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    ‘I escaped one gulag only to end up in another’: Russian asylum seekers face Ice detention in the US

    For most of the four years of Joe Biden was in office, citizens of Russia and other post-Soviet states seeking asylum in the US were generally released into the country while they awaited hearings on their claim in immigration court.But since last summer, many have been detained upon entering the US, and some of them have been held for more than a year, lawyers, activists and detainees say. Some children have been separated from their parents.“My Russian clients tell me, ‘Now our prison is 80% Russian, the remaining 20% are from rotating nationalities who stay for a while,’” said immigration attorney Julia Nikolaev, who has been advocating for detainees’ rights alongside representatives of the Russian opposition. “Only Russians and a few other post-Soviet nationals remain in detention until their final hearings.”Alexei Demin, a 62-year-old former naval officer from Moscow, was detained in July of last year.In the last 20 years, Demin rarely missed an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in the Russian capital. He had become concerned almost immediately after Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power, he said. For years, he criticized Putin’s regime on Facebook, and he was detained twice at protests. Still, he never imagined that he would end up fleeing his homeland for fear that Putin’s regime would imprison him. Or that he would end up imprisoned in the US.When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a colleague asked Demin why he wasn’t enlisting to fight. He replied: “If I go, it will be on Ukraine’s side.” Soon, as the crackdown on dissent in Russia intensified amid the war, Demin and his wife, like many others who had long openly opposed Putin, fled to the US to seek political asylum. For years, Russians have been among the top five nationalities granted asylum.The couple arrived in the US in the summer of 2024, after securing an appointment through CBP One, the app launched by the Biden administration (and since then shut down by Donald Trump) allowing asylum applicants to schedule to meet with immigration officials. At their appointment, Demin and his wife were detained, separated and sent to detention centers in different states. They haven’t seen each other since.His predicament, Demin said, was “a trap and a blatant injustice”.“This is how the US treats people who protest against Russia’s policies,” he said in a call from a detention center in Virginia in January.US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) does not release public data on the number of people from post-Soviet countries it holds in detention. But Nikolaev said that law enforcement officials have privately acknowledged to her that asylum seekers from those countries are being held longer.Other activists say they have seen similar patterns. The non-profit Russian America for Democracy in Russia (RADR) has played an active role in assisting detainees in immigration detention centers, finding lawyers and working with the government officials.Dmitry Valuev, president of RADR, said it was an issue that affected not only Russians, but also citizens of several other post-Soviet countries.There have been reports that some immigrants arriving from post-Soviet states are facing increased scrutiny over fears they are connected to Islamist terrorist organizations. It’s unclear what prompted US authorities to keep the Russian asylum seekers in detention. One theory is that immigration officials are targeting Russians and other post-Soviet nationals as spies.Eric Rubin, former US ambassador to Bulgaria who also served as a deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Moscow, said that the complicated history of US-Russia diplomacy can hurt Russian asylum applicants.“When you meet Russians in the United States, obviously you need to wonder whether some of them are actually working for Russian intelligence. Some of them are, most of them are not,” said Rubin.Nikolaev isn’t so sure. “Russian spies can enter the country with European passports, visas and all the right documents,” she said.Nikolaev in January took her concerns to US government officials, alongside Ilya Yashin, a leading Russian opposition figure. They met with officials at the national security council, who requested a list of separated families, Nikolaev said.The Department of Homeland Security, Ice and the national security council did not respond to repeated questions about detention policies or the specific cases outlined in this article.In a statement, the White House said that the duration of cases varies based on legal proceedings and any protections sought. The White