies that shape what I understood the Forest Service to be.” More

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

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

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      We’ve never seen a more error-prone, incompetent presidency | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      As we pass the 100-day mark of Donald Trump’s second term, it’s time to take note of a key element of how this administration governs: by mistake. I’m being serious. Have we ever seen a more error-prone, incompetent and fumbling presidency? In their rush to implement a barely concealed authoritarian agenda, this administration is producing a litany of blunders, gaffes and slip-ups. At times, they’ll seek to hide those mistakes by projecting a shield of authoritarianism. At other times, they’ll claim the mistake as a method of walking back an unpopular authoritarian agenda item. Either way, it’s a unique style of rule, one that I call “rule by error”.On 11 April, for example, the White House’s taskforce on antisemitism sent Harvard University a letter detailing a laundry list of actions that Harvard would have to undertake if the university wanted to avoid having over $2bn of multiyear federal grants frozen by the government. But the actions were extreme and would have resulted in the end of Harvard’s intellectual independence. Days later, Harvard wrote back: “Nah, I’m good,” they told Trump’s people. (More precisely, they wrote that the university is “not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration”.)Harvard’s response garnered much popular support against a bullying Trump administration, including a photo caption in the Onion that read: “Nation Can’t Believe It’s On Harvard’s Side.” Then, a few days later, several unnamed officials told the New York Times that the Trump administration’s letter, which had been signed by three officials from the administration and sent on official letterhead from an official email account, had been sent to Harvard by mistake. Oops.Maybe it was sent in error, which frankly still speaks poorly of this administration, but it’s also possible that as the wind began blowing favorably in Harvard’s direction, some in the administration were looking for a way out of the trap they had set for themselves.But that’s hardly the only error this administration has admitted to, nor is it the worst, not by a long shot. Kilmar Ábrego García, an Salvadorian man who lived in Maryland with his wife and five-year-old child, was grabbed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents on 12 March and deported three days later to El Salvador, despite having a deportation protection order forbidding him from being sent there. In a 7 April court filing, Robert Cerna, the acting Ice field office director, admitted that Ábrego García’s deportation was an “administrative error”.Did owning up to this error result in the return of Ábrego García? Absolutely not. Trump’s administration continues to this day to defy the courts while doubling down on its own failures. During a recent Oval Office meeting between the US president and Salvadorian president, Nayib Bukele, White House aide Stephen Miller disputed even the existence of an error, despite all the evidence. “The only mistake that was made is a lawyer put an incorrect line in a legal filing that since has been relieved of duty,” Miller said, presumably referring in his tortured English to the fact that the administration fired Erez Reuveni, a career justice department attorney who represented the government in court during the Ábrego García case. The lesson here? You’re better off shooting the messenger than correcting your own mistake.If those errors aren’t enough evidence to constitute a philosophy of error, there’s still plenty more. What about the official notice the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent to some Ukrainian refugees in the United States. More than 240,000 Ukrainians have been settled in the United States under a program titled “U4U” that began under Joe Biden’s presidency. On 3 April, some Ukrainians, it’s unclear how many, received a notice telling them: “DHS is now exercising its discretion to terminate your parole,” referring to their legal status to stay in the country. “Unless it expires sooner, your parole will terminate 7 days from the date of this notice,” the email said. Then it warned its recipients: “Do not attempt to remain in the United States–the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”This would unquestionably be a terrifying communication to receive. When CBS News, which first reported the story, asked DHS about the notice, the government replied: “A message was sent in error to some Ukrainians under the U4U program. The U4U parole program has not been terminated.” Sorry!Or how about the time when Nicole Micheroni, a US-born American citizen and immigration lawyer received an email from the Trump administration telling her to self-deport. “It is time for you to leave the United States,” the email read. “If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States.” Oops! They did it again.Or what about using the messaging app Signal to plan a bombing campaign, and then adding a journalist to this top-secret chat? Who hasn’t made this mistake before! And then done it again!How about the widely accepted fact that the calculation the administration has used to determine their outrageous and misguided tariff policy is just plain wrong. The American Enterprise Institute, a center-right thinktank, looked into Trump math and found that it inflates the tariffs that Trump assumes countries are levying on the US by four times. Then again, who cares!Remember when they told us that the US government was sending $50m of condoms to Gaza? The aid was actually sent to a province in Mozambique named Gaza and was earmarked for HIV and tuberculosis prevention. No condoms were part of the aid. Asked about the error, Elon Musk said: “Some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected,” but then he repeated part of the lie by saying: “I’m not sure we should be sending $50m worth of condoms to anywhere, frankly.”There are plenty more mistakes (tariffs on penguins, anyone?), but you get the point. Trump constantly complains about the existence of some shadowy “deep state”, when in reality he and his entire administration ought to be in a deep state of shame, considering the constant stream of errors and blunders that constitute their rule. No wonder Trump’s job approval rating at the 100-day mark is at a piddly 42%, the second lowest of any president in the last 80 years, according to a new NPR/PBS/Marist News poll. (The lowest? Trump in his first term, by a single point.)People on the right often view Trump as some sort of political genius. Michael Moore, on the other hand, once labeled Trump an “evil genius”. But all I see is a man and an administration who use mistakes to cover up evil practices and use evil practices to excuse mistakes. That’s not genius. It’s dangerous. And if we don’t understand “rule by error” and how to dismantle it, we will all be doomed to live out its mistakes.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York More

