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    Bernie Sanders: law firms that cut deals with Trump administration ‘sell out their soul’

    Law firms that cut deals with Donald Trump’s administration after the president issued executive orders targeting attorneys who challenge his priorities are demonstrating “absolute cowardice”, the independent US senator Bernie Sanders has said.“They’re zillion-dollar law firms, and money, money, money” is all that motivates them, the popular Vermont lawmaker who caucuses with Democrats said in a feature interview on the latest CBS News Sunday Morning. “So they’re going to sell out their souls to be able to make money here in Washington.”Sanders’ remarks provided a notable condemnation of law firms who had represented political rivals of Trump then chose the path of least resistance after he aimed orders that threatened to cripple them. The orders sought to revoke security clearances, ban attorneys from accessing federal buildings, and – if they do business with the government – to force the targeted firm’s clients to disclose existing relationships with them.Some of the US’s most prominent legal practices subsequently capitulated. Willkie, Farr and Gallagher; Milbank LLP; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom all reached deals with the White House meant to avoid Trump’s orders.In exchange, the firms would perform pro bono work for causes that are dear to them and Trump while also declining to engage in race-based hiring.Some firms, on the other hand, have sought to stand up to Trump. Perkins Coie got a court injunction blocking much of an executive order from Trump that targeted the firm. Hundreds of law firms and former judges have signed on to court briefs supporting Perkins Coie in its opposition to Trump.Meanwhile, after suing over Trump orders directed at them, Jenner & Block as well as WilmerHale were able to secure court mandates impeding most of his measures against them.Alums of the law firms which have yielded to Trump have voiced some of the strongest criticism for choosing that course of action.On Sunday, CBS asked Sanders what the cost was to the US when some of its most well-heeled institutions folded in that manner amid a standoff with Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It is indescribable,” Sanders said.Sanders on Sunday also contended that many of Trump’s maneuvers nearly three months into his second presidency had rendered the US into a “pseudo-democracy”. He singled out how Trump tasked Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, with slashing the size as well as funding of various federal government agencies and services.The multibillionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X landed the role after spending more than $270m supporting Trump’s successful run for the White House in November.“Look, you get one vote, and Elon Musk can spend $270m to help elect Trump,” Sanders told CBS. “Does that sound like a democracy to you?” More

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    Being a librarian was already hard. Then came the Trump administration

    For many librarians, the stakes of the job are high – they’re facing burnout, book bans, legislation pushed by rightwing groups, and providing essential resources in an effort to fill gaps in the US’s social safety net.Now, as Donald Trump’s administration rolls out their agenda, many librarians are describing his policies as “catastrophic” to accessing information and the libraries themselves – institutions considered fundamental to democracy.Rebecca Hass, the programming and outreach manager at the Anne Arundel county public library in Maryland, has seen the effects of Trump’s second term ripple in.“The impact [is] on many different community partners and customers that are represented in some of the executive orders,” said Hass. “We get everyone at the library. When people lose their jobs, they come to the library. When they’re not sure what’s going on, they come to the library.”Hass said the library received some pushback about LGBTQ+ programming, including protesters showing up to its trans Pride event. But the library is undeterred in efforts to meet community needs and supply resources, creating new resource pages on immigration and LGBTQ+ communities, and updating others. They have expanded partnerships, including with social workers in the library. Usage of the community pantry has increased.Much of this is work the library has always done, Hass said, adding: “But now it’s taken on urgency and additional responsibilities.”Emily Drabinski, an associate professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the City University of New York, said that what is happening to librarians now mirrors what is happening to other workers.“You don’t get paid enough to meet your basic needs. Your autonomy at work is consistently under threat. People who think that they know better how to do your job are trying to get the power to push you out of your position,” she said.Some librarians described the impact of institutions capitulating to censorship on their work. A librarian in the deep south, who asked to remain anonymous in order to protect their safety, described tensions rising on their library board, and how the library is taking pre-emptive measures to make it challenging to find titles considered “controversial”.“I see all that being as a measure of: ‘If we fly under the radar, we’ll be safe,’” they said. “But it’s sad because who gets left behind – for staff members of color, [or] who are visibly queer, who are disabled, we don’t get to turn off that part of ourselves.”Meanwhile, Imani, an academic librarian in Texas who declined to give their full name for privacy concerns, is an active public library user, said “DEI removal” happened in her workplace in 2023. Now, they’re seeing increased scrutiny on how funds are spent, especially in regard to large databases.“It’s really important that people know that this isn’t new at all,” she said, adding that she knew a school librarian who retired several years ago due to fears of criminalization. “At this point, many librarians have done every single thing they can to save things.”Also, Imani noted, librarians are doing their work with “very little money, very little support [and] higher, higher demand”.Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” recently gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which the American Library Association noted greatly affects the important services they offer, including high-speed internet access, summer reading programs, veterans’ telehealth spaces and more, with the most intense losses in rural communities.While the majority of public library funding comes from city and county taxes, according to EveryLibrary, the IMLS provides grants that support these critical services in every state.Marisa Kabas, the independent journalist who writes the The Handbasket, obtained a copy of a letter sent by IMLS’s acting director, Keith Sonderling, announcing that state library grantee funding would be terminated immediately. (Sonderling previously declared his intention to “restore focus on patriotism” to the IMLS, which many groups noted as an attack on freedom of expression.)The IMLS submitted a budget request of $280m for 2025.“That’s nothing in terms of the federal budget, yet it’s going to affect every single library in the country,” said Jessamyn West, who works in a rural, public library in Vermont in addition to working with the Flickr Foundation. “It’s going to make them scramble, it’s going to make them worry, and it’s going to make them have to make really difficult choices for the services that they give to their patrons.”In many cases, the money is already spent because of contracts libraries had with governments, West added.“We’re all pretty furious,” West said.Librarians are speaking out about what communities could lose, including internet access and workforce development in Kentucky, the Talking Book and Braille Center in New Jersey, digital hotspots in North Carolina, and much more outlined in reporting from Book Riot. As librarians grappled with losses that would directly affect their work, the IMLS Instagram account issued posts appearing to mock grantees.“It’s catastrophic,” Drabinski said, adding that IMLS funds significant library infrastructure, including ebook platforms and interlibrary loan systems. “Without those funds, many of those systems will grind to a halt. All of our work is about to become harder at the same time that the need for our resources and services will explode.”Drabinski continued: “What we want is for people to be able to read, and for people to have enough. The problems that we face as American workers are similar to yours, and we share a fight.” More

