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      The Guardian view on the US suspension of military aid: Ukraine and Europe’s race against time | Editorial

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      How long do Ukraine and Europe have to respond to US betrayal? When Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago, each day that Kyiv held out was a victory. The west rallied to Ukraine’s support at equally remarkable speed.Now, as the Trump administration turns upon the victim, and embraces the aggressor, Europe is accelerating nascent plans to bolster Ukraine and pursue security independence. Trump allies blame Friday night’s extraordinary Oval Office confrontation between Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump and JD Vance for the shocking halt to all US military aid. Others suspect that the administration was seeking a pretext for the suspension. Mr Zelenskyy pledged on Tuesday to “work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts” and expressed gratitude for his first-term approval of Javelin missile defence systems sales.That may or may not be enough. The suspension concluded a fortnight in which Mr Trump attacked Mr Zelenskyy as a “dictator”, the US sided with Russia against western allies at the UN, and the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, suspended offensive cyber operations against Moscow. There are reports that the US is preparing plans for loosening the economic pressure on Russia – even as it imposes punitive tariffs on allies. Little wonder the Kremlin crows that Washington “largely coincides with our vision”. Vladimir Putin has reportedly offered to mediate US-Iran nuclear talks. Observers were braced for further developments in the US president’s address to Congress on Tuesday.Analysts suggest that Ukraine’s forces should be able to continue fighting at their current rate for a few months if US aid does not resume, depending on what it has stockpiled. Though it is far less dependent on the US than three years ago, key elements like Patriot air defence missiles will be hard to replace. If US logistical and intelligence assistance and Elon Musk’s Starlink’s services were suspended, those would be further punishing blows.Mr Trump is in a hurry – hence his angry threat that Mr Zelenskyy “won’t be around very long” if he doesn’t cut a deal. This came after the Ukrainian president suggested on Sunday that the end of the war was “very, very far away”. Yet he has also squandered leverage he might have exerted on Moscow before reaching the table. He has emboldened Russia to pursue further territorial gains, especially if it can shape a deal with the US before a ceasefire.The US has already undermined central pillars of Sir Keir Starmer’s approach – maintaining military support for Kyiv and economic pressure on Moscow, and creating a “coalition of the willing” to guarantee Ukrainian security. Mr Vance derided “20,000 troops from some random country that has not fought a war in 30 or 40 years”, then claimed that he was not referring to Britain or France.European leaders must continue trying to buy time, deferring further US perfidy, and hasten rearmament for themselves and Ukraine. On Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, announced a proposal, including changes to EU fiscal rules, which she said could mobilise nearly €800bn for defence spending. A rival operator to Starlink is in talks with European leaders about satellite services.But this is an administration which moves abruptly and erratically. Ukraine and Europe are racing against the clock, not knowing when zero hour will arrive. It is likely to be sooner rather than later. More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump-Zelenskyy meeting: ‘Embarrassing, chilling and confusing’

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      Late-night hosts recap Donald Trump’s shocking rebuke of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a disastrous White House press conference.Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert braced himself on Monday to recap Friday’s chaotic White House meeting between Trump, JD Vance and Zelenskyy that devolved into a shouting match between the two world leaders, with Trump as the aggressor, blaming Zelenskyy for continuing Russia’s war in his country.“In just 10 minutes, Donald Trump reversed 80 years of postwar US foreign policy,” the Late Show host explained. “A mere six weeks ago, America defended democracy against autocrats and promoted free and open societies all over the world. Now, we’re on the same pickleball team with Russia. And you don’t want to know who’s pickled balls we’re playing with.“So our friends are now our enemies, our enemy is now our friend, we’re breaking up with Europe, we’re friends with Russia,” he continued. “You could argue that’s a good thing, you could argue that’s a bad thing. But what you can’t argue with is that’s the thing.”The talks, nominally to sign a deal in which Ukraine promised the US 50% of its profits from rare earth minerals, collapsed within 10 minutes. “So things were looking promising, but then everything exploded and collapsed. It’s a phenomenon political scientists refer to as the Emilia Pérez Oscar campaign,” Colbert quipped.“Zelenskyy kept reminding these numbnuts that Putin breaks every single deal he ever signs,” he added. When a reporter then asked Trump what would happen if Putin broke any deal, the president responded: “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now.“Yeah, that’s how Putin’s going to break the ceasefire,” Colbert responded. “This meeting was embarrassing, chilling and confusing.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also tore into Vance and Trump for their handling of the Zelenskyy meeting, starting with Vance’s insistence that Zelenskyy thank Trump personally for US aid. “JD Vance sounds like a boyfriend who just got caught cheating for the third time – ‘You keep asking where I was last night, but have you said thank you once for the bracelet I got you!’” said Meyers.“For the record, Zelenskyy has said thank you many times, directly to the American people, in English, a language he speaks more fluently than Donald Trump,” he added.Meyers went on to note: “Diplomacy is good, we should try to achieve a ceasefire to stop the killing and bring peace, but it is possible – in fact, it’s necessary – to do that while also remaining clear-eyed about who the aggressor is. Who violated sovereignty and international law and human rights by starting the war in the first place.“But Trump doesn’t give a shit about any of that,” he continued. “All he cares about is self-enrichment and raw power and territorial conquest. That’s why he’s doing a solid for Russian oligarchs by letting them keep their superyachts.”Meyers also blasted Democrats for their feckless response, referring to comments from Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, that “we’ll need to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration.”“What is wrong with all of you?” Meyers fumed. “You want to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration? Well, I want to see all the gold in Fort Knox. And guess what? Neither of us is getting what we fucking want!“Seriously, Democrats, show some spine,” he added. “Do you want to get primaried? Why do you guys keep acting like this is your first day on the job?”Jon StewartAnd on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart mulled an offer by Elon Musk to appear for an interview on the show, as long as it was unedited. “After thinking about his offer, I thought, you know, hey, that’s actually how the in-studio interviews normally are. It’s unedited,’” Stewart said. “So sure, we’d be delighted.”Stewart added that he would “sweeten the pot” and keep the cameras rolling for as long as Musk wanted their conversation to last. “The interview can be 15 minutes. It can be an hour. It can be two hours, whatever,” he said.Musk later appeared to renege on his offer, posting on X that “Jon Stewart is much more a propagandist than it would seem” and not “bipartisan”.“The guy who custom-made his own dark Maga hat that he wears to opine in the Oval Office with the president who he spent $270m to elect thinks I’m just too partisan,” Stewart laughed. “I’m really not sure what he thinks bipartisan means, but it’s generally not ‘I support Donald Trump and also Germany’s AFD party.’ That’s not bipartisan, that’s just the same shit.“Look, Elon, I do have some criticisms about Doge,” he continued. “I support, in general, the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways. And if you want to come on and talk about it on the show, great. If you don’t want to, sure.“But can we just drop the pretense that you won’t do it because I don’t measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times? Because quite frankly, that’s bullshit.” More