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      Private firms are trying to fill research gaps, but their ‘puny’ budgets are no match for federal funds

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      The federal government has slashed research since Donald Trump took office – hacking away at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its grants, staff and long-held partnerships with academia.Now, some private companies said they want to pick up strands of research that might have otherwise been funded by the federal government. The effort has stoked little optimism among experts, who caution that private efforts cannot remotely replicate the breadth, depth or public service provided by federal funding.“We can’t wait four years to do any women’s health research,” said Priyanka Jain, co-founder and the CEO of the startup Evvy. The company sells at-home vaginal microbiome tests – a product the company argues can help women better understand common conditions such as bacterial vaginosis.Jain said Evvy is funding a small trial to identify biomarkers, or physical indicators, of how the vaginal microbiome can impact in vitro fertilization (IVF) success rates.“There are companies like Evvy raising venture dollars and doing the work the government is not doing,” said Jain. “Women step up and actually solve this problem.”In contrast, health policy insiders such as Sean Tipton, the chief policy officer at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said the many small projects that hope to keep research alive cannot remotely match the retreat of federal government research.“It is absolutely not realistic to think that the resources of the federal government can be replaced through some combination of philanthropic and for-profit entities trying to fill the gap,” said Tipton.The NIH is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research. When Trump took office, the agency had a $48bn budget and funded projects into nearly every area of medicine imaginable – including administration bugbears such as fluoride and vaccine safety.In the first few months of the administration, the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and billionaire Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” have fired 1,300 NIH employees, canceled $2bn in grants, and slowed new grant approval by nearly one-third, pumping $2.3bn less into research.View image in fullscreenA leaked budget proposal would further shrink the NIH by 40% – or tens of billions less that will not go into research. HHS has also canceled more than $11bn in state grants and frozen billions in grants slated for research at Ivy league colleges such as Harvard University. In the latest move, the National Science Foundation, which finances basic research in areas such as astronomy and quantum computing, canceled $2bn more in funding.“In the research space, my organization is proud because we’re now spending in excess of $3m a year on research grants – that is literally a rounding error compared to what the federal government spends,” Tipton said. “We’re very proud of that, and worked very hard to get it up to that level, and that level is puny and inadequate.”The federal government’s backing of scientific research has been fundamental to modern drug discovery. NIH research contributed to 354 of 356 of the drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 2010-2019, a JAMA Health Forum study found.That money has gone to advance blockbuster drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic – first identified by an NIH-funded researcher and isolated from gila monster saliva by Veterans Affairs researchers – and to the hundreds lesser known FDA-approved treatments.“Tell taxpayers we’re studying gila monsters in a lab – they’ll laugh you out of town, but the first GLP-1 was exenatide, which is a gila monster protein,” said Dr Fred Ledley, the author of the JAMA Health Forum study. Ledley’s favorite example of basic research comes from worms – publicly funded studies of their intestinal development led to the discovery of a trigger of cell death, which now underpins nearly one-third of the new cancer drugs on the market.His research found that for every “first in class” innovative drug brought to market, the NIH funded roughly $1.4bn in research. If government investment was calculated as industry calculates its investment – to include failure and the cost of capital – it is closer to $2.8bn in public funding, or about the equivalent of what industry spends to bring an innovative drug to market.Without NIH’s basic research, there is little hope that the private market will pick up the tab, said Ledley.“It’s too expensive for them,” Ledley said. “What you’ll see industry do is develop more ‘me too’ drugs,’” and “incremental tweaking … This is not what the public wants”.“The public wants something to treat Alzheimer’s with, they want something to prevent diabetes in the first place, and they desperately need better treatments for cancer and heart disease – still the number one killer,” said Ledley.Another indicator of the low likelihood of the industry picking up basic research is in job listings. Since 1 January, listings for research and development positions have fallen 25% based on a “before times” baseline of January 2020 baseline, according to data from job hiring site Indeed. Instead, the private health sector is dominated by demand for services – such as nurses and surgeons.“The government can step in and correct that kind of market failure when something is going to be positive for the society but not necessarily profitable in the market,” said economist Allison Shrivastava, an economist with Indeed. “A lot of this research falls into that category.”Put another way by the Democratic US senator Patty Murray at a recent press conference: “Our public health folks who go out and track measles or track whooping cough or track a new pandemic aren’t going to work for a private company … There isn’t a profit-making course in this.”“In last year’s world we were hoping to get funding” from the federal government for her company’s study, said Jain. She noted that women’s health research has been especially hard-hit by cuts, a victim of “diversity, equity and inclusion” cancellations.“I personally don’t think we should have to raise venture capital money to do this study – that is not the typical use of venture capital money,” said Jain. “Our hope is we survive another four years and the tides turn.” More