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    Under Trump and Musk, billionaires wield unprecedented influence over US national security

    Just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, launched its New Glenn rocket, named for John Glenn, the Mercury astronaut who was the first American to orbit the Earth. Around 2am on 16 January, the 30-story rocket powered by seven engines blasted off into the Florida night from Cape Canaveral’s historic launch complex 36, which first served as a Nasa launch site in 1962.The flight’s end was marred by a failure to bring the booster rocket back for further use, but the successful launch and orbit still marked a watershed moment for Blue Origin in its bid to compete with SpaceX, the company owned by Elon Musk, for dominance over American spy satellite operations. During the Trump administration, it is likely that both companies will play significant roles in placing spy satellites into Earth orbit, which could mean that the United States intelligence community will be beholden to both Bezos and Musk to handle the single most complex and expensive endeavor in modern espionage.In fact, Musk and Bezos are in a position during the Trump administration to personally exert significant influence over the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the rest of the US national security apparatus. The two pro-Trump billionaires have already been awarded massive contracts with the US intelligence community, including some that predate Trump’s first term in office.The emergence of Musk, Bezos and a handful of other pro-Trump billionaires as key players in US intelligence marks a radical change in US spy operations, which have traditionally been controlled by career government officials working closely with a few longstanding defense and intelligence contractors, giant corporations such as Lockheed Martin, RTX and Northrop Grumman that are adept at lobbying both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. But with Musk, Bezos and other pro-Trump Silicon Valley figures gaining an edge through their personal ties to Trump, civil servants in the intelligence community may be reluctant to deny them ever-larger contracts, especially since Trump has already fired several inspectors general who investigated Musk’s businesses in other areas of the government.Anticipating big rewards, Musk is reportedly joining forces with other pro-Trump billionaires to try to carve up the defense and intelligence business. SpaceX is working with Palantir, a hi-tech data analytics intelligence contractor co-founded by Peter Thiel, one of the most prominent rightwing figures in Silicon Valley; Anduril, a new defense contractor founded by 32-year-old pro-Trump tech bro Palmer Luckey; and several other Silicon Valley firms to form a consortium geared towards loosening the grip of the defense industry’s traditional players.Tech leaders eager to get into intelligence contracting have long complained that the business has become so consolidated around a few big players that it is nearly impossible for outsiders to compete, leading to a lack of innovation. “Consolidation bred conformity,” argued Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir, in a widely read public memo, The Defense Reformation.Swapping one oligarchy for anotherIt is hard to separate Silicon Valley’s calls for breaking up the oligarchy now controlling the defense and intelligence business from the eagerness of pro-Trump tech bros to grab as much power and cash as possible while creating a new oligarchy of their own.“The idea of overturning the contracting process did intrigue me, but now, under Trump, I think it is just about greed,” observed Greg Treverton, a former director of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community’s top analytical arm. “Now, with Trump, it is mostly about money and connections.”In the eyes of their critics, tech entrepreneurs offer a simplistic, black-and-white picture of the defense and intelligence business in which Silicon Valley conveniently has all the answers.“Beware the instant expert,” said Peter Singer, a defense analyst at the New America Foundation. “It’s like they are saying ‘I watched a YouTube video and now I know everything.’ They have this narrative that only Silicon Valley can drive innovation.”Elon Musk, satellite spymasterAs he eagerly slashes and burns through the ranks of federal employees with his Doge apparatus, Musk has emerged as the most powerful and polarizing figure in the Trump administration. But what is less well known is that Musk has also gained an influential role in the US intelligence community despite never having served inside the spy world.Musk’s SpaceX has already become one of the main rocket contractors launching American spy satellites and is seeking to overcome the edge held by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the traditional giant in the niche. In addition, Starlink, Musk’s commercial satellite communication network, is playing a critical role in US foreign policy, providing internet service in remote regions of the world including in Ukraine, where it operates a communications network for the Ukrainian army. Starlink’s role in the Ukraine war has placed Musk squarely in the middle of the dispute between Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Meanwhile, questions about whether Musk is assuming a dual role as both a player in Trump’s national security policymaking and a major contractor grew after he received a private briefing at the Pentagon on 21 March and visited the CIA headquarters 10 days later.SpaceX has a head start over Blue Origin in the spy satellite business, and Musk has a big lead over Bezos in Trump world. But Blue Origin and Bezos are working hard to catch up in both.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBezos seeks to add to classified cloud contractDuring his first term, Trump repeatedly attacked Bezos over negative stories that were published in the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, and as revenge threatened Amazon’s business dealings with the US Postal Service. Since the 2024 election, though, Bezos has turned himself into a Trump booster, lavishing praise and large donations on the president while also working to transform the Washington Post’s opinion page, which he says should focus on “personal liberties and free markets”.Bezos’s move into an alliance with Trump has put him in a position to expand his reach into the spy satellite business while also protecting the large stake he already holds in other aspects of intelligence. The billionaire, the second-richest person in the world after Musk, has been involved in the spy world for more than a decade through Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing subsidiary of Amazon, which Bezos founded and where he remains executive chair. Amazon Web Services has managed the CIA’s classified cloud since it won a $600m contract with the spy agency in 2013, and dramatically expanded its intelligence role when it was awarded a $10bn contract to manage the NSA’s classified cloud in 2022 through a program code-named “Wild and Stormy”.Palmer Luckey and Silicon Valley’s clique of young defense contractorsPlenty of other Silicon Valley billionaires are also seeking to crowd into Washington alongside Musk and Bezos. Palantir’s Thiel is a mentor of the vice-president, JD Vance, and his firm has a longstanding relationship with the intelligence community that is likely to expand under Trump. The CIA’s investment firm, In-Q-Tel, was one of the early backers of Palantir after its 2003 founding, and the company has had a major role in the development of data integration and data analytics systems for the intelligence community. Palantir is now seeking a broader role in developing AI for both the Pentagon and the intelligence community.Luckey, who made his name as a virtual reality entrepreneur by founding Oculus, has become a prominent new face at the intersection of Trump world and national security. Luckey’s Anduril now has a contract with the US army to develop battlefield virtual reality headsets, which would allow data to be sent directly to soldiers while also allowing them to control unmanned drones and other weapons. In addition, Anduril won a $642m contract with the Marine Corps to develop countermeasures against small drones in March. Luckey first supported Trump in 2016, when that was an unpopular position in Silicon Valley, but now that Trump is back, he has said that he’s on an “I told you so tour”, trumpeting his America-first political views.Luckey said in a recent interview: “I don’t think the United States needs to be the world police. It needs to be the world’s gun store.”Google once committed to not building artificial intelligence for weapons or surveillance in a watershed moment of divorcing tech from the defense and intelligence industry. Earlier this year, though, the company scrapped that pledge. The campaign by the tech bros to win bigger roles for themselves in defense and intelligence represents a return to Silicon Valley’s roots. Hi-tech originally grew in northern California because of its early connections to the military and defense industrial base in the region, observed Margaret O’Mara, a tech industry historian at the University of Washington.“Silicon Valley has always been in the business of war,” O’Mara said. More