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      Federal layoffs hit the deep-red, rural US west: ‘Our public lands are under threat’

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      Republican representative McKay Erickson walked through the halls of the Wyoming capitol with a Trump 2024 pin on the front of his suit jacket. Much of Erickson’s home district in Lincoln county falls under the jurisdiction of the Bridger-Teton national forest and Grand Teton national park.With that federal land, comes federal workers. While it appears districts in Wyoming crucial to US energy dominance have been spared the brunt of the layoffs, McKay said his forest-heavy district has not been so fortunate. He’s hearing from his constituents about the layoffs, and he’s troubled about the implications for his district’s future.“These people have a face to me,” Erickson said. “They have a face and a place in either Star Valley or Jackson that I know quite well.”Erickson is a small-government conservative, laments bureaucracy and stands by his belief that there’s a need to “cut the fat” at the federal level. But in his district, he foresees a lack of trail maintenance hurting local outfitting companies and understaffed parks with closed gates.“This way is so indiscriminate, and it doesn’t really drill down on the real issue as to where those cuts need to be,” Erickson said. “I’m afraid that probably all we’re going to lose is services.”Erickson’s district is in a bind that’s playing out across the American west.Wyoming, for the third presidential election in a row, voted for Donald Trump by a wider margin than any other state in the country. Neighboring states Idaho and Montana also swung red with mile-wide margins. All three have high proportions of federal land (Idaho – 62%, Wyoming – 48%, Montana – 29%), and thriving outdoor recreation industries dependent on public lands.Erickson, while watching cuts with apprehension, said that he is still supportive of the president, who won more than 81% of presidential votes cast in Lincoln county in 2024.“It hasn’t really shaken me. It’s concerned me, but not shaken me in my support,” Erickson said.As layoffs under Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) bleed out of the Beltway and across the country, local business owners, politicians and federal employees in the rural Mountain West told the Guardian that they feared devastating consequences for their communities.The Guardian reached out to US senators from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, some of whom have publicly praised Doge’s work, about their constituents’ concerns. None responded to a request for comment.Few towns represent the ties between small town economies and public lands better than Salmon, Idaho. With a population of just over 3,000, Salmon is cradled by a nest of federal lands, including the Salmon-Challis national forest, the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness and a smattering of Bureau of Land Management holdings.Dustin Aherin calls Salmon home, and is the president of Middle Fork Outfitters Association, which represents 27 local businesses. He said that the day-to-day duties of forestry service employees, from river patrol to permitting to conservation, keep businesses like his alive. Recent layoffs put their future in jeopardy.“The team in the field that manages the Middle Fork and Main Salmon river, all but two were terminated. And the two that were left have been reassigned,” Aherin said. “We have no on-the-ground management as of right now.”The urgency caused by the layoffs sent Aherin to Capitol Hill, where he spoke with the Guardian between meetings with federal officials. He held cautious optimism that Idaho’s federal delegation would be able to help craft a solution.A hundred miles south-west of Salmon, in Stanley, Idaho, Hannah, a terminated employee from the Sawtooth national forest who requested anonymity, has a grim outlook for the future of the small mountain town. She said that about 40% of staff was cut, including the entire wilderness and trail crew. She wonders who will handle the public-facing jobs, from cleaning toilets and campgrounds to providing visitor information, and worries about the effects on Stanley, which took a major hit in the 2024 wildfire season.“In a small town like this where you only have a couple good months of a summer season, one hard year and another hard-ish year could be really bad for some local businesses,” Hannah said.Hannah said the termination cost her her health insurance just weeks before a costly surgery, and she expects to have to relocate. In the early stages of her career, she said the experience will likely sour her, and other young civil servants, on public service.“We’re losing the next generation of public land stewards,” Hannah said. “And our public lands are under threat.”Similar anxiety is creeping into communities surrounding the Mountain West’s marquee national parks, which are economic engines for the region. A 2023 report estimated that National Parks generated more than $55bn in economic impact off of a budget of $3.6bn. Many of these dollars went to gateway towns in red states, such as those framing the entrances to Grand Teton national park or Yellowstone national park.Dale Sexton, owner of Dan Bailey’s fly shop in Livingston, Montana, is helping push the revival of the Yellowstone Business Coalition, whose 400-plus members are lobbying Montana’s federal delegation to work to address the effects of federal layoffs. Sexton is pragmatic about the national political climate and is betting that an economics-based argument will move the needle.“I’m envisioning that our delegation currently doesn’t want to abandon the Doge ship,” Sexton said. “But I’m also hopeful that outcry becomes so loud that it garners their attention and affects change.”Livingston city commissioner Karrie Kahle envisions a trickle-down effect from the layoffs.“As we lose federal workers first, if one of them is lost, we’re potentially losing a whole family from our community,” Kahle said. “If that federal worker has a partner, is that partner a teacher or doing other work in our community? Are we going to lose kids out of our school systems?”Andrea Shiverdecker, an archaeologist in Montana’s Custer-Gallatin national forest, lost her job on Valentine’s Day. Along with the impact on her personal life and community, Shiverdecker dwells on potential consequences for Yellowstone.“I don’t think people understand the sheer volume and amount of people that come through our ecosystem every year and the amount of manpower it takes to keep cleaned up,” Shiverdecker said. “This is what we fear with our public lands … We need to be stewards and foster them for future generations.”Shiverdecker said the layoff process has been disorienting. She said she was terminated 25 days before the end of her probationary period, while paperwork was being run for her promotion. She said she believes in “good people” and hopes to somehow return to her job, but right now, she has a lot of frustration.“How am I getting laid off for performance issues when you were processing my promotion?” Shiverdecker said. “It’s heartbreaking as a dedicated public servant, as a disabled veteran, as somebody who loves the fact that they’ve served. That’s the biggest honor you can give.” More