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      ‘A ruthless agenda’: charting 100 days of Trump’s onslaught on the environment

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      Donald Trump has never been mistaken for an environmentalist, having long called the climate crisis a “giant hoax” and repeatedly lauding the supposed virtues of fossil fuels.But the US president’s onslaught upon the natural world in this administration’s first 100 days has surprised even those who closely charted his first term, in which he rolled back environmental rules and tore the US from the Paris climate agreement.This time, the mantra “drill, baby, drill” has been used to justify a hyperactive series of actions to reverse rules designed to protect clean air and water, open up vast tracts of land, ocean and even the seabed to mining, fire federal scientists en masse and downgrade the federal response to the disasters that stem from a warming world.Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is attempting to roll back toxic regulations that were calculated to save an estimated 200,000 Americans’ lives in the years ahead, his Department of the Interior is looking to shrink national monuments and his scientific agencies are degrading the basic data collection required for climate assessments and even weather forecasts.This burst of activity faces a barrage of legal action, with the courts already taking a dim view of the administration’s attempts to skirt usual practice in its haste to deregulate. Even with a rightwing-dominated supreme court, many of these executive orders are expected to founder.However, the US must accelerate efforts to cut emissions if climate goals are to be met, half of Americans still have to endure unsafe air and endangered species and public lands face pressure from a changing climate. The next few years will see little remedy to these growing problems from the White House.“The pace of announcements may slow at some point but the pressure on our regulatory system and our democracy will not only continue, but ramp up,” said Michael Burger, a climate law expert at Columbia University.“The result will be fewer environmental protections and more people suffering the public health consequences of more pollution. It’s that straightforward.” Oliver MilmanHistoric rollbacks of environmental regulations What has the administration done:

      Taken more than 140 actions to roll back environmental rules and push for greater use of fossil fuels.

      Set about rewriting regulations that limit pollution from cars, trucks and power plants.

      Officially reconsidering whether greenhouse gases actually cause harm to public health.

      Legally targeted states that have their own laws on tackling the climate crisis.

      Speeded up environmental reviews of drilling projects, from years to just a few weeks.

