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      It’s time for Americans to withhold their taxes | Judith Levine

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      Political power boils down to two things: votes and money. But when money buys presidents, senators and judges, votes are merely the sales receipts. What’s left is money, and the purpose of power is to get more of it.Trump’s non-billionaire followers appear thrilled that Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” are burning down the government. “Imagine if Trump hadn’t met and talked with Elon Musk that all this progress on efficiency may not be taking place or at such a fast pace needed before the midterms,” comments holy666 on a Fox News story about the mass layoffs of federal employees.Firings at the IRS elicit particular glee. Writes EnemyCitizen: “A beautiful thing about Mr Trump’s approach is that internal revenue will slow down and Congress will have to sober up and stop passing appropriations bills that apply our hard-earned money to frivolous political agendas. No more blank checks, Congress!”In fact, what the megalomaniacal multibillionaire is destroying is everything – minus the policing functions, of course – that we pay taxes for, including such frivolous agendas as food inspection, flood mitigation and Medicare. This is how kleptocracies work. Taxes are collected from the hoi polloi. The more benign government functions – housing the poor, postponing climate apocalypse – are abolished. But the rest of these functions do not entirely disappear. Rather, it is farmed out to private enterprise, which undertakes what it’s paid to do with minimum expense and maximum profit (and we all know corporations never commit waste, fraud or abuse).Watchdogs are eliminated, bribery is legalized. The most corrupt carry off the greatest rewards. And bereft of revenue, social services wither, the infrastructure crumbles, and the prisons fill with the destitute and the resistant.Maga wants to starve the bureaucracy. But it still wants money. And with the wealthiest awaiting gigantic tax breaks, they need it from the rest of us. With the Internal Revenue Service in effect transformed into a shell corporation laundering the money of the ultra-rich, why should we pay taxes?The IRS is being speedily organized for this rerouting. Doge is axing as many as 15,000 law-abiding and knowledgeable civil servants. It is trying to coerce the agency to give Elon’s AI-wielding AV squad unfettered access to the system containing the personal and financial data of every American taxpayer, small business and non-profit.Not only would this arrangement provide an armory of intelligence to be deployed against the president’s enemies – according to a lawsuit filed by taxpayer advocates, unions and small business alliances, it would give Musk access to his rivals’ profit and loss statements, payrolls, tax records and information about IRS investigations into their (or his own) suspected tax fraud. “No other business owner on the planet has access to this kind of information on his competitors,” assert the plaintiffs, “and for good reason.”These are all good reasons to withhold your taxes.Can the tactic work? Is it right? Morally and politically motivated tax nonpayment has an honorable, if not always successful, history. After the Roman empire’s destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD Jewish people refused to pay Rome’s “temple tax”. Rome responded by destroying more temples. Gandhi’s salt tax protest, on the other hand, was the first step toward India’s independence from the British empire. The American Revolution was a tax revolt, and that worked – although some colonists resisted taxes levied by the revolutionaries and, after independence, the states as well.More recently, American opponents of wars, nukes and abortion have refused to pay all or portions of their taxes in protest. Many went to prison for it. In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau wrote of weighing the benefits and costs of any given action. He believed all taxation was illegitimate as long as the US condoned slavery. “If [the injustice] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law,” he concluded.One of the diabolical features of an anti-state state like our current regime is its ability to turns acts of resistance against the state against themselves. Principled prosecutors and agency heads resign rather than carry out the president’s illegal orders – leaving only Maga flunkies in their places. Civil servants quit rather than pervert the services or science they’ve devoted their careers to – leaving the work unguarded and the workforce decimated, precisely as the wrecking crew intends.So it is with tax resistance. Every dollar that does not come into Washington’s coffers is justification to cut another dollar. You may remember that the vanguard of 21st century far right populism was the Tea party, an anti-tax movement.In the New Republic, Liza Featherstone points out that the destruction of popular government programs is not “a goofy misstep on this administration’s part. Rather, it’s exactly the point.” Whether firing park rangers, defunding daycare centers, or deep-sixing job-creating clean-energy projects in red states, the programs’ “popularity is precisely what the Trump-Musk administration dislikes about them. For anti-government ideologues, it’s important that people not have good experiences with the government.”And if people have bad experiences with the government – if they contract bird flu because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer have the wherewithal to control and prevent disease; if bridges collapse because the funds to repair them are cut off – well, there’s proof that the government can’t do anything right, and deserves to be destroyed.In fact, after it outsources the government, the regime would be smart to keep calling it the government. When IRS.com loses a taxpayer’s refund and assigns a bot to sort out the problem, the taxpayer will blame IRS.gov.Thanks to intentional staff shortages at the IRS, your missing tax payment might go unnoticed, just as the Trump family’s multibillion-dollar fraud escaped the agency’s auditors for decades. But if tax evasion is a secretive act, tax resistance is civil disobedience, a public, political act. The reason to withhold your taxes is not to cheat the government of much-needed funds. It is not even to cheat the crooks now running the country, satisfying as that may be. It is to expose the criminality of what is being done – and not done – with the money the state has a legal and moral obligation to collect and then to distribute, to serve all the people.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books More

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      From weather apps to taxes: the trickle-down effects of Trump’s federal worker firings