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      Yes, Trump is a hypocrite. But is pointing that out an effective attack? | Jan-Werner Mueller

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      Historians and psychologists will study when exactly the meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy started to descend into political disaster. A plausible contender for an answer is the – in itself trivial – moment when Brian Glenn, representative of the far-right outlet Real America’s Voice (newly admitted to the press pool) asked the Ukrainian president why he was not wearing a suit.That framing – the wartime president was somehow “disrespecting” America – was then picked up in the vile attack on Zelenskyy by JD Vance and repeated by a chorus of sycophants in the Republican party (including Glenn’s girlfriend Marjorie Taylor Greene). Critics immediately pointed out the hypocrisy: if Elon Musk can appear in a T-shirt and a baseball cap at a cabinet meeting, what is wrong with someone wearing fatigues? That gotcha might provide momentary psychological satisfaction – but it’s important to understand why the charges of hypocrisy achieve little with the Maga-world and why, as a matter of political psychology, something different is needed.According to a much-repeated maxim from a 17th-century French moralist, hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. According to this logic, hypocrisy actually contributes to moral standards being upheld, as no one wants to be seen flaunting them openly. Wearing a suit is obviously not an important “norm” – part of the problem with the whole debate about aspiring authoritarians breaking norms and crashing through guardrails has been that those diagnosing violations of norms have not always distinguished between different kinds of norms. They have also not made it clear why some norms matter for democracy much more than others (Trump was criticized for breaking the “norm” of having a pet in the White House).The larger issue, though, is that charges of hypocrisy do not land if the supposed hypocrite is not committed to any kind of consistency in the first place. They can simply assert that that the inconsistency happens to be justified: Musk de facto presiding over the cabinet meeting is OK because, hey, he’s a genius who can see more clearly than the rest of us why stopping cancer research and making hurricanes more deadly are actually making America greater in the long run. Zelenskyy, by contrast, is a Democrat in disguise who just does “propaganda”, according to Vance.An even better option for seeming hypocrites is to assert their superiority over those making the charge: Viktor Orbán is frequently accused of having betrayed his original liberal convictions; after all, he had been financed by George Soros to spend time at Oxford, his political party had a liberal, even outright anti-clerical, and pro-European program – before Orbán transformed himself into a cheerleader for the international far right. The response easily available to the authoritarian prime minister is that he has actually learnt something over the course of his career – to wit, that liberalism doesn’t work in his country – whereas the liberal critics, contrary to their self-image as sophisticated thinkers, cling to dogmas. Vance has kept pulling the same trick: he has learnt to stop worrying about Trump being Hitler and simply come to love the good felon, always emphasizing that he was able to see something in Trump that lesser mortals fail to get.A final reason why the accusation of hypocrisy is hardly a knock-down argument – and the one most applicable to Maga – is that those always ready to lie can hardly be caught out by claims about inconsistency. It is now clear that the Trump campaign was based on deceptions – starting with strident denials of any association with the Project 2025 Christian nationalists-cum-authoritarians. By the same token, Trump’s nominees were not exactly truthful in their confirmation hearings; and the entire Republican party is now evidently lying about their intended spending cuts.Pointing out the inconsistencies between what Maga Republicans – it’s not clear at this point whether there are any others – say one day and do the next will not be seen as a cause for moral introspection; rather, the inconsistency is proof of Maga’s power. What observers call performative lying is part of authoritarianism – think of Vladimir Putin lying to his interlocutor’s’ face, smiling, knowing that they know that he is lying, but cannot do anything about it.What about broader audiences? Do they not care about hypocrisy? True, some might; but, given the self-enclosed rightwing media ecosphere which has been created in the United States over decades – and the attention deficit of the public more broadly, to put it bluntly – it is unlikely that finer points about inconsistencies will get much of a hearing.The challenge is to devise rhetoric – and powerful gestures – that do not rely on complicated comparisons but stress how Trump and Musk are sabotaging the country. Democrats might simply boycott the Trump address to Congress next week and instead hold rallies and town halls establishing meaningful connections with citizens who Republicans are now refusing to listen to – and, yes, on those occasions, also slip in a point about hypocrisy: that the party that blathers about “giving power to the people” is afraid of any contact with the people.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and is a Guardian US columnist More