      Winding back water efficiency standards for showers and toilets and halting a phase-out of plastic straws
      View image in fullscreenAnalysis and reaction: When campaigning for president, Donald Trump promised to torch environmental regulations if fossil fuel companies were able to donate enough money to propel him to the White House. He has set about fulfilling this pledge in dizzying fashion.By the Guardian’s count, Trump’s administration has taken more than 140 actions to weaken or rescind environmental rules and to escalate the use of fossil fuels in his first 100 days – more than all of the rollbacks of his entire first term.The drumbeat of this effort, largely via a blizzard of executive orders and agency memos, to eviscerate rules designed to protect Americans’ air, water and a livable climate, has been relentless. “What we’ve seen in this first 100 days is unprecedented – the deregulatory ambition of this administration is mind-blowing,” said Burger of Columbia University.In a single day in March, Trump’s EPA launched 31 different actions to refashion pollution laws for cars, trucks and power plants and even re-evaluate whether greenhouse gases harm public health – a key finding that underpins US climate laws. It was a “dagger to the heart of the climate religion”, according to Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator.Zeldin has repeatedly touted the EPA’s record during the first 100 days, with the agency publishing a list of 100 environmental actions, including the cleanup of toxic waste and the testing of chemicals.But the administration has also sought to ease restrictions upon coal plants dumping their toxic ash and mercury and to scale back a plan to prevent states from wafting their pollution to their neighbors. Consideration of the climate crisis has been removed from federal spending decisions and disaster recovery, pipeline safety standards are to be relaxed and environmental permit approvals speeded up from years to just weeks.Places of refuge for nature and carbon storage, such as oceans and national forests, will be opened up for the extraction of fish and timber while endangered species laws are set to be upended and, if the administration gets its way, essentially neutered.Not content with the reorientation of the federal government’s response to the climate crisis, Trump has ordered his Department of Justice to target states that have their own climate laws. He has also ordered the expiration of environment and energy regulations across 25 different laws, usually a responsibility of Congress.Trump has even used the power of his office to attend to his own fixations around shower water pressure, which he considers too weak, and paper straws, which he dislikes compared with the plastic alternative. “There doesn’t seem to be any strategy to this but I feel like I have policy whiplash,” said Gina McCarthy, who was Joe Biden’s top climate adviser.“We see an administration that doesn’t care about these things and is all about the whims of President Trump. Executive orders are not laws, though, and we spend a great deal of time focusing on them when most of them are highly illegal and won’t go anywhere.” Oliver MilmanTrump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ agendaWhat the administration has done:

      Trump signed executive orders to ease restrictions on fossil fuel extraction and exports, pledging to “unleash American energy”.

      He tapped fossil fuel-supporting appointees to head up crucial federal agencies, including Chris Wright, a former fracking CEO, for energy secretary; Doug Burgum, former Republican governor of North Dakota – the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the country – to lead the interior department (DOI); and Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressperson to head the EPA.

      Trump offered the fossil fuel industry – which lavished record levels of donations on him and Congress – an exemption from the tariffs he presented in April (and which he placed on pause shortly thereafter).
      Analysis and reaction: Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led environmental justice group Sunrise Movement said: “Donald Trump’s actions on climate are part of a ruthless agenda to prop up big oil and reward the billionaires bankrolling his campaigns. Big oil’s bribe paid off.”Trump’s loyalty to the fossil fuel industry has not, however, shielded fossil fuel companies from the fallout of his erratic policymaking. The domestic oil industry is currently facing the some of the lowest prices for crude it has seen in years. The Dow Jones’s US Oil and Gas Index, which tracks 42 fossil fuel companies, plummeted by more than 15% since Trump announced the tariffs on 2 April, sinking to its lowest level since 2022, before a slow, partial rebound.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Trump’s tariffs have already begun driving up the costs of oil production, with new taxes on steel and aluminum inflating the costs of building fossil fuel infrastructure. And his calls to “drill, baby, drill” have raised concerns about oil demand, since an increase in supply could push down prices, thereby limiting profit.Though the oil industry has publicly praised Trump, they have quietly showed they are anxious about the economic implications of his policies. In a recent anonymized survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, for instance, fossil fuel executives brazenly criticized Trump. “The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets,” one oil boss said. “‘Drill, baby, drill’ is nothing short of a myth and populist rallying cry. Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”At a major Texas oil and gas conference in May, fossil fuel top brass echoed these criticisms.Though the Trump administration has not ended the chaos created by its policies, it has given big oil other gifts. In recent weeks, for instance, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws forcing polluting companies to pay for climate damages, and also targeting dozens of lawsuits that accuse big oil of intentionally covering up the climate risks of their products. Dharna NoorHollowing out agencies including Noaa, Fema and DOIWhat has the administration done