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      You wake up to dark clouds outside, so you check the weather on your phone: a storm is coming.That weather app uses data from the National Weather Service, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a small organization which could see as much as 10% of its workforce cut this week.You grab food to make breakfast: eggs, meat, formula for your baby. The safety of your food is regulated and inspected by a host of federal employees, who flag and investigate when items shouldn’t be eaten.The former head of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division resigned this week because he thought firings and layoffs at the agency would hinder its work. “I didn’t want to spend the next six months of my career on activities that are fundamentally about dismantling an organization, as opposed to working on the stated agenda,” he told Stat News.You check your flight reservations for an upcoming trip to a national park. The safety of that flight is overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration, which experienced layoffs this month despite recent high-profile aviation accidents. The national park will probably see its staff gutted, leaving it more vulnerable to wildfires and without search and rescue capabilities. “I honestly can’t imagine how the parks will operate without my position,” a park ranger who was cut wrote on Instagram. “I mean, they just can’t. I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency. This is flat-out reckless.”You keep an eye on the bird flu levels and a measles outbreak – the winter has been punishing for illnesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were hit with a first round of layoffs this week, which could affect outbreak response and reporting. The Epidemic Intelligence Service, a disease-detective training program, could be on the chopping block.Oh, and you’re working on your taxes – while thousands of Internal Revenue Service probationary employees are expected to be laid off during tax season.The government certainly has room for improvement – backlogs that should be cleared, investigations that should be more thorough, communication that should be sharper, actions that should be more transparent. But all of this work is done by the federal government and its millions of workers and contractors, whose daily jobs touch the lives of all Americans and many around the globe.In the first weeks of the Trump administration, the president and the billionaire Elon Musk, tasked with cutting government through the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), have waged war against federal workers. Musk and his team have moved from agency to agency, indiscriminately firing probationary employees and those whose work they say doesn’t align with the administration’s priorities, including many who work on diversity initiatives or in international development.The result is a hobbled and terrified federal workforce that is just at the beginning of the expected cuts – and an American public that is starting to experience the repercussions.“We’re playing Russian roulette, and basically you’re putting a whole bunch of more bullets in the chambers,” said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit that advocates for a strong civil service. “You can’t prevent all bad things from happening, but our federal government is, in a lot of ways, a manager of risk, and it does a pretty darn good job of managing that risk, even though it can be improved.”An email went out in January to millions of federal employees offering a deferred resignation, which the White House says about 75,000 people have accepted, although it’s unclear how many of the people who accepted are actually eligible.Joel Smith works at the Social Security Administration and is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3184, which covers more than 90 agency offices in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana. He said the office of management and budget, which has coordinated the buyout program it’s calling a “fork in the road”, hasn’t communicated with the agencies about which employees accepted the buyout. Some employees didn’t show up the first day the program’s leave was supposed to begin, and the agency had to call them to figure out where they were, he said.“It’s just chaos on top of chaos, on top of terror, on top of employees that want to leave are being told they can’t leave. I’m trying to think of a good word for it. I don’t know if there is one, other than clusterfuck,” Smith said.Those that remain in their jobs worry about whether they’re next as they add to their workloads to cover for those who lost their jobs or quit. People eyeing next career moves will avoid civil service, previously seen as a stable career, to stay out of the current chaos.Many people take core functions of the federal government for granted, as it protects them from disasters or national security concerns, but might not otherwise affect them. But that could change after widespread firings. For example, layoffs in the Environmental Protection Agency mean that those remaining in their positions have less capacity to do their jobs.“That could come in the guise of someone not being able to respond to an environmental disaster,” said Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704. “Or what about if there’s a facility illegally flaring air pollutants? We might not be as able to respond to something like that which could have health effects. There could be devastating effects to the American people.”If you or your loved ones use any direct services such as benefits programs, you could see the effects of a beleaguered federal workforce up close.Let’s say you’re helping your parents sign up for social security. The Social Security Administration is already understaffed, so losing any positions will make wait times longer for people who need to access benefits, Smith said.Smith’s father filed for retirement benefits in November to begin in February, but by February, his case hadn’t been processed – it was stuck in somebody’s backlog. A member of Congress had to intervene to bring attention to the delay, a frequent tactic to overcome stalled claims.“What people think they’re witnessing now and they’re complaining about now, in terms of delays, is going to be considered the good old days here in a year or two if this continues,” he said. “We already don’t have the people to do the work.”For federal workers and their families, the impact is heavy and immediate if they lose their livelihoods.“The way it’s working now is that the career civil servants are viewed as the villains,” said Rob Shriver, former acting director of the US office of personnel management who now works at Democracy Forward. “They’re viewed as people who are to be worked around and not worked with. They’re being deprived of the thing that’s most important to them, which is to contribute to the agency’s mission and bring their skills and expertise to the table to help inform decision makers.”Though many have focused on the disruption caused in Washington, federal workers live throughout the US and, in some cases, other parts of the world.“There’s a human aspect of it, which is these people are not just being fired, but they’re being fired in the worst way. No notice, no nothing. This is true across the board. There is zero humanity being demonstrated,” said Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service. “It is unbelievably costly to the individuals involved, and it’s costly to the system and to the American taxpayers. It’s going to cost the American taxpayer a ton of money. It is not going to save any money.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More

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      Civil servants are leading the American resistance – with GameStop as a guide | Virginia Heffernan