House also said there had been “zero instances of children from any of the countries you mentioned being separated from their families by US immigration authorities in this entire fiscal year”.View image in fullscreenBut Galina Kaplunova, 26, an illustrator and anti-Putin activist, was detained and separated from her child and mother at the US border last August.In the summer of 2024, Kaplunova’s husband, a Kremlin supporter, had threatened to take her child away and report her to the police for her political activism, Kaplunova said. A native of St Petersburg, she had been detained multiple times at protests and had volunteered in opposition leaders’ campaign offices. Two days after her husband made the threat, Kaplunova, her four-year-old son and her mother fled to the US.At the US border with Mexico, Ice agents separated Kaplunova from her son, she said. He was placed in foster care, while she and her mother were sent to different detention centers in separate states.After being separated, her son was placed with a Mexican American family, she said. He didn’t speak English, so communicated with them through Google Translate.“I fled Russia so they wouldn’t take my child or jail me. But the US did,” she said.About two months after being detained and separated, Kaplunova was released and reunited with her son, she said. It was a miracle, she said.Now Kaplunova and her son now live in California. Her mother is still detained. Her son is afraid of being abandoned. Whenever she tries to discuss his time in foster care, he simply says he doesn’t remember it.“It’s as if he erased that part of his life so he wouldn’t have to remember it,” she said.He learned some English in foster care, but refuses to speak it with his mother.“Maybe he associates English with something bad, something negative,” she said.Valuev, the president of RADR, said that long periods of detention can hurt applicants’ asylum cases. Hiring a lawyer from within a detention center is nearly impossible due to the lack of internet access, he said. “Detainees are given a list of contacts, but most of these numbers don’t answer the phone,” he said.Additionally, many detainees have no access to materials for their asylum cases because their documents were stored on computers and phones that were confiscated.Vladislav Krasnov, a protest organizer and activist from Moscow, said he spent 444 days in a Louisiana detention center. Krasnov fled Russia in 2022 after Putin announced a draft. He crossed the border with the CBP One appointment and was swiftly detained. Now free, he is still waiting for a court hearing to review his asylum case.Reflecting on his experience, he said he was shocked by the welcome he got in the United States. “I escaped one gulag only to end up in another,” Krasnov said.He was also angry at Russian opposition leaders for not paying attention to his plight until recently.“Last summer, I watched Yulia Navalnaya hugging Biden in the Oval Office. Then she talked on the phone with [Kamala] Harris, and Harris declared that America supports people fighting for Russia’s freedom. To put it mildly, I had a complete breakdown at that moment, sitting in detention,” Krasnov said.About 300 detainees from Russia and other post-Soviet countries filed a lawsuit last November, calling their detention discriminatory, and demanding freedom for people they argue were held without a justification. A federal judge ruled in February that the court lacked the jurisdiction to review the detention policy and dismissed the case.View image in fullscreenAmong those mentioned in the lawsuit was Polina Guseva, a political activist and volunteer on the team of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Guseva arrived in the US in July 2024, applied for asylum and was sent to a detention center. She said Ice officers at the Louisiana detention facility where she’s being held “openly say that Russians are not being released”.Still, she does not regret coming to the US, she said, adding safety concerns in Russia left her with no other choice.“Two thoughts help me a lot. First, better to be here than to be raped with a dumbbell in a Russian prison,” Guseva said. “And second, my friend Daniil Kholodny is still in prison in Russia. He was the technical director of the Navalny Live YouTube channel. He was tried alongside Alexei Navalny in his last trial and sentenced to eight years. He has been imprisoned for more than two years now. If he can hold on, why shouldn’t I?”Alexei Demin, the former naval officer and longtime protester, was supposed to have his first asylum court hearing reviewing his asylum case in early February, but the hearing was rescheduled to mid-April because of the judge’s sickness. By that time, he will have been in detention for more than 300 days. More