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      What Trump did during week 6: Gaza AI video and Zelenskyy meeting meltdown

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      During his sixth week back in office, Donald Trump and the vice-president, JD Vance, hosted Ukrainian president for what devolved into a shocking and explosive meeting.Trump accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of “gambling with world war three” while Vance berated the Ukrainian president in a storm of accusations and falsehoods about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Elsewhere in the Trump administration, Elon Musk again demanded that federal workers send an email detailing their recent accomplishments.Here’s what else happened last week.2 March 2025Day 42The fallout continued from Trump and Zelenskyy’s disastrous Oval Office meeting, as the Ukrainian leader sought to recalibrate and insisted a minerals deal was ready to be signed during a diplomatic visit to London. While Europe rallies behind Ukraine, Trump’s Republican allies, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said Zelenskyy may have to resign, a suggestion Senator Bernie Sanders called “horrific”. The Democratic senator Chris Murphy said Trump’s White House had in effect become “an arm of the Kremlin”.Also on Sunday:

      The health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, urged Americans to get the MMR vaccine in response to a growing measles epidemic in Texas, days after Kennedy, who has long sowed skepticism with his endorsement of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, downplayed the situation as “not unusual”.
      1 March 2025Day 41A federal judge in Washington blocked Trump from ousting the leader of a federal watchdog agency, ruling that the effort to terminate the official without cause was “unlawful”. The decision by the US district judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington allows Hampton Dellinger to remain the head of the office of special counsel, which protects federal whistleblowers. In her ruling, Jackson wrote that upholding the president’s ability to fire Dellinger would give him “a constitutional license to bully officials in the executive branch into doing his will”. The case is likely to be decided by the supreme court. View image in fullscreenAlso on Saturday: 

      Musk renewed his demand that every federal employee send an email detailing their recent accomplishments, a week after the original demand sparked chaos and confusion across the government workforce.

      Trump signed an executive order establishing English as the official language of the US.

      Supporters of Ukraine protested against the Trump administration across the US, including a Vermont ski resort where Vance was vacationing with his family.
      28 February 2025Day 40In an explosive Oval Office meeting, Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, assailed and berated Zelenskyy in a storm of accusations and falsehoods about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The tense exchange ended with Zelenskyy leaving the White House early, without signing a controversial minerals deal that was seen as key to unlocking US security guarantees for European peacekeepers in Ukraine. During the exchange, which played out publicly on live TV, Trump said Zelenskyy was “gambling with world war three” and told the Ukrainian president to come back “when he is ready for peace”. Hours later, Zelenskyy sought to de-escalate the situation in an interview on Fox News, but Trump appeared unmoved as he departed Washington for his Mar-a-Lago resort. View image in fullscreenAlso on Friday: 

      European leaders and Democrats rallied around Zelenskyy, voicing continued support for Ukraine, while Trump’s Republican allies demand the Ukrainian leader apologize.

      The White House said that classified documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago in 2022 had been returned to Trump.

      The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that Trump had “asked Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to depart the White House” after their contentious exchange in the Oval Office. 

      The Democratic party sued Trump over a recent executive order it says violates federal election law by giving him too much power over the independent federal election commission.
      27 February 2025Day 39Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, arrived at the White House bearing a letter from King Charles as he quietly appealed to Trump not to abandon Ukraine as the US president searches for a speedy end to Russia’s brutal invasion of the country. In remarks, Starmer praised Trump for “changing the conversation” and making peace possible in Ukraine while Trump denied calling Zelenskyy a dictator, despite having done so, and suggested Vladimir Putin could be trusted. En route to Washington, Starmer pledged to raise the country’s defense spending, a commitment seen as a way to persuade Trump to provide a “backstop” for European security in Ukraine. And in a major relief for the British premier, Trump indicated that he would not slap harsh tariffs on the UK. View image in fullscreenAlso on Thursday: 

      A federal judge found that the mass firings of probationary employees as part of the Trump administration’s government downsizing effort were likely unlawful.

      The ruling came on the same day that the Trump administration moved to terminate hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency housed within the Department of Commerce.

      Senate Democrats publicly – and some Republicans privately – raised concerns over the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid and cuts to USAid. 
      26 February 2025Day 38Donald Trump used the first full cabinet meeting of his second term to heap praise on Elon Musk and his billionaire ally’s mission to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government. Though not a member of Trump’s cabinet, Musk attended and took center stage as the secretaries sat mostly silently for the hourlong meeting. The tech mogul defended Doge’s actions, which have stoked confusion and backlash, but conceded that the team would make mistakes, citing a decision to cancel an Ebola prevention effort that was “quickly” reinstated. During the summit, Trump also threatened to slap 25% tariffs on the European Union and announced that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would visit the White House to sign a minerals deal with the US.View image in fullscreenAlso on Wednesday: 

      A new White House memo instructed federal agencies to submit plans for “a significant reduction” in their staff by 13 March, potentially setting the stage to shrink the government workforce by tens of thousands more in the coming weeks. A top Senate Democrat warned that Trump may be pursuing a mineral rights deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia as well as Zelenskyy and Ukraine.