      Sweeping cuts to federal agencies on the forefront of the climate crisis, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the DOI and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and widespread firings of climate scientists and regulation experts.

      Withdrawal from contracts and canceled grant funding; datasets pulled from public-facing websites; funding for regional climate centers suspended.

      National Climate Assessment contract canceled; hundreds of experts dismissed.

      Executive order to expedite deep-sea mining for minerals.

      Plans to dismantle a key Fema disaster preparedness program.

      Weather balloon launches stopped due to staff shortages.

      Censorship of climate-related words, flagged in studies, contracts and agency documents/websites.

      Plans to drain funding for climate, weather and ocean laboratories.
      Analysis and reaction: Trump wasted no time before he unleashed an all-out assault on environmental science, gutting the federal agencies positioned on the frontlines of the climate crisis, firing hundreds of researchers, staffers and forecasters and pulling public access to critical resources and data.Vital work to understand, prepare and respond to changes caused by global heating has slowed or stopped as teams try to navigate the chaos, while the threat of more severe budget cuts and political crackdowns lingers. The moves largely bypassed input or oversight from Congress as Trump used executive orders and actions undertaken by the billionaire Elon Musk-led “department of government efficiency”, even on budget issues typically governed by the legislative branch.View image in fullscreenThousands of federal workers were culled from the ranks across the country’s premier scientific agencies – including at Noaa and Nasa – and in roles across the government that typically facilitate regulatory process or research. Many of those fired were probationary employees, a classification applied to the first year, or sometimes two, in a position.The widespread firings were challenged in court, forcing the administration to rehire workers and put them on administrative leave, only to fire them again when legally in the clear. In the end, at least 121,000 federal workers were fired, leaving significant holes in their wake.Thousands more workers have opted to take offers of early retirement or voluntary separations. At Noaa alone, roughly 27,000 years of collective experience was lost, according to Craig McLean, the former director of Noaa research.“We lost our promising new talent in the probationary firings and now we’ve lost our institutional knowledge,” a Noaa employee said of the resignations, asking for anonymity out of fear of retribution.While the losses are expected to have a profound effect on the American public, the impact will be felt globally too.Among the hundreds of positions lost were workers who track El Niño-La Niña weather patterns around the world, people who model severe storm risks, and scientists contributing to global understanding of what could happen as the world warms.“I want to emphasize that this blunt smashing of federal agencies is limiting the ability of our nation to respond not only now, but in the future,” said Dr Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s dismantling the very infrastructure by which we collect data, foster expertise and collaboration, and have the people and processes in place to take action.”Already, the staff shortages have hampered data collection and field offices have had to stop deploying tools that gather essential intel.“The effects may not be obvious until there is a major tornado outbreak, or a hurricane landfall downwind, that doesn’t go so well,” said climate scientist Daniel Swain, who spoke about the gravity of this issue during a recent broadcast on YouTube. But, he said, the actions taken in the first 100 days were just the beginning.“What we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, noting recently leaked budget documents that outline the president’s plans to continue gutting climate science-focused federal work. If the administration has its way, he said, “it would probably spell the end of most publicly funded climate research in the United States”. Gabrielle CanonPublic lands targetedWhat has the administration done

      Rescinded protections for hundreds of millions of acres of federal waters.

      Initiated major changes to National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa) regulations that require federal projects consider environmental impacts and enable public oversight/comment, severely reducing the often years-long environmental impact process to 28 days.

      Ordered the end of American Climate Corps jobs that create climate and public lands-supporting positions.