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    Trump says the economy ‘went to hell’ under Biden. The opposite is true

    Donald Trump keeps saying he inherited a terrible economy from Joe Biden and many Americans believe him, even though that’s not true. During his White House marketing event for Tesla on Tuesday, Trump said the US and its economy “went to hell” under Biden. Last week, in his national address to Congress, Trump said: “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”But the truth is that by standard economic measures, the US economy was in excellent shape when Biden turned over the White House keys to Trump, even though most Americans, upset about inflation, told pollsters the economy was in poor shape.When Biden left office, the unemployment rate was a low 4.1%, and during Biden’s four years in office, the average jobless rate was lower than for any president since the 1960s. Trump has repeatedly railed against the high inflation under Biden, but the fact is that by the time Biden left office, the inflation rate had fallen to just 2.9% – down more than two-thirds from its peak and near the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal.Not only that, the nation’s GDP growth has been impressive, rising at a solid 3.1% rate at the end of Biden’s term. Ever since the pandemic ended, economic growth in the US has been considerably stronger than in the UK, France, Germany and other G7 nations. Shortly before election day, the Economist magazine ran a story saying the US economy was “the envy of the world” and had “left other rich countries in the dust”.Trump often says job growth under Biden was terrible, but the fact is that the US added 16.6m jobs during Biden’s presidency, more than during any four-year term of any previous US president. Under Trump, job growth was far worse – during his first four-year term, the nation lost 2.7m jobs overall, making Trump’s presidency the first since Herbert Hoover’s during which the nation suffered a net loss in jobs. The pandemic was largely responsible for this, but even during Trump’s first three years in office, before the pandemic hit, job growth was only half as fast as it was under Biden.Recently, Trump has repeatedly boasted how his tariffs will bring back manufacturing. Trump fails to note, however, that Biden had considerable success in bringing bring back manufacturing and factory jobs. Under most recent presidents, the US lost manufacturing jobs, but under Biden, the nation gained an impressive 750,000 factory jobs, the most under any president since the 1970s. A big reason for this was that as a result of Biden’s green jobs legislation and the Chips Act to boost semiconductor production, manufacturing investment boomed, more than doubling during Biden’s four years in office.Biden took considerable pride about how the economy performed under him, even though he failed to persuade most Americans that the it was doing well. In December, Biden wrote: “Incomes are up by nearly $4,000 adjusted for inflation [since he took office], and unions have won wage increases from 25% to 60% in industries like autos, ports, aerospace, and trucking. We’ve seen 20 million applications to start small businesses. Our economy has grown 3% per year on average the last four years – faster than any other advanced economy. Domestic energy production is at a record high.”Many economists vigorously disagree with Trump’s claim that he inherited a poor economy. Paul Krugman wrote that in January, when Biden left office, the US had what was “very close to a Goldilocks economy, in which everything is more or less just right”. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, had even more glowing words. “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” he said. “The US economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than pre-pandemic.”Trump pays attention to one measure of the economy above all others: how the stock market is doing. During Biden’s four years, Wall Street did very well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 39% and the S&P 500 soared by 55.7%, including a 28% jump during 2024. In contrast, the stock market is down overall since Trump took office as investors have grown alarmed about the president’s tariff war against the US’s trading partners.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo be sure, there were some serious economic problems under Biden. Housing affordability was a major problem, and inflation rose to uncomfortable levels. The spike in prices was caused largely by two factors: the pandemic, which gave rise to worldwide supply chain problems, and Putin’s war in Ukraine, which pushed up food and fuel prices. But Trump, in denouncing Biden on inflation, ignores all that.As Trump’s trade war spooks the markets and makes nervous CEOs rethink their investment plans, many economists are saying it’s more and more likely the US will stumble into recession this year.Trump has a long history of refusing to accept blame for mistakes and problems, and by repeatedly claiming he inherited a horrible economy, he seems to be laying the groundwork to blame Biden if the country slides into a painful recession. More

