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    View from the couch: therapists on sessions in new Trump era

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    In his conversations with trans clients, Will Williams, a therapist in Oakland, California, sees the psychic toll exacted by the fusillade of recent executive orders targeting transgender protections. Many of his patients are filled with fear – and for legitimate reasons.In the days after Donald Trump took office, the administration required passports to be marked with sex assigned at birth, banned trans people from serving in the military and cut funding for gender-affirming care. On some federal websites, the “T” was removed from “LGBT”.“There’s this literal embodied experience of ‘Oh I’m a target,’” said Williams, who is trans. “[We are] the 1% that is going to be targeted and blamed, and when it comes down from the theoretical into daily life – psychically there’s an experience of being erased.”When clients ask him “Do I even exist?”, Williams can at least offer some comfort. He asks: “How is it to be in a room with another trans person?” The question makes plain what is in front of them: yes, they both exist. “The medicine is in that,” Williams says. “Trump can say the moon doesn’t exist anymore, but the moon still shines, and it still waxes and wanes.”Williams is among the many therapists who are figuring out how to navigate a profession that has been plunged into uncharted territory during a tense second Trump term. It’s a new atmosphere, and therapists say they are “learning beside” their clients as they go.Many of those who spoke with the Guardian requested anonymity so they could speak freely about sensitive issues.Liberal therapists say they sometimes incorporate their political views into the healing process to provide support for clients distressed by Trump’s actions. “You’re taught in school that therapists aren’t supposed to be political, but it’s very political,” one liberal practitioner said. “Now, at least in my therapist friend group, we’re like, ‘Screw that, no, this is very political.’”Trump’s policies, such as deporting immigrants, go against therapists’ code of ethics that requires them to uphold client’s dignity and worth, she said. That hasn’t precluded her from working with Trump-supporting clients. Some don’t return “and that’s OK”, but she successfully works with a range of conservative patients.On the other end of the spectrum, some therapists say they are encountering liberal clients who are fearful of coming to therapy: “They want to know if their therapist voted against their human rights.” Providing assurance to anxious clients is an instance in which many are choosing to share their political views. “When appropriate, I want to let them know that it’s really safe,” one therapist said.Liberal therapists, conservative clientsThe relationship between liberal therapists and conservative clients has demanded a slight revision of therapeutic calculus. A few said they find themselves revolted by their clients’ beliefs but figure out how to work with them effectively despite the fraught dynamic.None of the therapists I interviewed said they try to change clients’ political views, but therapy is often about getting people to think about problems in their lives differently – and sometimes there’s overlap.One therapist I spoke with used the example of some of her clients’ fear and hatred of transgender people. She asks them where those fears stem from, because they are often passed on generationally.“What kind of things were you taught as a child? If you heard your parents talking about this – do all of your values align with your parents’ values? Have you ever broken from them? Will you feel rejected by your family or community if you think differently?” she asks.As therapy progresses, fears are often unlocked, and some of those questions are answered. “Even if the client isn’t focused on the political aspect, we can work on some of those themes, like fear, without getting into politics,” she said.Another liberal practitioner who took on a Trump-supporting client had doubts about their potential for growth in part because of the latter’s very religious, conservative beliefs. The client was upset with their church’s liberal positions on some issues, and that was causing a problem in their life.The therapist encouraged the client to talk with church leadership and to try to understand a different viewpoint. “I didn’t look at it as an opportunity or say, ‘Oh, I got a chance to try to win them over,’” she said. “It was, ‘Oh, you have this conflict, and maybe if you can see another perspective that would help you.’”Sometimes, the roles are reversed and fear is on the other foot. A practitioner who fears fascism and societal collapse, and has stocked up on supplies in case “the shit hits the fan”, said the money she makes taking on conservative clients is worth it.“You know, I’m billing $90 an hour, and I can listen to that bullshit for 50 minutes for $90,” she said. “I feel gross saying that because I do think my [Trump-supporting] clients are doing something awful, and are the personification of the problems I deal with.”A website, ConservativeCounselors.com, highlights the work of conservative therapists around the country. The Guardian sent emails to five of them, but only one responded in a brief email.