      A Pentagon memo filed in court on Wednesday said transgender service members would be separated from the US military unless they receive an exemption.

      The supreme court handed the president his first victory, granting the Trump administration’s request to pause a lower court’s deadline for the government to resume nearly $2bn in foreign aid payments.
      25 February 2025Day 37In a dramatic vote, House Republicans unified behind a budget blueprint, taking a major step toward advancing Donald Trump’s “big BEAUTIFUL” tax cut and immigration agenda. But vulnerable Republicans face a brewing backlash over the plan, which would almost certainly require significant reductions to social safety net programs that serve the poor. House Democrats plan to hammer Republicans over their support for the measure and the potential cuts to Medicaid required to pay for it as they plot a return to power in next year’s midterms. But Trump’s fiscal plan is far from guaranteed: Republican negotiators from both the House and Senate must now reconcile their competing budget blueprints to move forward.Also on Tuesday: 

      The White House said it would pick which media outlets are allowed to participate in the presidential press pool, drawing sharp condemnation from the White House Correspondents’ Association, which warned: “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”

      The Trump administration announced that immigrants in the US without authorization could face fines and prison time if they fail to submit their personal data to a government registry while the president floated the creation of a “gold card” visa that would give wealthy foreigners a pathway to citizenship for a $5m fee.
      24 February 2025Day 36The US office of personnel management told agency officials that federal workers were not required to respond to billionaire Elon Musk’s demand that they defend their recent accomplishments or risk being fired, even as Donald Trump indicated support for the ultimatum. The email sparked widespread chaos and confusion amid ongoing turmoil Musk’s Doge has inflicted on the federal workforce. After government departments gave their employees differing instructions as to whether they should respond to the message, OPM, which manages the federal workforce, announced that compliance with the email was voluntary and that failing to do so by midnight would not be considered a resignation, as Musk had warned.Also on Monday: 

      France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, warned Donald Trump against a “surrender” of Ukraine during a visit to the White House, as the US president said Vladimir Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine as part of a potential deal to end the conflict. (The Kremlin has pushed back on this.)

      Earlier in the day, the US joined Russia, Belarus and North Korea in voting against an EU-Ukrainian resolution condemning Russia on the third anniversary of its full-scale invasion, another sign of Trump’s sharp turn toward Putin.  
      The Guardian is tracking the presidency’s first 100 days. Find days 1-35 in our full guide. More

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      UN human rights chief ‘deeply worried by fundamental shift’ in US

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      The UN human rights chief has warned of a “fundamental shift” in the US and sounded the alarm over the growing power of “unelected tech oligarchs”, in a stinging rebuke of Washington weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency.Volker Türk said there had been bipartisan support for human rights in the US for decades but said he was “now deeply worried by the fundamental shift in direction that is taking place domestically and internationally”.Without referring to Trump by name, Türk, an Austrian lawyer who heads the UN’s rights body, criticised the Republican president’s measures to overturn longstanding equity and anti-discrimination policies, as well as repeated threats against the media and politicians.“In a paradoxical mirror image, policies intended to protect people from discrimination are now labelled as discriminatory. Progress is being rolled back on gender equality,” Türk said in comments to the UN human rights council in Geneva.“Disinformation, intimidation and threats, notably against journalists and public officials, risk undermining the work of independent media and the functioning of institutions,” he added. “Divisive rhetoric is being used to distort, deceive and polarise. This is generating fear and anxiety among many.”Since returning to power, Trump has continued to attack the press. Last month, he barred the Associated Press news agency – on which local and international media have traditionally relied for US government reporting – from the White House.His administration has launched a purge of anti-discrimination policies under the umbrella term of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and moved to slash rights for transgender people. At the same time, the administration has sent panic through communities with its widespread and muddled immigration crackdown.Internationally, the US has moved to withdraw funding for international organisations that promote health and human rights, such as the World Health Organization, and imposed economic sanctions on the international criminal court, which is investigating war crimes in Gaza.Washington’s traditional allies, including Canada, France and Germany, are feeling increasingly alarmed as Trump lashes out at democratic leaders while expressing a fondness for autocrats, including the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.In his speech on Monday, Türk presented a concerned overview of the global rights situation, saying the world was “going through a period of turbulence and unpredictability”.“[What] we are experiencing goes to the very core of the international order – an order that has brought us an unprecedented level of global stability. We cannot allow the fundamental global consensus around international norms and institutions, built painstakingly over decades, to crumble before our eyes.”He called out the growing influence wielded by “a handful of unelected tech oligarchs” who “have our data: they know where we live, what we do, our genes and our health conditions, our thoughts, our habits, our desires and our fears”.Türk added: “They know how to manipulate us.”While his comments were not directed at the US, they come at a time of rising and consolidated power among American tech and social media billionaires who have fallen in line behind Trump.They include Elon Musk, who owns X and has been the 78-year-old president’s most prominent backer, but also Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who has ended factchecking programmes on Facebook and Instagram – a move the UN chief, António Guterres, has warned will open the “floodgates to more hate, more threats, and more violence”.Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest man and owner of the Washington Post, which in the last US presidential election declined to endorse a candidate for the first time in decades, recently banned opinion articles that did not support his views on “personal liberties and free markets”.Türk, whose comments were not limited to the situation in the US but could also apply to tech leaders in China and India, said that “any form of unregulated power can lead to oppression, subjugation, and even tyranny – the playbook of the autocrat”. More