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      The most ferocious response to Elon Musk’s coup in the US is also the most disciplined. It’s a sustained act of civil disobedience by the civil service. Amid the malignant lies of the current regime, federal workers are steadily telling the truth.This strategy is more methodical than it at first seems. Yes, the distress and anger among federal workers is palpable. But the more anarchy Donald Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) operation loose upon the world, the firmer the federal employees are standing. Their protest might even be seen as a political short squeeze.Starting on 28 January, federal employees refused to leave their posts in spite of Musk’s campaign to bully them out. On the subreddit for federal employees, they exhorted each other not to quit. Their rallying cry soon became: “Hold the line, don’t resign.” Although 2 million workers were pressured to quit, only 75,000 of them took what looked like a sketchy “buyout” deal.Then, this past week, when on the job mass firings started, staying at work became impossible. Thousands of employees, many of them with excellent performance reviews, were terminated on the hollow pretext that their “performance has not been adequate to justify further employment”.But as these employees cleared out their desks, a vocal group refused to vacate their faith in the civil service’s excellence. They have, in short, opposed the lie that they and their colleagues are being fired for cause. In this way, they’ve converged on the policy that Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Soviet dissident, called “personal non-participation in lies”.On Reddit, one poster encouraged federal employees to think with a view to the public record. They should write letters, the poster urged, on behalf of the “trashed colleagues”. It was imperative to put on paper that these colleagues “did indeed have good performance despite the firing”.The poster offered a list of reasons to write these letters, among them that references help workers get new jobs. But the biggest reason to praise colleagues who have been fired under false pretenses is that, as the poster wrote, “it’s the truth.”This campaign to tell the truth is not the work of to-the-barricades types. Those being harassed, demonized and fired are middle-class workers in agencies established by elected officials in Congress. Their remit includes conducting cancer research, preventing fires and supporting veterans. By refusing to let Doge distort their service as wasteful or inadequate, they have taken a stand that the rest of us should emulate.Solzhenitsyn believed ideology itself was built of lies – the delusion that human society can be remade, from the top down, by social engineers serving an autocrat. This is exactly the kind of program spelled out in Project 2025 and being enacted by Trump’s increasingly totalitarian executive orders.“Our path is not to give conscious support to lies about anything whatsoever,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in a 1974 essay called Live Not by Lies. “Though lies embrace everything, we will be obstinate in this smallest of matters: Let them embrace everything, but not with any help from me.”In more 2025 terms, the civil service appears to be initiating a kind of short squeeze on the broligarchy. This is a maneuver akin to the so-called Gamestop affair of 2021, in which tiny-dollar investors banded together to put the screws to major hedge funds.During the pandemic, funds like Melvin and White Square were selling GameStop short – betting on it to fail. Keith Gill, a young financial educator, believed they were wrong, and he put his money on the company. Others wanted in. Not only was the video game store a fan favorite, but, in bleak Covid days, there was something inspiring about being believers in solidarity as opposed to friendless fatalists.Sound familiar? To stand with the US’s civil service today – to continue to believe in a government of, by, and for the people – is a risk. Not only will your wise-guy friends sneer at you, but you could miss out. If the big payouts are in nihilistic plays like crypto or Maga or Project 2025, you’ll feel like a jerk for putting your chips on dippy stuff like making roads and helping the poor.View image in fullscreenBut keeping faith is not as stodgy a project as you might think. With the GameStop short squeeze, everyman investors developed a boisterous lexicon of populist solidarity and above all tenacity. They enjoined one another to hodl the GameStop stonk with diamond hands.Their dominant slogan was just like that of the federal workers: “Hold the line.” And it worked. When they held, they kept the price of GameStop high and the hedge funds couldn’t afford to cover their short bets. Melvin Capital broke down, as did White Square.But back to the federal employees. The second they received the 28 January “Fork in the Road” email trying to drive them out, thousands did what the GameStop apes had done four years earlier: went to Reddit. It was electric. A campaign to save America from Trump-Musk crystallized. “When Tyranny becomes Law, Rebellion becomes Duty,” posted one anonymous federal worker.“Who knew that the fight against tyranny was me looking at some spreadsheets and trying to make Americans healthier?” another said. It was on. “They just created the imaginary deep state they convinced everyone they were fighting against.”And then it came: “Diamond. Fucking. Hands.”The GameStop words. “You made me double check which sub I was in,” someone said, with laughing-crying emoji. Here was the ethic of holding fast to something you believe in, even while tyrants conspire to destroy it.The feds held on. And even now, even among the jobless, they are refusing to lose faith in the American project. “Take up space, put a face to the stories,” said a recent poster to the fednews subreddit. “Make it uncomfortable for them. Let them know the human toll it takes.”Right now, it’s hard to imagine Musk or Trump will ever go bust. But emperors rise and fall. Those two have now bet against America. If the rest of us stay steadfast, they very well might, like those hedge funds, hit a bruising kind of margin call.Musk could have to answer for Tesla’s recent precipitous losses. There have been international boycotts of Tesla and creative, energized and widespread campaigns against it. Steve Bannon, one of the marquee Maga influencers, recently savaged Musk as anti-Maga, calling him “a parasitic illegal immigrant” who “wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions”.Trump, for his part, may have to face his 34 felonies one day, and pay the more than $500m he owes. Axios recently reported on a mounting revolt against Doge among Republicans in Congress. Then there are the people.In icy temperatures on Monday, thousands took to the streets, shouting: “No Kings on Presidents Day.” The goal of the organizers was to protest against “anti-democratic and illegal actions of the Trump administration and its plutocratic allies”. And the legal actions against the Trump administration are piling up – more than 75 opposing his executive orders, with more being filed every day.Even people without conscience can be brought up short by realities like the erosion of their fortunes, their standing and their bases of support. The GameStop apes used to say: “I like the stock” when people asked them why they wouldn’t sell. If you like the civil service, hold the line. Keep the faith. The Trump-Musk administration wants the American people to shut up, pack up our desks and resign our roles as citizens. Don’t take the deal. More

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      Trump signs executive order targeting ‘benefits for illegal aliens’