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    What will it take for a former president to speak out against Trump?

    The stadium announcer called on the crowd to give a warm welcome to “a very special guest”. A cheer went up as basketball fans realised that Barack Obama was in their midst. The former US president rose to his feet, smiled and waved before watching the Los Angeles Clippers take on the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday night.It was a jarringly normal scene at a profoundly abnormal time. The previous evening, Donald Trump had delivered the longest-ever presidential address to Congress, a dark, divisive tirade strewn with lies and insults – he called Joe Biden the “worst president in American history” and the senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”.Yet Biden did not respond and Obama remained silent. Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush were similarly mute. Six weeks into a Trump second term that has shattered democratic norms and ruptured diplomatic alliances, it remains unclear what – if anything – might prompt the former presidents to speak out.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Let’s look only at Clinton and Obama: it’s almost as though they’ve washed their hands of it.View image in fullscreen“I’ve been calling them Pontius and Pilate,” he said, referring to the Roman governor who allowed Jesus to be crucified. “You can understand why because when you challenge Trump, he goes after you and never lets up. It’s hell every single day, multiple times a day.”Trump’s barnstorming first six weeks in office have left millions of Americans reeling. He has pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, punished journalists, imposed tariffs, sided with Russia over Ukraine, expanded presidential power and unleashed the tech billionaire Elon Musk to slash the federal government. Critics say it is time to break the emergency glass.Struggling to find a coherent strategy, Democrats used delaying tactics to stall Trump’s cabinet nominees and heckled his address to Congress. Grassroots activists have expressed their anger and fear at town halls while demanding more direct action. Notably, former senior government officials have gone public with their concerns.Last month, a group of five former treasury secretaries wrote a joint essay for the New York Times warning that the nation’s payment system was under attack by political actors from Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.Then, five former defence secretaries signed a joint letter calling on Congress to hold immediate hearings on Trump’s recent firings of the chair of the joint chiefs of staff and several other senior military leaders.The presidents’ club has its own etiquette, however. The five men have gathered twice recently, first at the Washington national cathedral for Jimmy Carter’s state funeral, where Obama and Trump were seen conversing and even sharing a joke. Then, they reunited at Trump’s inauguration, where Biden was forced to listen to his presidency being described as “a horrible betrayal”.Since then, all the ex-presidents have resisted the temptation to stage a significant intervention. Sabato believes that one factor is an awareness that Trump – and his vituperative supporters – would be sure to strike back, including at family members such as Hillary Clinton, a former first lady and secretary of state who ran against Trump in the 2016 election.“Bill Clinton is close to 80 and he’s been attacked a lot in his lifetime,” Sabato said. “I’m not sure he wants any more of it and then there’s Hillary – he has to realise that Trump would go after her, too. With Obama, the more I think about it, the more I believe that little friendly chat at Jimmy Carter’s funeral either was part of Obama’s plan or, once it happened, he decided to capitalise on it and keep his mouth shut so that he wouldn’t be the target again.”He added: “It’s unpleasant. Trump unleashes this army of assholes and we’ve all experienced them on Twitter and in other ways. I get it. But I think they have an obligation to do more.”View image in fullscreenCertainly the former presidents’ feeds on the X social media platform do not convey a sense of a nation in crisis. Bill Clinton has posted tributes to political figures who died in recent weeks, although Hillary Clinton has been more combative – for example, by responding to the suspension of offensive cyber operations against Russia with sarcasm: “Wouldn’t want to hurt Putin’s feelings.”Bush does not have an X account, although his Texas-based presidential centre this week posted an article headlined, “America First should not put Russia second”, condemning Trump and JD Vance for attacking Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Obama’s X account, which has more than 130 million followers, did post a New York Times article by Samantha Power, former administrator of USAid, decrying Trump’s cuts to the international development agency. But it then offered congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles on their Super Bowl win and a Valentine’s Day message to his wife, Michelle, who did not accompany him to Carter’s funeral, the inauguration or Wednesday’s basketball game in California.Biden has kept a low profile since flying out of Washington on 20 January apart from signing with a Los Angeles talent agency. His X feed includes congratulations to the new Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, reactions to the release of Hamas hostages, a Valentine’s message to wife Jill, reflections on Black History Month, a picture of his beloved Amtrak train service and a tribute to the late representative Sylvester Turner.It is not hard to imagine how Biden must have seethed as Trump bullied and berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last week and threatened to tear up the 80-year transatlantic alliance that Biden had striven to renew. Yet he offered no public reaction.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDavid Litt, an author and former Obama speechwriter, said: “There’s the question of, is this protocol or is this patience. Protocol is pretty clearly out the window at this point, including Trump spending a good chunk of his address to Congress bashing Joe Biden. That is just not done and yet it’s done now.“Certainly Trump was not shy about criticising the current administration when he was an ex-president. I suspect that in 2029, if he is still physically able to tweet what he thinks about whoever’s in office, he will do so.”View image in fullscreenThe death of George HW Bush in 2018 left his son, George W Bush, as the only living Republican president apart from Trump himself, raising the question of when Bush could join Clinton, Obama and Biden in a powerfully symbolic show of bipartisanship.Litt added: “You get one moment when that has the greatest impact so you want to pick that moment carefully. Trump going further in selling out our allies and also forging a new alliance with Putin and Russia to me sounds like the kind of thing that might cross a line where a bipartisan group of former presidents would say this isn’t right.”There is traditionally reluctance among presidents to criticise a successor, especially during the opening honeymoon period. However, history is littered with exceptions to the rule.Theodore Roosevelt lambasted William Taft in a series of speeches, even though Roosevelt had promoted Taft as his successor in 1909. Carter eviscerated Ronald Reagan, who beat him in 1980, for sending arms to Iran in hopes that Americans held captive in Lebanon would be released.Clinton had a dig at his successor, George W Bush, for failing to achieve democratic progress in Iraq, saying in a 2007 interview: “The point is, that there is no military victory here.” Bush, in turn, reportedly told a closed-door meeting in 2015 that Obama’s decision to lift sanctions on Iran was a mistake.Obama denounced his successor Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration. He also warned that the “rule of law is at risk” under the 45th president.But none of it compared with Trump’s constant and vicious attacks on Biden during the Democrat’s four years in the White House. Trump mocked his successor as “Crooked Joe” and “Sleepy Joe” and claimed that he had caused “more damage than the last 10 worst presidents combined”.Whether a return of fire from Biden, who left office with an approval rating in the 30s and could be accused of being a sore loser, would benefit his party at this moment is questionable. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “The answer for Democrats is not backwards. It’s not in the past. It’s got to be somewhere forward-looking and that’s what they’ve got to figure out here.”Bardella said of the former presidents: “If I were them, I would get behind someone right now and say this is the guy or girl that I believe in. Stop playing the: ‘I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes or prematurely step out of line.’ We don’t have time for that crap. Get in the game or don’t ever talk again. If you don’t have anything to say now, while this is going before our very eyes, I don’t want to hear from you ever again.” More

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    Democrats are acting sedate and silent during Trump’s worst excesses | Moira Donegan