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      ‘The basis of eugenics’: Elon Musk and the menacing return of the R-word

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      I got into my one and only physical fight when I was in seventh grade. It was right after school let out, the other boy was called Nathan, and moments before I launched at him, he knocked the books out of my brother Casey’s hands and called him “retarded”. More than 20 years after that scuffle, I still wonder how often Casey, a now 35-year-old autistic man, is called that word. Given the current political landscape, I’m certain he’s going to start hearing it more often.The R-word is in a new era of prominence in rightwing, chronically online circles – especially on 4chan and X. A favorite of those who currently hold power or stand to gain power under Donald Trump’s second administration, the slur is being used with gleeful relish to belittle and mock ideological enemies.In the past year, Elon Musk has used the R-word at least 16 times on X. He thought Ben Stiller was one for endorsing Kamala Harris; so was the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz for comparing Tesla to Enron.Elsewhere, brash, right-leaning personalities such as the political commentator Dave Rubin, and Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan of the podcast Red Scare, frequently throw the word around with provocative irreverence, attempting to discredit those who don’t align with their politics.Trump reportedly used the word to denigrate both Joe Biden and Harris in private conversations during the 2024 election. When Trump won in November, a “top banker” told Financial Times: “I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled.” (Interestingly, this banker chose to remain anonymous.)I’ve spent my life on the lookout for this word: how it shrinks people with intellectual disabilities down to a caricature, incorrectly depicting them as incapable of coherence and, ironically enough, social decorum; how it communicates a lack of respect for their humanity. It’s just something that you do when you have an autistic brother. And while the slur was certainly more prevalent when we were teenagers in the early 2000s, this resurgence is still menacing, not least because I can’t fight Musk after class.Right now, the right wants a word that stings, and the R-word does the trick, according to Dr Kelly Wright, an experimental sociolinguist, lexicographer and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin. In the 2000s, disability advocates waged a moderately successful social campaign to stop kids (and everyone else) from using the slur. Now, its proponents cling to it because of its taboo nature, lauding it as a victory over censorship by the woke mob (like the insults “libtard”, “fucktard” and “gaytard” before it).“Conservatives are empowered … People struggle with holding back what they actually want to say, so there’s something psychologically ‘freeing’ for this group of empowered people to be able to be like: ‘I’m going to punch up my words with something edgy and get attention,’” said Wright, whose work focuses on self-censorship, or the ways we limit ourselves when speaking.“[It is used] in a ‘please see me’ way.”They are getting seen. A recent study from Montclair State University found that Musk’s use of of the slur in early January correlated with a 200% spike in usage of the word by users on X, the platform Musk owns, in the days following.“There’s this whole generation of people who did use it in a more neutral way in the beginning, especially when we were younger,” Wright said. Now, “it’s like, ‘Oh, this other person who I identify with is using it.’ It gives people permission.” Cut to inauguration weekend, when the tech right and Maga youth descended on DC, throwing around the slur as they celebrated their win over the left. Just this week, Musk responded to a critical post on X: “I’m tempted to call this guy a retard, but I won’t because I’ve used that word too many times.” (Ironically enough, X’s own AI chatbot outlined the slur’s offensive history in the replies.)But the R-word isn’t just a rallying cry. It’s an attack on someone’s personhood.We’ve seen this before. Starting in 1910, the term “mental retardation” was used to diagnose those who were “feeble-minded”, failed to develop on the average timeline, and were deemed by some doctors as “incurable”. Around the same time, the belief that undesirable traits – specifically intellectual disabilities, and eventually race and sexual orientation – could be “bred out” of existence was growing in popularity in the US. This eugenics movement was endorsed by political powerhouses and substantial research on eugenics was bankrolled by the likes of the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation.View image in fullscreenAdvocates of eugenics suggested people with disabilities should be institutionalized and separated by gender, so as to discourage “bad breeding”. It was the popularity of the eugenics movement that served as inspiration for the Nazi party: in 1939, the Third Reich began systematically murdering Germans with disabilities in institutions; an estimated quarter of a million people were killed during this “euthanasia” program, at least 10,000 of them children. Stateside, tens of thousands of people with intellectual disabilities were forcibly sterilized from the turn of the century and into the 1970s. People with disabilities didn’t secure sweeping civil rights, including equal access to employment and housing assistance, until the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 – just one generation removed from present day.“[The use of the R-word] is absolutely historically linked to the understanding that ‘retarded’ children are defective children and that we can eliminate defective children for the good of society,” said Topher Endress, a reverend in Missouri who holds a doctorate in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. His focus is disability theology, including the words used to describe people with intellectual disabilities, and he spends much of his days working with this community. “I mean, that’s the basis of eugenics. I’m a little fearful of seeing this word pop back up because it does have such a strong eugenic connotation,” he continued.Today, approximately 7.4 million people in the US have an intellectual or developmental disability. Vocational services have connected them to employment in service, healthcare and food industries. Madeline Stuart, a model with Down syndrome and autism, walked her first runway in 2015 after falling in love with modeling at a fashion show. The chef Adam Libby, who has Down syndrome, treats his 2.6 million TikTok followers to cooking demos and recipes (pizza sauce and dough, all from scratch). Stories like these are everywhere, chipping away at the stigma around intellectual disabilities. But this is a highly vulnerable community, and their recent successes have hinged in part on government support systems put in place to foster growth and independence. This progress is still so fragile.Musk, a man who launched a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration festivities, has aligned himself dangerously closely with eugenicist thinking. Musk, who has said he is on the autism spectrum himself, also wields oligarchic power as he attempts to eliminate “unnecessary spending” in the federal government with Trump’s blessing. Early on, Musk set his sights on Medicaid, which was created in part to ensure people with disabilities had access to affordable healthcare. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are looking to slash Medicaid spending to support Trump’s tax cuts. When the Trump administration temporarily froze federal funds in its second week, programs like vocational rehabilitation and disability housing assistance were put into jeopardy, according to the American Association of People with Disabilities, which condemned the move. One source told ProPublica that even one more spending freeze could keep their organization from delivering hot meals to people with disabilities.Trump, who has used eugenicist language to describe undocumented immigrants, implied that February’s deadly plane and helicopter crash was linked to the FAA’s hiring of people with “severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions”, dragging disability into his anti-DEI crusade.And Trump’s pick to run the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, could be disastrous for children with disabilities, reports the New Yorker, as the department helps fund special education programs across the US. It’s also likely that McMahon would advocate for school choice, redirecting tax dollars to private schools that are not legally required to accept students with intellectual disabilities.According to Endress, people who use the slur “understand at a deep level that there is a bottom rung to our social hierarchy, and that is intellectually disabled people. And so because the word ‘retarded’ still links to them and pretty much to them alone, it becomes the worst insult you could give somebody,” Endress says.If the government were to withhold care from our most vulnerable, leaving them unhoused and uneducated and without healthcare or employment, it would make it easier to point a finger at them and say: “What a burden.”“It [suggests] you are the worst of the worst … You don’t deserve to be part of our social fabric,” Endress said.Casey works at a Wendy’s in our hometown – he’s been employee of the month twice (I have to brag about him when I can). We talk on the phone weekly, and he recently told me that, unfortunately, someone called him a “retard” late last year. One of his coworkers jumped over the counter and laid into the guy. Again, one person in the right place at the right time.In that way, I see the rise of the R-word as a gauge for how far society is willing to let people like Musk and Trump go. And while I believe that in most reasonable environments, it’s still very much taboo to say the word aloud, the fact that it’s being said by some of the most powerful people in the world, with no recourse, says enough. More