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at ending federal benefits for people in the country illegally, his latest in a blizzard of moves to crack down on immigration.The White House said the order seeks to end “all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens” but it was not clear which benefits will be targeted. People in the country illegally generally do not qualify except for emergency medical care. Children are entitled to a free K-12 public education regardless of immigration status under a 1982 supreme court ruling.The order notes that a 1996 welfare overhaul denies most public benefits to people in the country illegally but says that law has been gradually undermined. “Over the last 4 years, in particular, the prior administration repeatedly undercut the goals of that law, resulting in the improper expenditure of significant taxpayer resources.”Trump’s words appear directed at former president Joe Biden’s extensive use of parole authority to allow people into the country temporarily, including more than 900,000 through an online appointment app called CBP One used at border crossings with Mexico, and more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who flew to the US at their own expense with a financial sponsor. Trump immediately ended both programs.Biden also granted parole to nearly 300,000 people from Ukraine and Afghanistan.People granted parole for at least a year are considered “qualified non-citizens”, making them eligible for some income-based benefits, but only after five years. They include Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, according to the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.Some states have shortened the five-year wait.Trump’s order appears to have other targets, some already subjects of earlier edicts and Justice Department lawsuits. It directs all departments and agencies to identify federal benefit spending that is inconsistent with the 1996 welfare law. It also seeks to ensure that state and local governments are not using federal funds for policies that support “sanctuary” policies or encourage illegal immigration.Trump signed 10 executive orders on immigration on his first day in office. They included ending automatic citizenship for people born in the United States and asylum at the southern border. The birthright citizenship order has been temporarily halted in court.In another order on Wednesday, Trump instructed the heads of every agency to undertake a review of all regulations, working with members of Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency. Any regulations that are deemed inconsistent with the administration’s policies will be rescinded or modified, the order said.The action aims to bolster Musk’s sweeping government-slashing effort, which is facing numerous court challenges over its lawfulness.Trump also targeted a number of advisory committees and agencies for elimination, part of his broader campaign to assert control over independent executive agencies.Among the agencies set to be disbanded are the United States Institute for Peace, which promotes conflict resolution around the world; the Inter-American Foundation, which funds community development programs in Latin America and the Caribbean; and the US African Development Foundation, which invests in community development efforts in Africa.With Associated Press and Reuters More

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      Trump administration reportedly orders Pentagon to plan for sweeping defense budget cuts – live

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      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by 24 February, according to the memo, which includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern US border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense and acquisition of one-way attack drones and other munitions. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.According to the Post, the memo calls for continued “support agency” funding for several major regional headquarters, including Indo-Pacific command, northern command and space command. Notably absent from that list is European command, which has had a leading role in executing US strategy during the war in Ukraine; central command, which oversees operations in the Middle East; and Africa command, which manages the several thousand troops the Pentagon has spread across that continent.“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve peace through strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday.
      The time for preparation is over – we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and re-establish deterrence. Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.
      The White House has reshared a social media post from Donald Trump, calling the president a king and picturing him in a crown.This afternoon, Donald Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social, “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”His post referenced a letter his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, sent to New York governor Kathy Hochul today, ending the Department of Transportation’s agreement with the state over a toll policy for lower Manhattan.Shortly after, the White House shared the quote from Trump on social media, alongside a computer-generated image of a smiling Trump wearing a crown on a stylized version of a Time magazine cover, with the word “Time” replaced with “Trump”.In his address, Pritzker recalled in 1978 when a neo-Nazi group wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb that he said was once home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors in the world. The ensuing legal battle and controversy ultimately led to a supreme court decision in favor of the group’s right to march. The demonstration was ultimately canceled days before and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center was formed in Skokie.Pritzker credited the resistance and resilience of ordinary Illinoians for defusing the Nazis threat.“If we don’t want to repeat history then for god sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it,” he said.Pritzker concluded the thirty-plus minute speech with a call to action.“Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance,” he said. “Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity Illinois and do not let the tragic spirit of despair overcome us when our country needs us most.”Pritzker, who is seen as a possible 2028 presidential contender, has adopted a far more confrontational posture toward the Trump administration than other blue state governors.“We don’t have Kings in America and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one,” Pritzker vowed, as the official White House social media account posted a photo of Trump wearing a crown with the words “Long Live the King”.In his remarks, he defended the approach, arguing: “Going along to get along does not work.”Responding to scattered boos in the audience, the governor warned that Trump’s cuts to federal agencies would affect conservatives and liberals alike. “You can boo all you want until your constituents lose these services,” he said.“If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this,” he continued. “It took the Nazis 1 month, 3 weeks, 2 days, 8 hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. And all I’m saying is when the 5-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Wednesday delivered a searing state-of-the-state address, likening Donald Trump’s stunning power grabs to the rise of Nazism in 1930’s Germany.“I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly,” Pritzker told a joint session of the Illinois House and Senate in Springfield, the state’s capital. Speaking as “an American and a Jew” who helped build the state’s Holocaust Museum, Pritzker said he was “watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now”.Trump’s attacks on DEI, LGBTQ people and immigrants was part of an “authoritarian playbook,” the Democratic governor said.“They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems. I just have one question,” he said. “What comes next?”Good afternoon, thanks for joining our US politics coverage today – nearly one month into the second Trump administration. I’m Cecilia Nowell, taking over our coverage into the evening.Donald Trump’s first and second vice presidents have had markedly different reactions to the president’s comments on the war in Ukraine.In an interview published today by the conservative British tabloid, the Daily Mail, JD Vance warned Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “badmouthing” Trump is a bad idea.“The idea that Zelenskyy is going to change the president’s mind by bad mouthing him in public media, everyone who knows the President will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration,” Vance said.Meanwhile, former vice president Mike Pence – who notably fell out of favor with the president after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol and declined to endorse Trump in the 2024 election – struck a different tone.“Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth,” Pence wrote on social media today.Both comments follow an escalating exchange between the US and Ukrainian presidents. After Trump implied Ukraine had started the war, which began after Russia invaded Ukraine, during a press conference yesterday, Zelenskyy said Trump was trapped in a Russian “disinformation bubble”. Today, Trump called Zelenskyy “a dictator” and warned that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”.Here are Pjotr Sauer and Luke Harding with more:Much of the day so far has been dominated by the fallout of Donald Trump’s unprecedented and extraordinary attack on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he called “a dictator without elections” who had “done a terrible job”. In the rant rife with falsehoods about the Ukrainian leader’s popularity among other things, Trump warned Zelenskyy that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”.Trump accused Zelenskyy (baselessly) of benefiting from continuing US financial and military support, suggesting he had an interest in prolonging the war rather than seeking its end. Trump’s latest comments, which parrot key talking points of Vladimir Putin’s regime, cast serious doubt on future US aid to Ukraine and mark the most explicit threat yet to end the war on terms favourable to Moscow. European leaders are scrambling to contain the crisis (German chancellor Olaf Scholz called Trump’s comments “wrong and dangerous”), while several Republican lawmakers in the US rushed to distance themselves from Trump’s remarks.Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy had said Trump was “living in a disinformation bubble”, in response to the US president last night blaming Ukraine for Russia’s illegal invasion. Trump made the comments in response to Zelenskyy’s concerns that Ukraine had not been invited to the talks between the US and Russia on Tuesday.Elsewhere:

      The Trump administration has ordered the Pentagon to plan for sweeping budget cuts, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years. He has given a deadline of 24 February.

      Senate majority leader John Thune said the upper chamber will still go ahead and begin vote-a-rama on the budget plan tomorrow, according to Fox News. This is despite Trump throwing his support behind the House’s competing version of the budget blueprint earlier on Wednesday.

      The Trump administration said it is not disbursing funds for thousands of foreign aid contracts and grants despite a federal judge’s order last week to lift a widespread freeze on foreign aid funding.

      A federal judge refused on Tuesday to immediately block Elon Musk and Doge from accessing government data systems or participating in worker layoffs. The US district judge Tanya Chutkan found that there were legitimate questions about the billionaire’s authority but said there was not enough evidence of grave legal harm to justify a temporary restraining order.

      Donald Trump signed an executive order making independent regulatory agencies established by Congress now accountable to the White House – a move that some experts said clashes with mainstream interpretations of the constitution. The order forces major regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to report new policy priorities to the executive branch for approval, which will also have a say over their budgets.

      The Trump administration’s planned cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) not only threaten essential biomedical research in the US, but the livelihoods of researchers – and some are seriously considering leaving the country.
      Further to the news that Donald Trump has thrown his support behind the House’s budget plan, Fox News reports that Senate majority leader John Thune has said the upper chamber will still go ahead and begin vote-a-rama on the budget plan tomorrow.The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by 24 February, according to the memo, which includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern US border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense and acquisition of one-way attack drones and other munitions. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.According to the Post, the memo calls for continued “support agency” funding for several major regional headquarters, including Indo-Pacific command, northern command and space command. Notably absent from that list is European command, which has had a leading role in executing US strategy during the war in Ukraine; central command, which oversees operations in the Middle East; and Africa command, which manages the several thousand troops the Pentagon has spread across that continent.“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve peace through strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday.
      The time for preparation is over – we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and re-establish deterrence. Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.
      All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump.It is hardly surprising Zelenskyy lost his cool. Part of the reason he has a 57% confidence rating in the latest poll (13% above Trump’s own current standing) is because he has led his country through years of war with his heart vividly on his sleeve. Having been subjected to eight years of Russian aggression, followed by an entirely unprovoked full-on invasion which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, and then to be told on the world stage: “You should have never started it”, would be too much for most people.When slighted and sprayed with Trumpian falsehoods, other world leaders, with much less at stake, have resorted to a “smile-and-wave” default strategy, deflecting direct questions and changing the subject to some aspect of relations with Washington that is still functioning normally.Zelenskyy did not do this on Wednesday. Instead, he said out loud the bit that European leaders keep quiet. Trump, he observed, is “trapped in this disinformation bubble”. He was stating the obvious, but not even Zelenskyy could have known how fetid the air inside Trump’s bubble has become. Now we know.Trump’s tirade on his own app, Truth Social, is a distillation of the greatest hits of Russian disinformation from the past three years. He said Zelenskyy was “A Dictator without Elections” (something Trump has never said about Putin) who had hoodwinked the Biden administration into a $350bn war of choice, which only “TRUMP” could fix. The president’s repeated references to himself in the third person and all caps erased any lingering doubts about the single unifying compulsion now driving Trump foreign policy.Read Julian’s full analysis here:This is an extract from my colleague John Crace’s weekly UK politics sketch – and this week he’s focusing on Trump:Even by his recent standards, Tuesday night’s stream of unconsciousness from Donald Trump took some beating. Hot on the tail of excluding Ukraine from the first round of peace talks with Russia and in effect threatening to withdraw the US from Nato, the Donald has now suggested it was Kyiv who started the war with Moscow.More than that, he declared President Zelenskyy’s popularity ratings had slid to just 4% in his own country and that he had assumed the role of dictator by not holding elections. He ended by claiming that the US had given more than three times as much aid to Ukraine than the rest of Europe combined. You could almost hear Vladimir Putin cheering from the sidelines. He couldn’t have written the script any better. It was perfection.It goes without saying that everything the US president had said was complete doggy-bollox. Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and seized Crimea. There was then a pause in hostilities before Putin invaded a second time almost exactly three years ago. Claiming Ukraine started the war was like believing that Poland invaded Germany to trigger the second world war.That was just the start. Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy’s approval ratings were 4% were just his delusional, senescent fantasies. The real figure is 57%: about 10% higher than the Donald’s own. And no one in their right mind is suggesting Ukraine holds elections while the war is ongoing. There again, Trump is clearly not in his right mind. His aid figures are also way off. Collectively, Europe has given Ukraine £132bn since the start of the war. America has given £114bn.While a shrink would have a field day trying to untangle the workings of the Trump psyche – is he a narcissist or solipsist? Does he actually believe what he says or do his words have an independent existence to his brain? – it’s left to the rest of us to pick up the pieces. Much as they might like not to, other world leaders have to find a way of engaging with him. The Donald is the most powerful man on the planet and whatever he says counts for something.You can read the full politics sketch here:The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, will visit Washington next week amid other meetings aimed at bringing an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, US national security advisor Mike Waltz said on Wednesday.Asked about the chances of reaching a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, Waltz told Fox News in an interview: “We’re engaging on all sides, and then the next step is we’re going to put technical teams forward to start talking more details.”It comes amid fears of an irreconcilable rift between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the former leader launched a war of false words on the Ukrainian president, whom he called “a dictator” and warned that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”. (We have factchecked Trump’s rant here).The unprecedented escalation of tensions between Kyiv and Washington came after senior US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine, as well as economic and political cooperation, indicating a fundamental shift in the US approach to Moscow.In the latest edition of This Week in Trumpland, my colleague Adam Gabbatt writes:
      What came of those talks? Well, on Tuesday Trump came out with a curiously Putin-centric view of the war, and of how to end it. Declaring himself ‘disappointed’ that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, had objected to not being part of talks which directly affect the future of his country, Trump blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, and trotted out Kremlin talking points about Zelenskyy’s approval rating among Ukrainians.
      In a few days Trump has apparently swallowed whole Russia’s revisionist claims about how the war began, and potentially driven a rift between the US and Europe in how it should end. Could it be that the author of Think Big and Kick Ass, and Trump 101: The Way to Success (both books were actually ghostwritten, but you get the idea), doesn’t really know much about kicking ass or the route to success? It’s not for me to say.
      You can sign up for Adam’s weekly newsletter here.Following Donald Trump’s incendiary comments earlier today calling the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a “dictator” who had “done a terrible job”, Republicans have moved swiftly to distance themselves from Trump’s attacks.The North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, who has just come from a visit to Ukraine, said Putin does not want peace, he “wants to dictate the world”. “That invasion was the responsibility of one human being on the face of this planet: Vladimir Putin,” Tillis told NBC News. On Trump calling Zelenskyy a dictator: “It’s not a word I would use.”The Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski told CNN: “I would like to see that in context because I would certainly never refer to President Zelenskyy as a dictator.”Speaking to HuffPost, the South Dakota senator Mike Rounds called Zelenskyy “the duly elected” president of Ukraine. “I think he has been a key component in the fact that they’ve been able to withstand the Russian attacks,” Rounds said. He answered “no” when asked if US foreign policy was realigning with Russia.Don Bacon, a Representative for Nebraska, posted on X: “Putin started this war. Putin committed war crimes. Putin is the dictator who murdered his opponents. The EU nations have contributed more to Ukraine. Zelenskyy polls over 50%. Ukraine wants to be part of the West, Putin hates the West. I don’t accept George Orwell’s doublethink.”Donald Trump threw his support behind the House’s budget blueprint on Wednesday, throwing a curveball into the Senate’s plan to vote on a competing version this week, Politico reports.In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said:
      The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it! We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to “kickstart” the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.” It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
      The House Speaker, Mike Johnson, who quickly celebrated Trump’s endorsement on X, plans to bring the plan to the floor for a vote next week.Trump’s announcement comes as the Senate leadership has prepared their own budget plan, which would divide up the president’s policy priorities into two bills, for a floor vote in the coming days.“As they say, did not see that one coming,” said Senate majority leader John Thune, telling reporters that he hoped to gain further clarity on the future of the two-bill plan from a previously scheduled lunch meeting with vice-president JD Vance.“We’ve got a plan that we think makes sense,” Thune told reporters. “We’re planning to proceed. But you know, obviously, we are interested in and hoping to hear with more clarity where the White House is coming from.”Donald Trump’s efforts to influence US cultural institutions received more pushback on Tuesday, as a group of more than 400 artists sent a letter to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) calling on the organization to resist the president’s restrictions on funding for projects promoting diversity or “gender ideology”.The letter, first reported by the New York Times, comes after the NEA declared that federal grant applicants – which include colleges and universities, non-profit groups, individual artists and more – must comply with regulations stipulated by Trump’s executive orders. The new measures bar federal funds from going toward programs focused on “diversity, equity and inclusion” or used to “promote gender ideology”.“While the arts community stands in solidarity with the NEA, we oppose this betrayal of the Endowment’s mission to ‘foster and sustain an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States’,” the letter reads. “We ask that the NEA reverse those changes to the compliance requirements.”Here’s more on that story: More

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      Love, rockets and media attacks: Trump and Musk bring their toxic bromance to Fox News