      Plans to fast-track controversial deep-sea mining and accelerating approvals for mining, drilling, and fossil fuels extraction on public lands..

      Proposed rolling back protections in the Endangered Species Act.

      Plans to rescind Bureau of Land Management rules that protect millions of acres in Alaska and across the US west; planned repeal of BLM Public Lands Rule.

      Emergency situation determination issued by the USDA to open logging on more than 100m acres of national forests and an executive orders to increase and accelerate logging on federal lands. And revoked a Biden order that protected old-growth forests.

      Joint taskforce between DOI and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to examine federal lands for housing development as the administration pushes for the sell-off of public lands.
      Analysis and reaction: Trump may be one of the very few Americans who doesn’t cherish the country’s public lands. Voter support for these roughly 640m acres – forests and deserts, parks and monuments among them – is stalwart and one of the few issues bridged by an otherwise vast political divide.But even with broad popularity and a rapidly escalating interest in outdoor recreation that’s fueled both local economies and international tourism, the administration has made it a priority to shrink land management agencies, reduce protections once governed by them and possibly even diminish the holdings of lands under federal jurisdiction.View image in fullscreenThousands of employees were fired or took deals to leave, and agencies are struggling to hire seasonal employees who typically run operations during the busiest seasons. Still, more cuts are being planned as Trump seeks to reshape the federal government. Reports found the Department of Interior has plans to cull roughly 25% of its workforce, and employees at the US Forest Service are bracing for a broad reduction in force that has yet to be detailed. The National Park Service alone has suffered a 13% reduction in staff already.Sweeping firings left behind gaping holes in an already short-staffed workforce at parks and forests, leaving some departments with workforce levels typically seen during government shutdowns according to some experts.Toilets, trash and overgrown trails may become a common feature in highly trafficked areas, along with increasing risks of trampled conservation areas, a lack of capacity for the study of threatened plants and animals, and lost support that ensures safety measures are followed. Visitation has surged in recent years, adding new strains on ageing infrastructure and more opportunities for injuries and wildlife conflicts, as dangers from extreme conditions fueled by the climate crisis continue to mount.“Scientists who should be doing their job tracking the wildlife and the ecosystems in these parks, are being told they have to take restroom cleaning shifts,” said Aaron Weiss, the deputy director for the Center for Western Priorities. “That’s incredibly important in parks,” he added, “but we shouldn’t be assigning those jobs to scientists because Doge has fired all the custodial staff.”It’s not just about recreation, though. The administration has also made moves to open the country’s holdings of conservation areas, protected habitats and wilderness to extraction and development. There have been a series of orders from the administration that call for increased logging, fossil fuels leases, and mining as Trump pushes for expanding industry access.Ben Vizzachero, a federal worker who initially lost his job during the federal firing spree but who was later brought into his position said the outlook still remained bleak for US public lands. “The Trump administration is waging a campaign of bullying and harassment, trying to shrink the federal workforce by any means,” he said, noting that removing regulators and regulations will “open lands for mining, logging, drilling, and other destruction”.These sweeping changes and the threats to public lands come as they continue to be widely supported and cherished by the American people. “The fight to protect our public lands is embedded within the fight for our democracy itself.” Gabrielle CanonCancelling environmental justice schemes, and hitting US farmers What has the administration done

      Trump immediately rescinded a slew of executive orders that directed federal agencies to prioritize tackling environmental racism and other injustices – including one dating back more than 30 years.

      A separate executive order focused on ending government-sponsored diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and so-called “illegal DEI” efforts in the private sector also targeted environmental justice by wrongly conflating the two. This called for the closures of all environmental justice offices and positions in the federal government – including the office of environmental justice and external civil rights which was created to support EPA efforts to help improve access to clean water, air and land in communities disproportionately affected by environmental pollution, as well as enforce federal civil rights laws.

      Mass layoffs in the EPA, USDA and health and human services department which will disproportionately hit access to adequate, clean and affordable food, water, air and energy for low-income and rural communities.

      Freezing the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – more than $20bn of competitive grants available to states, cities, tribes and other eligible groups to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, particularly in areas most affected by climate crisis and excluded from mainstream finance.