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      ‘I’m selling the Nazi mobile’: Tesla owners offload cars after Musk’s fascist-style salutes

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      View image in fullscreenWhen Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s “truck of the future” in 2019, Filipos could barely contain his excitement. He quickly paid $100 to get on the waitlist. Filipos described himself as a “true Tesla fanboy”, and the Cybertruck would be the third vehicle he’d buy from the company.“When the Cybertruck came out, I watched the live event that night, and my wife was sitting there going, ‘No. No. No,’” said Filipos, who lives in a suburb of Philadelphia and whose last name is being withheld for fear of online retribution. Despite his wife’s disapproval, Filipos loved the bulky trapezoidal truck. “I was truly geeking out on it,” he said.Now things have changed. Filipos bought a Ford F-150 Lightning instead of the Cybertruck. And even though his other car, a Model 3 Performance Tesla, had just 30,000 miles on it, he traded it in for an Acura in February. Frustration had been building for Filipos over the last few months, but the turning point was when Musk did back-to-back Nazi-style salutes during an inauguration day celebration for Donald Trump in January.“I didn’t want to be saddled with a vehicle that was associated with something so awful,” Filipos said. “When you own a vehicle like that, you are advertising for that company.”Filipos is part of a growing movement of Tesla enthusiasts who are now turning their backs on the company – selling their cars, dropping their leases and getting rid of Tesla stock. Many say that, while they still love the cars, they can’t square the CEO’s politics and behavior with their own. Musk is synonymous with Tesla; his vehicles, the Cybertruck in particular, are his calling cards.The Guardian spoke with three people who offloaded their Teslas in protest of Musk over the last month alone. All said they did so explicitly because of Musk’s salutes during the inauguration. Another person who spoke with the Guardian on the condition of anonymity started the process of dropping her lease on the day of the salute with an email to Tesla reading: “Your boss is a Nazi.”Across Reddit, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, dozens of posts are popping up with people saying they are also getting rid of their Teslas. Some have added photos of themselves flipping the bird as a goodbye gesture to their cars. 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      When you own a vehicle like that, you are advertising for that company
      One celebrity Tesla owner has even taken part. Singer Sheryl Crow posted a video of herself to Instagram waving goodbye to her vehicle as it was hauled off in a flatbed truck on Valentine’s Day. Her caption read: “There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. So long Tesla.” She said she was donating the sale proceeds to National Public Radio because it was under threat by “President Musk”.Musk, the world’s richest man, has wholeheartedly thrown his weight behind Trump. He donated $288m to his presidential campaign and uses X, the social media platform he owns, as a megaphone to tout the new administration’s policies and goad anyone who disagrees. This support has earned Musk a coveted position heading the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which is tasked with cutting federal spending. His government overhaul has been so sweeping that Democrats such as Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer have called Doge an “unelected shadow government”.Musk and Tesla did not return requests for comment. The CEO responded to backlash over his fascist-style salute with jokes and memes on X.‘No Swastikars’: protesters across the US lambast MuskThe Tesla selloffs come amid nationwide US protests against Musk and his actions. Protesters have gathered outside Tesla showrooms in cities including New York, Seattle and Kansas City, and in towns as small as West Chester, Pennsylvania.In San Francisco, roughly 100 people descended on the city’s Tesla showroom in late February chanting: “Hey hey, ho ho, Elon Musk has got to go”. They unfurled a banner reading “Musk must GO” showing a boot kicking a swastika and carried signs saying “No Swastikars”, an apparent new nickname for Teslas. Passing cars drove by honking enthusiastically.Several anti-Musk websites and social media accounts have also popped up. Tesla Takedown encourages people to protest. One of the organizers is actor and activist Alex Winter, the titular Bill from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. A TikTok account called Cybertruck hunters has also surfaced. It’s filled with posts of people projecting anti-Musk videos onto the massive rear bumpers of Cybertrucks.The Instagram account Everyone Hates Elon is distributing stickers that say, “Don’t buy a Swasticar” and sending out posters for people to plaster around their cities that say “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds” with a picture of Musk doing the Nazi salute. Tesla showrooms and individual cars are also being vandalized, according to Wired. One Cybertruck in downtown Manhattan was spraypainted with a swastika last week.This anti-Musk protest movement started to percolate over the summer, when Tesla owners began to put bumper stickers on their own cars that said: “I bought this before Elon went crazy”.Rebekkah, who lives in the Tampa area and is only going by her first name for fear of retribution, said she started looking for one of those bumper stickers to put on her Model 3 after Musk endorsed Trump for president in July.