    What was the point of Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night? The annual speech – called the “State of the Union” address in every year except the one just after the president’s ascent to office – has long been a somewhat outdated bit of political theater, an event light on policy specifics and heavy on messaging in an era in which political messaging’s most effective venues have long since moved online.It’s perhaps even less clear what a speech to Congress is supposed to mean for this president, who has proven himself so indifferent to constitutional limits on his power – or for this Congress, which has shown itself so willing to abdicate its own constitutional responsibilities. It seems, like so many of the formalities of American politics do now, a bit like a phantom limb: something that Americans keep feeling for long after it has been excised. How long will it be, one wonders, until everyone stops bothering to go through the motions?But Trump, for one, seems to delight in any opportunity to make a spectacle of himself. On Tuesday, with a captive audience of all of Congress, many military leaders, about half of the US supreme court, and large swaths of the American public, he set about indulging all of his worst whims and lowest impulses. He repeatedly and extensively insulted his predecessor, the former president Joe Biden, by name and in strong terms. He relitigated old grievances, from his many prosecutions to his annoyance that not everyone likes him. He threatened the sovereignty of Panama and Greenland, went into extended discussions of the careers of various transgender athletes, boasted of ending “the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion” and removing “the poison of critical race theory”, and reminded his audience that he had renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”. Occasionally, the gathered Republicans in the crowd would burst into grunting chants of “USA! USA!” It was worse than merely vulgar. It was stupid.Trump boasted of the rapid pursuit of his agenda in the weeks since he returned to power, declaring that the US was entering its “greatest, most successful era” and that “our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never seen, perhaps never will see”. In fact, the country is on the verge of an economic recession. Thousands of federal workers have been laid off, and Trump’s hefty tariffs on the US’s largest trading partners – namely Canada, Mexico and China – sent the stock market into a freefall earlier that day. In the past, Trump has got cold feet, and backed off his tariff threats. On stage in the House chamber, he doubled down on them, declaring that he would pursue his trade wars, and acknowledging: “There will be a little disturbance.”Trump spoke intensely and at length about his culture war grievances, touting his executive orders declaring English to be the United States’ official language and that the federal government would recognize “only two genders”. “Our country will be woke no longer,” he said.He also touted his record on immigration, boasting of his administration’s mass deportation plans and the decreased number of migrants and asylum seekers at the southern border. He dwelt at length on stories of violence by undocumented immigrants, pointing to the families of murdered Americans in the crowd and describing undocumented people as “savages”. Alluding to a fringe legal theory that could be deployed to support his unconstitutional effort to end birthright citizenship, he referred to the immigrant population as an “occupation”, and cast his own mass deportation effort as something like the expulsion of an invading army – which sounds a lot more noble than the chaotic and brutal humiliations and human rights abuses that have actually taken place as a part of Trump’s deportation effort.In a section on economic issues, he blamed Biden, specifically, for the price of eggs, which have soared in some places to nearly $20 a dozen. (According to reporting from NPR, some of Trump’s advisers have asked him to talk more about egg prices, which were a repeated talking point during his campaign but which he has mentioned rarely since taking office, though prices continue to climb.) He also repeated false claims by Elon Musk’s extra-constitutional government-slashing group, the “department of government efficiency”, that Musk’s band of sycophantic teenagers who are leading the decimation of government services have found “hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud and waste” in Musk-targeted programs, such as social security. They have not.In fact, he talked about Biden a lot. At times, when he seemed to get distracted or lose his place in the speech, Trump appeared to insert insults towards Biden almost as filler. “And think of where we were with Joe Biden,” he said, in one such non-sequitur. “Biden took us very low, the lowest we have ever been.” Other digressions included complaints about his own various grievances and mistreatment. “Nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody,” he said once, after a brief discussion of a bill to combat revenge porn.Where were the Democrats during all this? Mostly, they were quiet. A few high-profile Democratic leaders, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the senator Patty Murray, skipped the speech. Others stayed and sat, sedate. Reportedly, word had gone out from Democratic leadership that party members should have a “dignified” presence at the speech, neither seizing the spotlight nor protesting against Trump out loud. The result was underwhelming.Democrats, who have told their voters that Trump represents a threat to democracy, sat silently, holding up ping-pong paddles printed with the word “false”. In an apparent nod to women’s eroded rights, some of them wore pink. Trump, for his part, used their silent presence to his advantage, turning them into props. Even if he cured a terrible disease, he jeered at the Democrats: “They will not stand, they will not jeer, they will not clap.” In fact, Trump has frozen virtually all federal funding of research into those terrible diseases, like cancer and Alzheimer’s, that American scientists were once working to cure. An opposition worth the name could have pointed that out; the one we have raised their ping-pong paddles a little higher.Trump is not the figure he used to be. He no longer seems to be quite in control of his own administration: he has delegated most spending policy to Musk, and has busied himself instead merely with turning the federal law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and the broader justice department, into instruments of his petty revenge. He’s not funny any more. But he is also more comfortable in power: even less deferential to formality, even less reverent towards his office, even more inclined to turn the presidency into what was always his greatest passion, a TV show.In Trump’s hands, an old State of the Union convention – pointing out citizens who had been brought to Congress as special guests – was given a new twist: Trump set the people up for surprises. One child, a 13-year-old aspiring police officer with cancer, was gifted with an honorary membership in the Secret Service; the cameras on him, his sunken eyes widened with surprise. A teenager who aspired to go to West Point stood up to wave to the crowd, and was told by Trump himself that he’d gotten in; his jaw momentarily hung open. The genre was the gameshow, the carnivalesque kind where nobodies see if they can catch some luck amid the random dispensation of gifts by the glamorous and benevolent host. Think of Oprah, in her decadent generosity, yelling: “You get a car!” In these moments, Trump seemed to be having fun. At least somebody is.