      Terminating climate and conservation grants to US farmers including the Biden-era five-year $3.2bn real-life study into the effectiveness of conservation practices such as cover cropping for commodity farms.
      View image in fullscreenAnalysis and reaction: From day one of Trump 2.0, the president has revealed his intention to willfully conflate environmental justice – efforts to acknowledge and correct decades of harm caused by placing polluting factories, landfills, fossil fuel infrastructure and highways in low-income and Indigenous people and communities of color – with what he and his allies believe to be woke, anti-white DEI policies that proliferated in response to the BLM movement.Citing Trump’s crusade against DEI, the justice department terminated a two-year investigation into a petrochemical plant in LePlace, Louisiana, accused of emitting extraordinarily high levels of the cancer-causing chemical chloroprene into the majority Black community. Then, in an unprecedented move, his justice department terminated a 2023 landmark settlement with the state of Alabama requiring health authorities to provide the majority-Black Lowndes county with basic sewage and sanitation services – which an earlier investigation found had been denied for decades due to environmental racism. Several other consent decrees involving egregious polluters are feared to be under threat.Not to be outdone, Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), dismantled the office and fired the entire staff at the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap). States were still waiting for about $380m to be disbursed this year, when the bipartisan program that helps low-income Americans struggling to pay energy bills so they don’t die from the extreme heat or cold was disbanded. In a leaked HHS budget for 2026 seen by the Guardian, Liheap was terminated – which unless revived will increase heat and cold deaths in the richest country in the world.The $20bn Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, and the portal, has been frozen on and off since February, causing chaos and uncertainty for recipients as this makes its way through the courts. The money was appropriated by Congress through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and finalized before the election, and it is widely agreed (outside Trump world) that the fund cannot legally be cancelled without legislation. The fear is that the Republican-majority Congress will succeed in pushing this through in the continuing resolution for the 2025 budget, which should be passed in May.“The administration is trying to make it so difficult that people will give up, but our quest for environmental justice [has been waged] for 40 years and we will not stop now,” said one veteran environmental justice leader who asked not to be named in fear that his organization, a recipient of the fund, would be targeted. “The climate crisis is real; environmental racism is real. Those are the facts.” Nina LakhaniTearing up US global climate pledgesWhat has the administration done

      Pulled out of the 2015 Paris accords, which the Biden administration rejoined in 2021 – four years after Trump first withdrew the US from the global climate mitigation pact.

      Withdrew the US from the loss and damage fund – a global agreement under which the developed countries most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.

      The EPA missed the annual 15 April deadline to submit data on US greenhouse gas emissions to the United Nations – the first time in 30 years.
      Analysis and reaction: The US is currently the second biggest greenhouse gas emitter, so withdrawing from the Paris agreement and its legally binding commitment to reduce emissions will further weaken global efforts to slow global heating – with catastrophic consequences for communities vulnerable to climate shocks in the US and globally. It takes a year for the withdrawal to go into effect, but missing the 15 April emissions reporting deadline, which never happened even during Trump’s first term, has raised suspicion that this administration is willing to violate international rules and could be preparing to exit from the entire UNFCCC.View image in fullscreenAnother major concern is climate finance. As the world’s biggest economy (and worst historical polluter), the US has been a major, albeit inadequate, contributor to global climate funds to help developing countries that are not responsible for global heating in their climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. It has already pulled out of the loss and damage fund, adopted at the Cop28 UN summit in 2023 after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy – and despite US efforts to block it. The US has long obstructed progress on global climate action and had pledged a measly $17.5m (£13.5m) to the fund; the cynical move to withdraw from loss and damage efforts – while bolstering fossil fuel production – was widely condemned by the global south.Harjeet Singh, a climate activist and founding director of the India-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said: “As the largest historical emitter, the United States bears a significant share of the blame for the climate adversities affecting vulnerable populations worldwide. The decision by the Trump administration exemplifies a longstanding pattern of obstruction by the US government in securing necessary finance for addressing climate impacts, [and] undermines global efforts to deliver climate justice.” Nina Lakhani More