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    Who will win bigly from Trump tariffs? | Brief letters

    After Donald Trump raised a range of tariffs, the US stock market tanked (Report, 4 April). If Trump rescinded these, within weeks the stock market would bounce back. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know in advance when that was going to happen? Somebody could make a great deal of money.John KinderRomsey, Hampshire In the past, we referred to the ABC of the cost of living crisis: Austerity, Brexit, Covid. Now, it seems, we have to add D for Donald and E for Elon. I don’t want to think about what F might stand for.Ruth EversleyPaulton, Somerset Re your article (‘She treats everyone with a deep growl’: can you train an angry cat to be more sociable?, 30 March), sometimes it just requires patience: in his 20th year my adopted feral cat Twix finally gave up being antisocial and climbed on to my lap for a cuddle, and there he remains at every opportunity, living his best life.Rosemary JacksonLondon Re your report (Birmingham declares major incident over bin strike as piles of waste grow, 31 March), we can now acknowledge that, like medical staff, binmen are essential frontline workers, without whom public health collapses? The solution to the impasse? Attlee got it right. Stuff their mouths with gold.Jenny MittonSutton Coldfield, West Midlands I hadn’t noticed seat heights on Mastermind (Letters, 1 April) but I comment every week to my wife about the amount of manspreading, to the extent that when we board a bus or train, we often say quietly to each other: “A few potential Mastermind contestants here.”Ray JenkinCardiff More

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    ‘Streamline’ or ‘lifeline’? Wyoming veterans divided over Trump’s VA cuts