    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    ‘Resist’ shirts and ‘a little disturbance’: key takeaways from Trump’s Congress speech

    Donald Trump delivered a divisive, falsehood-laden speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, touting the successes of his first weeks back in office even as his tariff policies have rattled global markets and his criticism of Ukraine has stoked backlash among European allies.Addressing lawmakers for roughly an hour and a half in the longest such speech to a joint session, the president’s sweeping proclamations and biting attacks on Joe Biden prompted many Democrats to walk out of the House chamber as Republicans offered Trump one standing ovation after another.Here are the key takeaways from Trump’s address to Congress:1. Democrats voiced their discontent, with one House member even being removed from the chamberAs Trump kicked off his speech, he boasted about his electoral victory over Kamala Harris in November, describing his win as “a mandate like has not been seen in many decades”. Trump won the popular vote by 1.5 points last year, whereas Biden won it by 4.5 points in 2020. Trump’s electoral college vote count of 312 surpassed Biden’s vote count of 306 in 2020, but Barack Obama secured 332 electoral votes in 2012.Trump’s comment struck a nerve with with Representative Al Green, a Democrat of Texas, who began shouting at the president. “You don’t have a mandate,” waving his cane as he spoke.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, then warned Green to “uphold and maintain decorum”. When Green continued shouting, Johnson instructed the sergeant at arms to remove him from the chamber.More Democrats voluntarily walked out of Trump’s speech as it went on, with some of them wearing black shirts bearing the word “resist”. Others displayed panels that read “false” and “save Medicaid” as Trump spoke.2. Trump doubled down on his divisive agenda and mocked BidenEchoing some of his most controversial rhetoric on the campaign trail, Trump warned about the dangers of “transgender ideology” and declared: “Our country will be woke no longer.”Trump repeatedly attacked his predecessor, labeling Joe Biden “the worst president in American history”. When Trump spotted Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachusetts, in the crowd, he again deployed his derogatory nickname of “Pocahontas” against her.Trump also applauded the work of Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), even as the billionaire’s efforts have sparked protests across the country amid layoffs of federal workers.“He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this,” Trump said of Musk. Pointing to Democrats in the audience, Trump added: “Everybody here, even this side, appreciates it. I believe they just don’t want to admit that.”3. Trump downplayed the risks of his tariffs despite warning signs in the marketsOne of the most noteworthy moments came when the president defended his trade agenda, just hours after Canada and China announced retaliatory measures after Trump moved forward with heightened tariffs against the two countries and Mexico.“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again, and it’s happening, and it will happen rather quickly,” Trump said. “There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that.”Trump’s escalating trade war has already contributed to wiping out all of the gains since election day for the S&P 500, and US retail giants have warned consumers to brace for price hikes because of the tariffs on Mexican imports.4. Trump called for an end to the war in Ukraine after his spat with ZelenskyyJust days after he and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, exchanged heated barbs in the Oval Office, Trump reiterated his desire to bring about an end to the war.Trump said he received a letter from Zelenskyy earlier on Tuesday, which seemed to align with the Ukrainian leader’s public statement that he and his team “stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts”.“I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump said. “Simultaneously we’ve had serious discussions with Russia and have received strong signals that they are ready for peace.”5. Trump repeated thoroughly debunked claimsTrump shared claims about the economy, social security and foreign assistance that have already been fact-checked and found to be false.The president claimed to have inherited “an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare” from the Biden administration. When Biden left office in January, inflation had fallen steeply from its peak in June 2022, and real gross domestic product consistently exceeded expectations in 2023 and 2024.Trump also repeated Musk’s incorrect claims that millions of dead Americans continue to receive social security benefits, pointing to the fact that at least one alleged recipient appeared to be 150 years old. But that data point reflects a well known flaw in the social security administration’s system in that it does not accurately track death records. A 2015 report found that only 13 people who had reached the age of 112 were receiving social security payments.6. Trump called for repealing a bipartisan bill signed by BidenRepublicans offered Trump repeated standing ovations throughout his address, even as the president called for repealing a bill that a number of them supported.“Your Chips Act is a horrible, horrible thing,” Trump said. “You should get rid of the Chip[s] Act, and whatever is leftover, Mr Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt or any other reason you want to,” Trump said.Signed into law by Biden in 2022, the Chips and Science Act has spurred investment in new semiconductor manufacturing sites in the US, and the bill was supported by 17 Senate Republicans and 24 House Republicans. And yet, Johnson and fellow Republicans still stood to applaud the suggestion. More

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    Bernie Sanders dismisses Republicans’ ‘horrific’ calls for Zelenskyy to resign