“It was just the shame of driving it around and getting out of it,” she said. “The potential optics that we were supporting him.”Rebekkah bought the car in 2020 because she was passionate about the climate crisis and wanted an electric vehicle, she said. She was initially thrilled with her Tesla, but like Filipos, things started to sour as she watched the Musk-Trump alliance grow. Then came Musk’s two-time inauguration day salute.“I was dead set on selling the car after that,” Rebekkah said, adding that her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. Rebekkah said she called her mom and told her: “I’m selling the Nazi mobile.”The car was gone within days. “We haven’t looked back since,” Rebekkah said. She put down a deposit for a Rivian.Tesla owners sell at a loss: ‘I happily paid $4,000 to get rid of that car’Ron likewise decided to sell his Tesla after Musk’s salute, even though he knew he would lose money. He bought his first Tesla in 2020, a gray Model 3 Performance, and loved it from the minute he test drove it. In 2023, he upgraded to a Model Y. Ron said he hadn’t really followed Musk at the time, but last summer, he began to pay attention to the billionaire’s increasing involvement in politics.“I started looking back at some of the things he said, and I started to feel guilty that I didn’t do more research beforehand,” said Ron, who lives in Los Angeles and is only going by his first name for fear of retribution. “I always just assumed he was a quirky, nerdy, you know, space-first exploration technology type of guy.”As time progressed and Musk became more outspoken, Ron said he grew increasingly embarrassed to drive the Tesla. “I felt like I was driving a billboard that supported his endeavors and his thoughts and ideologies,” he said.In the beginning of February, Ron swapped out his Model Y, which only had 15,000 miles, for another electric vehicle, a Hyundai Ioniq. He still owed thousands of dollars on his Tesla. 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      I felt like I was driving a billboard that supported his endeavors and his thoughts and ideologies
      “I guess you could say I happily paid $4,000 to get rid of that car,” Ron said. “That’s how much I disagree with his politics.”Tesla sales have plummeted over the last year. In California, the biggest US market for electric vehicles, they fell by 12%. And registrations for new Tesla vehicles fell by 11.6%, according to the California New Car Dealers Association, even as overall registrations for electric vehicles have grown in the state. Nationwide, the slump in Tesla sales marked the company’s first decline in how many cars it delivered to buyers annually. It’s unclear if the decrease can be fully attributed to Musk, since the electric vehicle market has seen increased competition over the past couple of years, especially out of China.In Europe, Tesla has taken an even more severe hit. In January, sales fell by 12% in Britain, 38% in Norway and 63% in France, according to the New York Times. Sales in Germany fell by 59% that month, coinciding with Musk’s outspoken support for the far-right alternative party AfD and with scolding Germans for focusing too much on “past guilt” for the Holocaust.Tesla stock flies, then plummetsIn spite of its poor sales and weak earnings reports, Tesla’s stock price soared in 2024 – likely boosted by Musk’s proximity to Trump and a regulatory outlook that’s friendlier than ever to the car maker. The day after the election alone, shares jumped 14%. But, as Musk has become increasingly involved in the day-to-day of the new administration, that has changed, too. Since mid-December, Tesla’s stock has plunged 25%.On social media, people are encouraging others to sell their Tesla stock. Reddit has threads of people posting their share sales with headlines like, “Never normalize Nazis” and “This is my way of fighting Nazis and I’m damn proud.” Since inauguration day, there’s been a 21% selloff of Tesla stock, according to ABC. Musk has lost more than $100bn from his personal fortune and the company’s valuation has now dipped below $1tn.Filipos is one of the people who sold his stock. He first bought 40 shares in 2020, not long after he joined the Cybertruck waitlist. Over the years, that number grew to 717 shares. He planned to keep holding, but when Musk endorsed Trump last summer, Filipos changed his mind.“I had to come to a reckoning,” he said. Filipos didn’t see Trump as standing up for the environment, and Musk’s endorsement “was against what I perceived as the original vision for Tesla”.In late July, Filipos sold all of his shares – even though he knew he probably would have made more money if he held. Now, he and his wife have gotten rid of their Model 3 too and are free of all things Tesla.“We feel lighter not being saddled with a symbol of hate,” he said. More