    Birgitt Paul has worked as a nurse at the Veterans Affairs (VA) in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for over a decade – five years on the floor, five and a half coordinating at-home care for veterans in the region.Like many people working at the agency, she has her gripes with the system: it could be more efficient, more streamlined, easier to navigate for the veterans in need of its care, and better for the 400,000 employees that keep its wheels spinning.But Donald Trump’s order for all federal employees to return to the office, coupled with an expected 80,000 cuts at the agency amid sledgehammer-style layoffs at the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), makes Paul worry that this top-down style of reform will have dire consequences for US veterans.There are many people with strong ideas of how to make the VA more efficient and cut costs, she argued.“But that’s not what they’re doing right now.”Wyoming is a land of superlatives. It’s the US’s least populated state, with under 600,000 residents. It’s possibly the country’s most conservative, going to Trump by the widest margin for three elections in a row. And it has the highest share of veterans in the lower 48 states. More than 9% of the state’s adult civilian population were veterans in 2022, and it has two large VA centers: one in the north Wyoming town of Sheridan, and the other in Cheyenne, the state capital.The state’s strong support for the president does not mean a unanimous endorsement from its veterans for Trump’s proposed VA cuts. In more than a dozen interviews, veterans said they were eager for reforms at the VA and across the military, saying they wanted less bureaucracy, and wished that policy that affected veterans had more input from veterans themselves. Some veterans said they believed Doge’s cuts would bring drastic benefits at no loss to veterans. But many feared veterans would lose a lifeline in a state whose veteran suicide rate is double the national average. They feared VA services would be increasingly privatized, hamstringing care, and were worried about far-reaching economic impacts to the region.Bobby Gray, who served in the army for 11 years, seeks care at the Cheyenne VA, and fears the impact of layoffs on his healthcare. Sitting at a round wooden table in a Cheyenne bar, Gray sipped on a soda and minced no words about the importance of the VA in his life.“They’re my lifeline,” said Gray. “I wouldn’t be here without the VA. I’d have been gone a long time ago.”Dwight Null, who served for two years in the army, concurred the agency plays a singular role in the life of many US veterans, offering a level of cultural understanding not available in the private sector.“A high percentage [of VA employees] are veterans in one service or the other, or have family that were veterans, or have worked at the VA working with veterans long enough that they understand our culture,” said Null, who now helps veterans access resources and care. “If you’re sitting down with a therapist that doesn’t know what a combat veteran went through, there’s not much value in it.”View image in fullscreenTrevor Smith served in the air force for 18 years and gets his care through the VA as well. Sitting beside his wife in their north Cheyenne home, a cane resting against his leg, Smith talked about his second suicide attempt.“I got one of my guns out and charged around and put it to my head, and she fought me and called the police,” Smith said.Smith credits the VA’s care with keeping him alive. He worries about other traumatized veterans that have not had the same luck accessing care, and said that vets can be a “difficult” population to care for. If left to the private sector, Smith’s thoughts on behalf of vets and their caregivers are simple: “We’re fucked.”“I have been extremely fortunate. I have very good care, I have very good people. And even with that, you can still get to a point, even with the best care, where you have a gun to your head,” Smith said. “People that are barely holding their heads above water now. What’s gonna happen if they take some of that away?”Rosemarie Harding served 11 years in the army and 22 in the national guard and represents Laramie county on the Wyoming Veterans Commission, a government board whose mission is “to develop, enhance and promote programs, services, and benefits to Wyoming veterans”. Speaking in her own capacity, Harding wondered what alternatives would exist for veterans who would struggle to access care under layoffs.“If they don’t have the VA, where are they going to go? Medicaid, which the state of Wyoming did not expand and hasn’t expanded?” Harding said.When Doge looks for areas to cut, Paul, the nurse, worries that they will target at-home care, which she says is a vital VA service. She estimated that more than half of the female veterans she works with have sexual trauma, and the VA can accommodate this in a way the private sector cannot.“There are women who need help who won’t accept it from a [private] agency because they don’t know who’s coming into their house,” Paul said. “So I have a program where you can pick your caregivers that you trust.”‘There is a need for these cuts’Other veterans said that they were not worried about the cuts affecting their care. Arthur Braten served eight years in the navy and eight in the army. He works at the VA as an HVAC tech, and is a disabled veteran himself, receiving comprehensive benefits. He said he is not worried about job security or losing access to his care, and supports the cuts.“There is a need for these cuts. Biggest reason is, I believe that the VAs are top-heavy,” Braten said, leaning on the counter in an east Cheyenne bar. “I think all these cuts are going to streamline the VA and in the long run, it’s going to give us better-quality people and better care.”Braten used his workplace as an example, saying he saw overstaffing in high departments but vacancies in his own role. Braten voiced support for Doge and disdain for the “corruption they’ve found … Our tax money went to Afghanistan, it went to all these other countries for stupid, stupid things.”He said many people in his surroundings felt similarly: “I haven’t come across a person yet that has been against it.”A man in a yellow University of Wyoming sweatshirt took a break from ordering a drink to interrupt Braten’s interview.