    Independent US senator Bernie Sanders has dismissed as “horrific” claims that Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy may have to resign after a diplomatic meltdown in the Oval Office with Donald Trump.Sanders’ comments, in an interview with NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday morning, served as a retort to pro-resignation remarks from his fellow US senator Lindsey Graham, which in turn had been affirmed by the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson.“I think that is a horrific suggestion,” Sanders told NBC’s Kristen Welker in the interview. “Zelenskyy is leading a country, trying to defend democracy against an authoritarian dictator, [Vladimir] Putin,” the Russian dictator whose forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022.“I think millions of Americans are embarrassed, are ashamed that you have a president of the United States who says Ukraine started the war, that Zelenskyy is a dictator,” Sanders continued, referring to Trump. “He’s got it exactly backwards.“The people of Ukraine have lost tens of thousands of soldiers, their cities are being bombed as we speak. Our job is to defend the 250-year tradition that we have of being the democratic leader of the world, not turn our backs on a struggling country that is trying to do the right thing.”The comments from Johnson came after Zelenskyy’s contentious meeting on Friday at the White House with Trump and JD Vance. As part of a deal with the US involving minerals in Ukraine, Zelenskyy had sought security guarantees from the US as Ukraine defended itself from Russia’s invasion. That prompted the US vice-president to accuse Zelenskyy of not being grateful enough for US aid – and for the US president to ask Zelenskyy to leave the White House without the minerals deal being signed.Trump is the not first US president during Ukraine’s war to accuse him of being ungrateful for the US military’s assistance.In October 2022, citing four sources familiar with the exchange, NBC News reported that then president Joe Biden lost his temper in a phone call with Zelenskyy in which he told Zelenskyy he had authorized another $1bn in assistance for Ukraine – to which Zelenskyy responded by listing the additional help he needed.NBC reported that Zelenskyy issued a statement praising the US for its aid after that call with Biden. And, in an Twitter/X post on Saturday, Zelenskyy thanked the US and Trump “for all the support … during these three years of full-scale invasion”.Nonetheless, on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio accused Zelenskyy of undermining Friday’s talks by failing to “contain himself” trying to “Ukraine-splain on every issue”.“I hope this could all be reset,” Rubio said.Meanwhile, on Meet the Press on Sunday, Johnson told host Kristen Welker that “something has to change” with Zelenskyy.“Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude or someone else needs to lead the country to do that,” Johnson said.Johnson claimed Zelenskyy should have shown gratitude and thanks to the US in the meeting and argued the push for US mineral rights in Ukraine as part of a peace agreement is “a win for everyone” that will give the US minerals it needs and Ukraine a level of security.On CBS’s Face the Nation, Johnson’s fellow Republican congressman Mike Turner, the chairperson of the House intelligence committee, added: “Instead of taking that win, Zelenskyy turned it into a debate on American security guarantees [on the] peace negotiations.”Turner also said: “[Zelenskyy] needs to not have this precondition of American security guarantees, which are not coming.”The derailed meeting incited pro-Ukraine protests around the US. And leaders across Europe, along with the prime ministers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, posted messages of support for Ukraine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“For three years now, Ukrainians have fought with courage and resilience. Their fight for democracy, freedom and sovereignty is a fight that matters to us all,” Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau wrote on X after the White House meeting. “Canada will continue to stand with Ukraine and Ukrainians in achieving a just and lasting peace.”Only 4% of Americans say they support Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, according to the results of a CBS poll published on Sunday.Notably, though, only a slim majority of Americans say they support Ukraine: 52%. And a large minority – 44% – say they do not support either Russia or Ukraine.Speaking to Face the Nation on Sunday, Democratic US senator Mark Kelly of Arizona said Zelenskyy was “cornered” and “bullied” in the Oval Office on Friday during what was “a sad day for our country”.“It was a dumpster fire of diplomacy,” Kelly said.Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski was one Republican US senator who condemned the Trump administration over the way Friday’s meeting with Zelenskyy unfolded.In an X post, she called the meeting a “shocking conversation”.“I know foreign policy is not for the faint of heart, but right now, I am sick to my stomach that the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embrace Putin, a threat to democracy and US values around the world.”Republican US senator James Lankford, for his part, said he disagreed with calls for Zelenskyy to resign.“I’m not interested in calling on the resignation of other world leaders,” Lankford told Meet the Press. “Quite frankly, I think that would spiral Ukraine into chaos right now.” More

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    Trump administration quietly shutters online form for student debt repayment

    The Donald Trump administration has taken down the online application form for several popular student debt repayment plans, causing confusion among borrowers and likely creating complications for millions of Americans with outstanding loans.Those seeking payment plans are unable to access the applications for income-driven repayment plans (IDR), which cap what borrowers must pay each month at a percent of their earnings, as well as the online application to consolidate their loans on the US Department of Education website.The quiet removal came after a federal appeals court decision earlier this week that continued a pause on Joe Biden’s Save program, an income-driven plan for loan forgiveness that would have forgiven debts after as few as 10 years of payments.Biden’s Save program has been on hold since last summer after a group of Republican state attorneys general brought forward a lawsuit against the forgiveness features. As a result, about 8 million borrowers who enrolled in Save before it was halted currently have their loans in limbo as the litigation is ongoing.It is currently unclear how borrowers who were already enrolled in income-driven plans are supposed to submit their annual paperwork to certify their incomes. It is also uncertain when or if the payment plan applications will be back up on the website.The continued setbacks in the path towards student loan forgiveness has caused concern among those with debt, and loan forgiveness activists. Critics also point out that removing payment plan options was not a part of the previous litigation.There is also criticism towards the DoE’s decision to quietly remove the applications rather than announcing it, with the department opting instead to post a banner on StudentAid.gov.The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), a non-profit dedicated to eliminating student debt in the US, released a statement in response to the sudden removal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Shutting down access to all income-based repayment plans is not what the 8th Circuit ordered—this was a choice by the Trump Administration and a cruel one that will inflict massive pain on millions of working families,” the statement says.It goes on to say: “President Trump campaigned on lower costs, but once again has chosen a path that will ensure the greatest possible harm to the monthly budgets of everyday working families.” More