“Conservative therapists have formed a pretty tight group, and many of us have shared that you’ve reached out for an interview,” the therapist, Maria Coppersmith, said. “The general consensus is that the Guardian is so ultra-liberal, that any conservative therapist that shares his or her viewpoint is likely to have their words twisted and will be highly misrepresented. You might get a naive newbie therapist that will agree to an interview, but I am respectfully declining.”‘Screw that, this is very political’To describe what’s occurring in the interplay between therapy and politics, Bill Doherty, co-founder of Braver Angels, a non-profit that works toward depolarization, borrowed a term from practitioners in destabilized Latin American countries: political stress. “It’s the anxiety and psychological preoccupation that stems from what’s happening in our political situation, how government officials are behaving and how we’re treating each other when we disagree,” Doherty said. “The challenge is therapists have their own viewpoints – they vote – this is not external to their lives. So the major challenge that’s now happening is therapists trying to keep their own political leanings from influencing clients.”Broadly speaking, therapists say the profound shock and sharp sense of fear that was almost universal among liberal clients after Trump’s first win has been replaced with variations of numbness, hopelessness and resignation.“After Trump won in 2016 everyone was like, ‘Oh my God what’s going to happen? What are we going to do?’ And during Covid they were like, ‘Oh my God, there are no adults in Washington! What are we going to do?’” a therapist said. Now his clients are much more despondent. “They’re like, ‘Fuck it, let it burn,’” he said.Williams said there was indeed less “fear and scrambling” in November 2024, but it has been more difficult for trans clients this time around. Many are running against the clock to make changes to identification cards, birth certificates, passports and other documents.Similarly, a therapist who works with federal employees says there is a broad sense of “whiplash”. The administration has also attacked minorities and women employed at federal agencies, claiming that they are unqualified and were only hired due to DEI initiatives. That takes a toll on some clients, who may end up questioning how people view their worth.And then there’s intra-family strife. One therapist certified to practice in Michigan and California said familial stress is greater in Michigan, a purple, more religious state. His clients feel a dissonance: “They say, ‘I love my parents, and they’re showing up for me, but then I also know that they voted for this person who’s completely appalling.’”Start honoring the numbnessEach therapist who spoke with the Guardian said anger and numbness over the second administration are initially appropriate responses. “Anger is a protective force,” Williams added.But to help his clients to settle their nervous systems, he directs them inward: “In the stillness they can access the greater wisdom – usually the message is there of what’s going to be supportive to them.” He also urges them to “go to nature and connect to systems older and larger than this moment, and put energy toward something life-affirming and creative”.Another therapist has clients accept this new reality. “Normalize that there is this threatening energy that is closing down certain civil liberties and trying to change social norms,” he said, adding that he also urges people to be curious about their numbness.This doesn’t mean embracing being inactive, however. “Find ways to start honoring the numbness, while starting to move energy, whether that’s physical movement, or getting out, seeing people and finding light in what feels like a dark time for some folks, whether that’s through art, music or nature,” he added.Doherty recommends what he calls “buffering”: limiting intake of news and conversations with friends and family about politics. That’s an especially helpful strategy for couples he counsels who have differing political viewpoints. Many still make it work, Doherty said.Most therapists tell their clients to focus on what they can control. Some suggest putting energy into mutual aid projects or partaking in local political action. One therapist is seeing her siblings more, making herself an ally to trans folks. She also likes to listen to the Moth story hour as a healthy escape from reality.However, another therapist pointed to a meme in which a person is lying in the road, about to get hit by a large truck. In the meme, a nearby therapist waves, shouting: “Just focus on the things you can control!” She finds the advice to be ludicrous. “I feel like an asshole as a therapist sometimes, so I try to not say shit like that.”Liberal therapists often face many of the same fears as their clients. Williams recounted how he worked with some of his youngest clients who were “heartbroken”, and how there was synergy in that process.“What I tried to do in those situations was reconnect them to: ‘We’re here, we’re alive, there’s a purpose,’” Williams said. “I actually left those sessions feeling more purposeful, and feeling more power from what I witnessed after reconnecting them with themselves.”Another therapist said she felt a similar energy by opening up about her political views and fears: “It feels more like we’re in this together,” she said. More