“I’m against it. Now you’ve come across me,” the man said.Dan, another disabled veteran (“I’m all beat up”), is firmly in Braten’s camp. Dan served for 24 years in the air force, and is not worried about his VA healthcare access in the face of layoffs , or about his current job at a separate federal agency. “I do believe that I’m going to get the care that I need,” he said.“America got itself in such a deficit that it takes extreme measures to fix the damage,” Dan said.Dan refers to himself as a “sacrificial lamb”. He was hired remotely, and the federally mandated return to office will split him from his family and push him to a Denver suburb 100 miles (160km) south. He will rent an apartment, receive an increase in pay, and believes his productivity will suffer – “there’s no efficiency in that regard.”But he stands behind the cuts. His views were shaped by what he considered large amounts of wasteful spending in the military, he said.View image in fullscreenLeadership would tell him: “If you do not spend this amount of money, you’re not going to get it next year,” Dan said, or “if you don’t spend our budget, if you don’t spend a million and a half dollars, and you only spend $500,000, then next year, we’re only gonna get $500,000. So you need to make up for the difference.”‘Everybody doesn’t know what to expect’Eric, a 24-year army veteran (“I’ve been blown up four times and shot twice”), and an employee at the Cheyenne VA, speaks bluntly and has no fondness for the federal bureaucracy or its spending habits. But the Doge cuts and impending VA layoffs, follow a structure he cannot get behind. He wants to see more input from veterans and less from inside the beltline, he said.“It never works top-down,” said Eric, who asked the Guardian to only use his first name due to his current VA employment. “I wish I could have 10 minutes alone with [VA] secretary [Doug] Collins. It might cost me my job, but I really don’t care. Let me put together a team out of the VA employees that are there and figure out what the hell is the problem at the VA and fix it.”Eric spoke acidly about seesawing emails from Doge creating an atmosphere of insecurity at the department, and said the cuts would have the opposite of the advertised effect, with the VA’s best doctors moving to the higher-paying private sector.“They love the veterans, but goddamn, they’ve got to look out for their families. They’ve got to look out for their mortgages. They’ve got to look out for what happens when all of this goes to hell and everybody’s looking for a job at the only other hospital in town,” Eric said. “And the ones that we want to leave, the ones that aren’t performing, the underperformers, they’re digging in like ticks.”Robert, another Cheyenne VA staffer and 20-year air force veteran, said the atmosphere after the initial “Fork in the road” email has been heavy.“Everybody doesn’t know what to expect. I feel like every day, you’re worried about checking your email because you don’t know what it’s gonna say,” said Robert, whom the Guardian is identifying by his first name.Robert’s wife is a federal employee who was hired remotely. While Robert has some confidence that he will survive the VA layoffs, his wife’s in-person office would be in Bethesda, Maryland, which Robert dryly labels “a bit of a commute”.“What we had thought was going to be the next 10 years has vastly changed,” Robert said.Harding, at the Wyoming Veterans Commission, worries about the economic impact on Cheyenne, a city of 65,000 that is deeply dependent on the military. Along with the VA, the city boasts FE Warren air force base, as well two national guard outposts.View image in fullscreen“Cutting all those positions is going to have an immediate economic impact on the city, I don’t think that those people can readily be absorbed by the local economy,” Harding said.Lee Filer, a Republican state representative, was born on FE Warren and served for eight years in the Wyoming air national guard. Filer has economic concerns about reducing the VA’s workforce and benefits, but practical ones as well – would military recruitment suffer further if young people enlisting were skeptical that the government would take care of them?“They sign a contract. They’re entitled to all these different benefits. And if we’re going to take care of them, if they get hurt or anything else, whatever happens, we’re here to take care of you as the American people in a society,” Filer said. “But all it takes is a strike of a pen and no Congress to push back and guess what? Now they can lose that.”Filer emphasized that he believes waste exists, and supports “streamlining” the federal government. But he wants to see a more methodical approach, and worries Congress doesn’t have the political willpower.“They don’t want to cross the president in any way, whether because of primary threats or fear of losing re-election,” Filer said. “But we need to get past that. If we look at our federal delegation, they all ran on supporting veterans.”When Paul, the VA nurse, hears politicians decry soaring VA costs, she thinks of widespread rallying behind the Pact Act, which passed in Congress with large bipartisan support, and was one of the largest increases to the VA budget in recent years.Paul said she has been vocal about her concerns over Doge and potential VA privatization, to the point that she’s been advised by higher-ups to not say so over government channels. She has “come to peace” with the prospect of retaliation for having “spoken truth”, she said, but she won’t accept being told, like probationary employees in earlier Doge layoffs, that she is being fired for poor performance. After the initial February firings, Paul and her colleagues printed out their performance evaluations, just in case.“The evaluation I have is outstanding,” Paul said. “So if you’re gonna try to fire me because I had poor performance, I will be suing you.” More