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    Keir Starmer lays down Ukraine peace demand ahead of Trump talks

    Keir Starmer has raised the stakes before a crucial meeting in Washington with the US president, Donald Trump this week, by insisting that Ukraine must be “at the heart of any negotiations” on a peace deal with Russia.The prime minister made the remarks – which run directly contrary to comments by the US president last week – in a phone call on Saturdaywith Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he also said that “safeguarding Ukraine’s sovereignty was essential to deter future aggression from Russia”.Downing Street made clear that the prime minister would carry the same tough messages into his meeting with Trump in the White House on Thursday.Starmer is likely to tell the US president that the UK will raise its defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product, in line with Labour’s election manifesto commitment.The prime minister is also expected to extend an invitation to Trump from King Charles for a second state visit to the UK.But the meeting is also expected to represent the biggest test of Starmer’s diplomatic and negotiating skills in his prime ministership by far, as he tries to retain good relations with Trump while making clear the UK and Europe’s red lines on Ukraine and Russia.View image in fullscreenSources said Starmer may speak to Emmanuel Macron on Sunday before the French president’s talks with Trump on Monday. The aim would be to agree a broad European position on the Trump-led effort to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict.Starmer also spoke yesterday to the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, and agreed that Europe must “step up” to ensure Ukraine’s security.Starmer’s meeting with Trump is being described in Westminster as possibly career-defining for the prime minister. Former UK foreign secretary William Hague said it was the most important first bilateral between a prime minister and a president since the start of the second world war.After a week of extraordinary anti-Zelenskyy and pro-Russian rhetoric from Trump and his team, the US president issued another dismissive assault on Zelenskyy’s leadership and relevance to a peace deal on Friday, saying: “I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings, to be honest with you. When Zelenskyy said: ‘Oh, he wasn’t invited to a meeting,’ I mean, it wasn’t a priority because he did such a bad job in negotiating so far.”View image in fullscreenAs well as dismissing the democratically elected Zelenskyy as a dictator, the White House has been pressuring Ukraine’s president to sign a $500bn minerals deal in which he would give the US half of his country’s mineral resources. The Trump administration says this is “payback” for earlier US military assistance.Zelenskyy has so far refused to sign, arguing that the agreement lacks clear US security guarantees.Reuters reported that the US was also threatening to disconnect Ukraine from Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system if Zelenskyy does not accept the Trump administration’s sweeping terms.Ukrainian officials characterised the threat as “blackmail”, saying to do so would have a catastrophic impact on the ability of frontline Ukrainian combat units to contain Russia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe news agency said the US envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, raised the possibility of a shut-off during talks on Thursday with Zelenskyy in Kyiv. An under-pressure Zelenskyy has signalled his willingness to accommodate Washington’s demand, but he has stressed he cannot “sell out” his country.Ukrainian officials are scrambling to find alternatives to Starlink in the event that Trump’s threat is carried out. Ukraine’s armed forces depend on the system to provide real-time video drone footage of the battlefield and to conduct accurate strikes against Russian targets.The Russian military uses Starlink too. Ukrainian commanders are now contemplating a nightmare scenario, in which Musk’s SpaceX company switches off Ukrainian access while continuing to offer it to the Russians – with the White House in effect helping Moscow to win the war.A senior Ukrainian official said his country’s armed forces need American satellite intelligence data. If intelligence sharing were to stop, Ukraine would struggle to continue its successful campaign of long-range strikes against targets deep inside Russia, he said.Asked if the US threat to turn off Starlink was blackmail, he replied: “Yes. If it happens, it’s going to be pretty bad. Of that we can be sure.” Frontline troops used the internet system continuously and it was fitted on advanced naval drones used to sink Russian ships in the Black Sea, he noted.Speaking on Friday, Trump rowed back on some of his earlier comments, which included a false claim that Zelenskyy was deeply unpopular, with a “4%” rating. Trump told Fox News that Russia did invade Ukraine but said Zelenskyy and the then US president Joe Biden should have averted it. “They shouldn’t have let him [Putin] attack,” he declared.Trump’s aggressive remarks have consolidated support for Zelenskyy among Ukrainians, with 63% now approving of him, according to the latest opinion poll before the third anniversary on Monday of Russia’s full-scale invasion.An Opinium poll for the Observer finds more than three times as many UK voters (56%) disapprove of the Trump’s administration handling of Ukraine as approve (17%).About 55% think it likely the UK will need to participate in a large military conflict over the next five years, compared with a fifth (20%) who think it unlikely. A majority (60%) of people believe the UK should increase defence spending. More