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      The British dancer Debbie McGee was once asked in an interview: “What first ever attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” Hopefully some day Donald Trump will be asked in an interview: “What first ever attracted you to the billionaire far-right sympathizer Elon Musk?”Alas, the question was not put by the Fox News host Sean Hannity when he conducted a joint interview with the world’s most powerful man and Trump at the White House on Tuesday.Even so, viewers were treated to a treacly display of the toxic bromance currently wrecking America and large swathes of the world. Who can resist three Maga men shooting the breeze about the size of Elon’s space rockets?The commander-in-chief and oligarch-in-chief sat side by side like a breathless young couple announcing their engagement on live TV. Trump wore a blue suit, white shirt and blue tie; Musk wore a T-shirt saying “tech support” under a black jacket. The orangeness of Trump’s face threw the paleness of Musk’s complexion into sharp relief and vice versa.Musk, the Tesla, SpaceX and X supremo who recently tweeted he loves Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”, confirmed he is indeed mad about the boy. “Well, I love the president,” he said. “I just want to be clear about that.”Sounding like he empathises, Hannity asked: “You love the president?”Musk said: “I think President Trump is a good man.”Trump was moved, like a man whose wife has not said that in many a long year. He interjected: “That’s the way he said that. You know, there’s something nice about.”Musk went on: “The president has been so unfairly attacked in the media. It’s truly outrageous. And I’ve spent a lot of time with the president and not once have I seen him do something that was mean or cruel or – or wrong. Not once.”Last month Trump exploited a deadly plane crash to blame his predecessors’s efforts to include people of colour in the federal workforce, but OK. Hannity took his chance to outdo Musk by boasting that he has known the president for 30 years and never known anyone deal with so much adversity, culminating in two assassination attempts.Musk acknowledged that the first shooting, when a bullet grazed Trump’s ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, accelerated his decision to endorse Trump’s re-election bid. The president sounded like a fiancee learning a sweet secret about their first date.“Nice”, Trump said: “I didn’t know that.”Musk added: “Yeah, it just – it sped it up, but I was going to do it anyway.”Like Romeo and Juliet, these star-crossed lovers are tragically misunderstood, in this case by vile media. “They want a divorce,” Hannity declared. “They want you two to start hating each other. And they try – ‘Oh, President Elon Musk’, for example. You do know that they’re doing that to you?”Trump concurred. “Actually, Elon called me. He said: ‘You know they’re trying to drive us apart.’ I said: ‘Absolutely’.”Then Hannity sounded like Oprah Winfrey interviewing Meghan and Harry. He said: “I want people to know the relationship and know more about you. What is the relationship, Mr President?”Trump replied: “Well, I respect him. I’ve always respected him. I never knew that he was right on certain things, and I’m usually pretty good at this stuff. He did Starlink. He did things that were so advanced and nobody knew what the hell they were.”He went on: “I think, you know, something that had an effect on me was when I saw the rocket ship come back and get grabbed like you grab a beautiful little baby. You grab your baby.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMusk chimed in: “Just hug the rocket.”Hannity too: “You hug the rocket. You hug the rocket.”Steady on!Speaking of space, Trump and Musk seized their chance to lie about Joe Biden, blaming him for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams having been stuck on the International Space Station for eight months.Musk said: “Yes, they were left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”Trump added that Biden “was going to leave them in space … Yeah, he didn’t want the publicity. Can you believe it?”Can we believe that Biden was as ruthless and calculating as Hal 9000, casting astronauts into the cold abyss of space? No, we can’t.Musk went on to mock “Trump derangement syndrome”, recalling how, at a friend’s birthday party in Los Angeles, he mentioned the president’s name, “and it was like they got shot with a dart in the jugular that contained, like, the methamphetamine and rabies”.Some would say that fate is preferable to the hour of television that Fox News served up in prime time, a desperate attempt to justify Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, currently laying waste to the federal government. It is as if Trump said: ‘You had me at dismantling the administrative state.’ More

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      We are on the road for democracy and justice | Bernie Sanders

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      I will be doing town meetings in Omaha, Nebraska, this Friday night and Iowa City, Iowa, on Saturday morning. Further, in the coming weeks and months, I and other progressives will be holding grassroots events from coast to coast.Why, at this moment, are we doing town meetings around the country – especially in conservative areas? The answer is obvious.Trumpism will not be defeated by politicians inside the DC beltway. It will only be defeated by millions of Americans, in every state in this country, coming together in a strong, grassroots movement which says no to oligarchy, no to authoritarianism, no to kleptocracy, no to massive cuts in programs that working people desperately need, no to huge tax breaks for the richest people in our country. And that’s what these events are about.Further, there are a number of congressional districts where Republicans won by only a small number of votes. With the Republican party in the House having only a three-vote majority we can defeat draconian, anti-working-class legislation if just two Republican members of Congress vote no. And they will vote no if we rally their constituents to demand that they vote no.Can Trumpism be defeated? Absolutely! But, if we’re going to make that happen, we need to know exactly what we’re up against and how we can best go forward. Here’s just some of what we need to know:Trumpism has an unlimited amount of money to throw into its efforts. Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on earth, put more than $270m into Trump’s campaign, a tiny portion of his fortune. Other multibillionaires will join Musk in spending whatever it takes.Trumpism has significant control over large parts of the media from which millions of Americans get their information. Fox and Musk’s platform X, among others, are not normal media outlets. Their basic function is not to cover the “news” but to spread rightwing extremist ideology.Trumpism is utilizing the concept of the “big lie” in a way that has never, in this country, been seen. Day after day, blatantly dishonest statements and conspiracy theories are propagated – and repeated over and over and over again.Trumpism does not believe in democracy or the rule of law. Trump recently posted: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” In other words, Trump believes that he can do anything he wants for any reason. He can ignore Congress or the courts. He is above the law.But, while Trump consolidates power into his own hands, there is another reality going on.Today, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck; millions are earning starvation wages; 85 million are uninsured or under-insured; young people are unable to afford the cost of college; 25% of seniors live on $15,000 a year or less; we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth, and we have a major shortage in low-income and affordable housing.Oh, and by the way, we’re losing the struggle against the climate crisis – an existential threat to the future of the planet.And here’s the kicker. While Trump moves us away from democracy, while the middle class continues to decline, the wealthiest people in the country have never ever had it so good. Today, the three major oligarchs, Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, are worth $905bn – that is more wealth than the bottom half of American society – 170 million people. And, incredibly, since Trump’s election their wealth has grown by $217bn.Our struggle, the American people’s struggle, is to protect democracy and the rule of law. Equally important, we must end oligarchy and create an economy that works for all, not just the few. We are the wealthiest country on earth and AI, robotics and other new technologies will only make our country wealthier. It is absurd, unjust and inhumane that virtually all of that new wealth being created goes to the people who need it the least.While Trump now “floods the zone” and occupies most of the political oxygen, it is imperative that we never lose sight of the progressive vision – a nation and world based on human cooperation and compassion, not greed and a “survival of the fittest” mentality. What we are fighting for is not “utopian”, or unachievable. Much of it already exists in other countries, and poll after poll shows that it is exactly what the American people want.In the richest country in the history of the world we must establish that:

      Healthcare is a human right and must be available to all regardless of income.

      Every worker in America is entitled to earn a decent income. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.

      We must have the best public educational system in the world, from childcare to vocational training, to graduate school – available to all.

      We must address the housing crisis and build the millions of units of low-income and affordable housing that we desperately need.

      We must create millions of good paying jobs as we lead the world in combating the existential threat of climate change.

      We must abolish all forms of bigotry.
      Not only must we continue to fight for a nation based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice, we must also lead the effort against Trump‘s reactionary legislative agenda.In the coming weeks the Republicans in Congress will be bringing forward a major piece of legislation, a “reconciliation” bill, that encapsulates the value system of greed and their obedience to oligarchy. It is the economic essence of Trumpism.At a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, this legislation will provide trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the richest people in our country. It will make the rich even richer. At a time when the working class of this country is struggling to put food on the table and pay for housing, this legislation will make savage cuts to Medicaid, housing, nutrition, education and other basic needs. It will make the poor even poorer.We cannot allow this to happen. This legislation is enormously unpopular. It is exactly what the American people do not want. It must not be passed by Congress.It must be defeated and we can defeat it.This is a perilous moment in American history. Let us go forward together.

      Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and chair of the health education labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

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      Musk and Trump put on lovefest in Sean Hannity interview

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      Donald Trump and his wealthiest backer, the multi-billionaire Elon Musk, expressed gushing admiration for each other in a Fox News interview in which each accused a critical media of trying to drive them apart.Interviewed together in the White House, the pair spoke of each other in such warm terms that the interviewer, Sean Hannity, was moved to say: “I feel like I’m interviewing two brothers here.”The united front was maintained to reject accusations that Musk’s so-called “department of government of efficiency” (Doge) – which has upended huge swathes of the federal bureaucracy in a supposed attempted to find “waste, fraud and corruption” – is a violation of the US constitution, saying their critics were themselves guilty of this.They also dismissed complaints that Musk, who has billions of dollars of government contracts through his ownership of companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, had serious conflicts of interest that could lead him to skew federal spending in his favour.Asked by Hannity how he would respond if he saw a conflict, Trump said: “He wouldn’t be involved.” Musk followed up by saying: “I’ll recuse myself. I mean, I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever.”The interview was aired after a chorus of criticism of Musk’s prominent role in Trump’s administration and suggestions from critics that he was usurping the president’s power, earning the appellation of “President Musk” in some quarters, including the cover of Time magazine.Amid speculation of incipient tensions supposedly fueled by Trump’s known dislike of sharing the limelight, the pair went to great lengths to show personal fealty to each other.“I love the president, I just want to be clear about that,” Musk said. “I think President Trump is a good man. The president has been so unfairly attacked in the media, it’s really outrageous.”Trump described Musk in equally flattering terms, several times describing him as “caring” and “amazing” before delivering a soaring personal testimonial near the end of the interview.“This guy’s a brilliant guy. He’s a great guy. He’s got tremendous and scientific imagination,” the president said, as Musk sat by his side. “But he’s also a good person. He’s a very good person, and he wants to see the country do well.”He said Musk, who described himself as “tech support” to the president, had been of practical value in ensuring that the avalanche of executive orders signed by Trump since his inauguration on 20 January were implemented – although many of them have been subjected to legal challenges and been blocked by court rulings.Musk had also brought “high IQ” young people to his Doge team who were dedicated to changing the country, Trump said.The pair mocked media speculation that their partnership was destined to end in an acrimonious split.“Actually, Elon called me and said, you know, they’re trying to drive us apart.,” Trump said. He went on: “Now they said: ‘We have breaking news. Donald Trump has ceded control of the presidency to Elon Musk.’ And I say it’s just so obvious, so bad. I used to think they were good at it. They’re actually bad at it because if they were good at it, I’d never be president – because nobody in history has ever got more bad publicity than I’ve had.”He predicted that Musk would be able to cut$1tn of government spending, but added that it would only be a small percentage of the waste and fraud that existed. Key programs such as social security, Medicare and Medicaid, would remain untouched, he insisted – except in cases where they went to “illegal migrants”. (Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for such benefits). More