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    Saturday Night Live: Jack Black returns for a stellar episode

    Saturday Night Live opens with Donald Trump’s (James Austin Johnson’s) “liberation day” speech, where he rolled out his disastrous tariff plan, which he calls Magda: “Make America Great Depression again.” Trump notes that no country is safe from his tariffs, including what he mistakenly thinks is a place called McDonald’s Island (“Get me to God’s country,” he exclaims in the first of two digs at last week’s musical guest, Morgan Wallen, which gets a huge pop from the crowd), as well as South Africa.The mention of the latter nation brings out Elon Musk (Mike Myers), who glitches out before whining about how poorly Tesla is doing. To combat this, he introduces a new, fully self-vandalizing model, which comes complete with AI-powered graffiti. Choice includes penises, swastikas, and his favorite: “Swastikas made out of penises.” Before he can complain about how dumb the tariffs are, Trump pushes him out of the way and wraps things up.This is a thoroughly fine send-up of this week’s big news story. Johnson is on point as ever, Myers’s Musk remains solid and appropriately mean-spirited, and the jokes about the tariffs basically write themselves.Jack Black hosts for the fourth time, but the first time in 20 years. The pressure is too much, so he decides to quit on the spot, until he’s brought back around by the band rocking out. He performs a self-referential version of Steve Winwood’s Back in the Highlife Again, taking it into the crowd before introducing a marching band for the big finish. It is a characteristically electric performance, but one that some of Black’s fans might find hard to fully enjoy in the wake of his throwing longtime friend and Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Gass under the bus this past summer after an on-stage Trump joke led to rightwing backlash.Love Match is a game show where a single gal picks from three available bachelors, none of whom she can see. The contestants include a nerdy nice guy, a baby-faced playboy, and Black’s Gene, an emotionally intuitive man cosplaying as Indiana Jones. When Gene starts to win the girl over, the host intercedes to let her know he’s dressed like the iconic adventurer, which leads to an argument about whether he has ever heard of the character. This is in line with a certain modern-day SNL sketches based entirely around the minutia of a pop culture institution; see the Matt Damon Weezer sketch from a few years back or the Chris Rock Simpsons one from earlier this season. These are usually fun, but this one doesn’t push the premise or specificity far enough.Then, Black teams up with Cheetos mascot Chester Cheetah to pitch Flamin’ Hot Preparation H Brief and disposable, but the visual of Black bent over a chair, pants and underwear down around his ankles, applying the burning cream to his hind parts as his CGI pal watches in horror, is good for a laugh.A dinner between college friends turns into a game of liberal one-upmanship, as each of them brag about how they have given up social media and alcohol, only read physical books, shop at thrift stores, watch foreign films with no subtitles, teach Spanish to special needs kids, and swim exclusively at black-owned pools. A solid fart joke can’t save this one from the fourth wall breaking mugging.We travel back in times to Athens, circa 500 BC, to witness the first performance of the first ever play. The audience, not understanding what they’re watching, continually interrupt the performance, accusing the actors of lying and tricking them–at least until they’re promised nudity. This is better in concept than execution.Kenan Thompson and Ego Nwodim perform a Jamaican reggae song about miserable goth kids dragged to the sunny island on family vacations. Black jumps in as said goth kid all grown up, singing to the tune of My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade. That unexpected moment, along with Michael Longfellow’s very convincing goth brat, make this a winner.Elton John and Brandi Carlile are the night’s musical guests. They play the rollicking honky-tonk song Little Richard’s Bible. This is a breath of fresh air after last week’s miserable turn.Speaking of, Colin Jost kicks off Weekend Update by reporting: “Money is leaving the stock market faster than Morgan Wallen at good night.”A little later, he brings back previous Update guests Grant and Alyssa (Marcello Hernández and Jane Wickline), the couple you can’t believe are together, to talk about spring romance. The boorish bro and nerdy wallflower explain that their dynamic works because they have ground rules: he does the dishes (“Because I like playing in the water”), she cooks (“Because I’m not allowed to touch the stove”), and finally, per her: “Don’t wear those little shorts around unless you’re trying to drop them.” The characters are clearly heightened versions of the performers, which is a big reason why they land.Jost reports on Russell Brand being charged for rape, before wincingly rolling a clip of Brand as SNL host, introducing musical guest Chris Brown.Then, in response to the White House correspondents’ dinner’s announcement that they will no longer feature a comedian at their yearly celebration out of deference to Trump, Nwodim comes out to make the case for herself hosting. She promises not to talk politics and instead only do material about the actual diner. Taking up Def Jam-inspired persona she performs a tight 3, getting the audience to shout out ‘SHIT!’ at one point. A great turn from Nwodim, whose fake material is funnier than most jokes on SNL these days.Black and Sarah Sherman play a new couple who decide to take things to the next level by sleeping together. This leads to a sensual ballad (which they perform while floating above the bedroom set on wires). But, as described in their song, the lackluster sex (“First we do things to me for a while, then we do things to you not that long”) and dirty talk (“You’ve been so bad I’m gonna … kill you”), lead them to bring in a third (Bowen Yang) and even a fourth (Carlile). Kudos to Carlile for making her comedy debut via literal high-wire act.Next, Black fronts a jam band, inviting musicians in the crowd to jump on stage and get in on their cover of Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’. But everyone who joins in – a couple of long-haired hippies, a busty wet T-shirt contestant, a crackhead, even a dog – only plays the bass. Like the musicians in the sketch, this is one-note.John and Carlile perform their second set, then the show wraps up with a black-and-white sketch set on VJ Day. We see the events surrounding the famous photo taken of a returning sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square. The nurse’s actual boyfriend, a hot-dog scarfing doofus who spent the war stateside drawing racist (even for the time) propaganda cartoons, watches in shock and dismay as she makes out with half a dozen returning troops. There’s not much meat on this bone, but the cast is having fun with their old-timey accents. It beats most of the recent episode enders.Following a quick tribute to the late, great Val Kilmer, we get the curtain call, with everyone sticking around this time. This episode was a big improvement over last week’s, thanks to them knowing how to use the host, two excellent performances from real-deal star musicians, and a show-stealing turn from Nwodim. More

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    Tens of thousands rally against Trump at DC ‘Hands Off’ protest

    Demonstrators estimated to be in the tens of thousands gathered in Washington on Saturday in a display of mass dissent against Donald Trump’s policies that organizers hoped would snowball into a rolling cycle of protests that could eventually stymie the US president in next year’s congressional elections.Anger with Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, the SpaceX and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk, was expressed in a sea of placards and banners on the Washington mall, in the shadow of the Washington monument. Multiple messages denounced the two men for shuttering government agencies, cutting jobs and services and – in often graphic terms – for threatening the survival of US democracy.“Resist like it’s 1938 Nazi Germany” and “Fascism is alive and well and living in the White House”, read two slogans at the Hands Off gathering, organized by the civil society group Indivisible and featuring speeches from a host of other organizations as well as Democratic members of Congress.The rally, which coincided with roughly 1,000 other similarly themed events across the country, was punctuated by a fusillade of barbs aimed at Trump as well as Musk, whose infiltration into government agencies through the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, without congressional approval, and cash-fueled interventions in election races have been seen as anti-democratic affronts.View image in fullscreen“They believe democracy is doomed and they believe regime change is upon us if only they can seize our payments system,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative from Maryland who is the party’s top figure on the House judiciary committee.He added: “If they think they are going to overthrow the foundations of democracy, they don’t know who they are dealing with.”Saturday’s events followed weeks of anxiety among anti-Trump forces that the president had railroaded through his agenda in the absence of adequate resistance from congressional Democrats and minus the displays of popular mass opposition that appeared early in his first presidency.But they also came days after the Democrats drew encouragement from victory in a race for a vacant supreme court seat in Wisconsin into which Musk had unsuccessfully ploughed $25m of his own money to support the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate.It also followed the roll-out of Trump’s flagship policy of import tariffs, which triggered massive plunges in international stock markets and fueled fears of an economic downturn.Multiple speakers and attendees said they hoped the rallies would embolden other American disillusioned by Trump’s policies to join future rallies, giving a fledgling protest movement much-needed momentum.View image in fullscreen“We want to send a signal to all people and institutions that have been showing anticipatory obedience to Trump and showing they are willing to bend the knee that there is, in fact, a mass public movement that’s willing to rise up and stop this,” said Leah Greenberg, Indivisible’s executive director.“If our political leaders stand up, we will have their backs. We want them to stand up and protect the norms of democracy and want them to see that there are people out there who are willing to do that. The goal of this is building a message.”Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer-rights advocacy group, told the crowd: “There’s only one thing that can face down the authoritarian moment we are facing, and that’s the movement we see here today.”Asked by the Guardian whether the mass demonstrations were sufficient to stop Trump, he said: “It’s not a one-time thing. It’s got to be a sustaining phenomenon. There’s been a lot of criticism of the Democrats for not standing up in Congress, so an event like this will stiffen their spine.“It’s about making the Democrats better and giving them courage – and it will. That’s also true for ordinary people, because Trump’s authoritarian playbook is designed to make people think it’s useless to resist. This demonstrates power and it will bring in more people.”Several congressional Democrats predicted the rally would inspire more protests, ultimately fueling an electoral triumph in next year’s congressional midterms, when control of the House of Representatives and the Senate will be up for grabs.“This is what freedom fighting against fascism looks like,” said Eric Swalwell, a representative for California. “This is not the last day of the fight, it’s the first day. When it all comes to [be] written about, you will see that April 5 is when it all came alive. Energy and activism beget energy and activism.”View image in fullscreenSeveral members acknowledged that protests were rarely enough to supplant authoritarian governments, as demonstrated in countries like Turkey and Hungary, whose strongman leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Viktor Orbán respectively, have survived in office despite repeated episodes of street protests.“We invited some historians in to discuss that question,” said Raskin. “They said, in some countries there was just a legislative parliamentary strategy, and that only succeeded about one-third of the time.“In other countries, there was just a popular-resistance strategy, and that succeeded a little bit more than a third of the time. But when you have a popular-resistance strategy and an effective legislative strategy, it wins more than two-thirds of the time. It’s not a guarantee, but you need to have national mass popular action at the same time that you’ve got an effective legislative strategy, too.”Representative Don Beyer, whose northern Virginia district – home to 75,000 federal workers – has been disproportionately affected by Musk’s assault on government agencies, compared the effect of Trump’s actions to the upheaval wrought by Mao Zedong in the Chinese cultural revolution.But, he said, Trump would be derailed by next year’s election, which he said he was “somewhat confident” would be ‘“free and fair”.“They’re not perfect [but] the people do have a chance to speak,” Beyer said. “Elections are very much decentralized and organized precinct by precinct. There are lots of chances to push back. We just saw that in Wisconsin.” More

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    ‘Hands Off’ protests take off across US and Europe to oppose Trump agenda – live

    Also speaking at in Washington DC was Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March.Carmona said:
    We are exercising the People’s Veto on Musk, Trump, Zuck–all these broligarchs–who want a country ruled by bullies to benefit billionaires. And they don’t care what–or who–they have to bulldoze to make it happen.
    But here’s the thing: We are the majority. Workers. Students. Parents. Teachers. Activists. We are the backbone of this country. Not the elites. They’re scared that a movement this large can threaten their power.
    But despite all the nonsense they’ve put us through, we’re still here and our numbers are growing.
    What I know is true about Women’s Marchers, and what I suspect to be true about everyone here today is that we are not afraid of hard work. That’s who we are: regular people who stepped up when there was work to be done…We are enough, and I believe that we will win.
    The strength of a movement isn’t measured by our easy wins, but by the hard days when we showed up anyway. And that’s what we need to do. Work hard. Work together. That is true people power. That is how we win.”
    Speaking in Washington DC, the former commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Martin O’Malley, told demonstrators:
    You and I are different. We do not believe, as Elon Musk believes, that you only have value as a human being in our country if you contribute to his economic system that makes him wildly rich.
    No, you and I are different. Elon Musk thinks that the greatest waste and inefficiency are people that don’t contribute to his economy. Therefore, the elderly who can’t work, people with disabilities who can’t work, they’re the wasteful inefficiency. Elon Musk is going after you and I.
    Protesters across the US rallied against Donald Trump’s policies on SaturdayThe “Hands Off” demonstrations are part of what the event’s organisers expect to be the largest single day of protest against Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk since they launched a rapid-fire effort to overhaul the government and expand presidential authority.Here are some images coming from Hollywood, Florida, where demonstrators are protesting against Donald Trump’s administration:Hundreds of protesters – including Americans living abroad – have taken to the streets across major European cities in a show of defiance against Donald Trump’s administration.On Saturday, demonstrators rallied in Frankfurt, Germany, as part of the “Hands Off” protest organized by Democrats Abroad, Reuters reports.In Berlin, demonstrators stood in front of a Tesla showroom and the US embassy in protest against Trump and the Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Some held signs calling for “an end to the chaos” in the US.In Paris, demonstrators, largely American, gathered around Place de la République to protest the US president, with many waving banners that read “Resist tyrant”, “Rule of law”, “Feminists for freedom not fascism” and “Save Democracy”, Reuters reports.Crowds in London gathered in Trafalgar Square earlier on Saturday with banners that read “No to Maga hate” and “Dump Trump”.Protesters also gathered in Lisbon, Portugal, on Saturday with some holding signs that read “the Turd Reich”.In addition to large US cities, anti-Donald Trump protests are also taking place through the US’s smaller towns, including in red counties.Here are some photos coming through BlueSky from St. Augustine, a small town in Florida of 14,000 people in a red county:Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland and the party’s ranking member on the House justice committee, said today’s demonstration was part of a “creative and nimble” strategy to resist Donald Trump.Talking to the Guardian, he said mass protests needed to be combined with a “smart legislative strategy” to be effective.Studies of authoritarian regimes abroad had shown that a strategy of either mass protest or legislature resistance did work on their own, he said, in response to a question about the failure of demonstrations to unseat strongman leaders in countries like Hungary, Serbia and Turkey.Here are some images coming through the newswires from across the country as thousands take to the streets in demonstrations against Donald Trump’s administration:About 600 people registered for the event, billed as a “Hands Off” rally, at the Ventura Government Center on Victoria Avenue in California.Ventura, with a population of 109,000, is a laidback beach and agricultural community with a vibrant cultural scene, about 65 miles north of Los Angeles.Leslie Sage, mother of two, drove up from nearby Thousand Oaks and said: “I’m a white woman and I want everyone to know white women don’t support Trump.” Sage’s sign read: “Russian Asset, American Idiot.”She came with her friend Stephanie Gonzalez. “As a double lung transplant recipient, I’m outraged that access to medical care and funding for research is at risk. This president is deranged.”People showed up from Ventura but also Ojai, Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Camarillo and Simi Valley.Harlow Rose Rega, an eight-year old from Ventura, came with her grandmother Sandy Friedman. Harlow made her own sign: “Save my future.”Friedman is worried about her social security. “I worked my whole life and so did my husband. Now I’m afraid Trump will take it away,” she said. Signs indicated protesters are worried about a range of issues – racism, national parks, health care, environment, veteran benefits, grocery costs and more. Some people said AI helped with their signage but refused to create anti-Trump slogans specifically so they worked around that.In Ventura, a chant of “Donald Trump has got to go. Hey hey ho ho!” started amid lots of cheers and honking cars.A mix of English and Spanish songs is also blasting from the mobile sound system. People are in good spirits and friendly with peacful though loud protests and no evidence of Trump support.Several hundred vociferous anti-Trump demonstrators converged on a traffic circle in Florida’s Fort Lauderdale suburb of Hollywood Saturday morning to vent their rejection of the 47th president’s policies and myriad executive orders.Chanting “hey hey, ho ho, Trump and Musk have got to go,” the predominantly white protestors jeered motorists in Tesla Cybertrucks and hoisted a variety of colorful placards that left little doubt where they stand on the topic of Donald Trump.“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 protestors’ anxieties about the future of democracy in the U.S.“Hands off democracy,” declared one placard. “Stop being Putin’s puppet,” enjoined another.“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.”“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 said.Heit attended a protest outside a Tesla dealership in Fort Lauderdale last week, and the Trump administration’s frontal assault on the rule of law and the judiciary has outraged her.“We’re supposed to be a nation of laws and due process,” she said, “and I am especially concerned about the people who are being deported without any due process.” More