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      The daylight savings debate misses the point: let’s make work hours flexible | Lynne Peeples

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      In a week, we will spring forward to daylight saving time. Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy all recently shared their desires to end the biannual flip-flopping of our clocks. The Republican senator Rick Scott recently reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act, which would lock our clocks on daylight saving time. Scientists, meanwhile, urge us to adopt the opposite: permanent standard time.The DST debate is heating back up. But all this chatter is, once again, largely missing the point–an omission particularly glaring for an administration that claims to be seeking greater efficiency.The time displayed on our walls and wrists carries only the meaning we attach. If we want to rein in our nation’s spending, if we want to make America healthy again, then we should turn attention to our inner clocks. For starters, we should nudge companies and schools to relax or revise rigid schedules – rather than, for example, reverting to pre-pandemic in-office requirements.We are all born with inner clocks, better known as our circadian rhythms. These biological drumbeats sync with our planet’s patterns to drive our bodies to do the right things at the right times: fall asleep, digest food, and fight pathogens, to name a few vital functions. But our internal timekeepers don’t all tick the same. Your 7am might be my 2pm.The upshot: a lot of money could be saved, and illness avoided, if we dropped the traditional one-schedule-fits-all that gives the clock-on-the-wall so much sway.More circadian-friendly schedules mean more people can wake, work, and learn in closer alignment with their inner clocks. They get more sleep. They take fewer sick days. This is especially true for night owls, whose circadian rhythms are most incongruous with the long-established early bird-biased schedules. Sleep loss alone is estimated to cost the US economy upwards of $400bn a year due to absenteeism, accidents, and reduced productivity. That’s around 1.5% of the country’s GDP – and far more than the approximately 1% of the GDP that pays the salaries of all federal civilian employees, whose jobs have been under attack.Impacts on sleep and sickness aside, it also pays to allow people to work or study during their peak hours of productivity and performance. Alertness, cognition, and learning fluctuate across the day. So does our ability to think critically, communicate effectively, and act morally. Risks of costly lapses of attention and reaction ride these waves, too. And, again, the ebbs and flows are unique for every person.A business’s market value is now about 90 percent intangible – tied to assets like IP, relationships and reputation. In other words, companies are investing primarily in employees’ brainpower. A few have begun optimizing those investments by taking advantage of our biological diversity.Magne Skram Hegerberg, secretary general for the Norwegian Association of Lawyers, told me he uses a curious tool to utilize peak brainpower: an army of plush frogs. During their personal power hours, employees will place one of these brightly colored plush animals on their desk or the door to their office. This signals others to “frog off”. Starting times among his workers also now range from 6.30am to 2.30pm. Meetings are held midday, when early birds and night owls overlap. After making these changes, he said, productivity in some areas doubled and, more broadly, innovation, creativity, and problem-solving improved.View image in fullscreenCamilla Kring, founder of the Copenhagen-based B-Society, has advised Hegerberg and other companies including medical giants Medtronic and AbbVie. She has watched job satisfaction rise and sick days plummet. Her end goal, she said, is to create a “new time architecture” that helps everyone better live by their inner clocks. And that includes B-persons, her term for night owls, an often-stigmatized club to which Trump and Musk belong. “You are born with this rhythm,” said Kring. “It’s not something you choose.”Among the few good things to come out of the Covid pandemic was a glimpse into a more sun-synced life. Some studies found that people, especially night owls, tended to get more sleep and maintain healthier circadian rhythms as school and work schedules were relaxed. But much of that greater flexibility is now being reversed. The Trump administration has issued an executive order to end remote work for federal workers, a mandate pushed by Musk, who enforces strict in-office policies at Tesla, SpaceX, and X. Amazon, too, made the move in January. JP Morgan and Dell plan to do the same in March. Emerging policies that restrict where an employee works also tend to define when. And that can result in wasted resources.Sure, there are benefits to having employees in the office. It can reduce loneliness, encourage teamwork, and inspire creativity. But workplaces can still foster flexibility. Business leaders can spread out work hours and schedule meetings, lunches, and other events for the middle of the day. Those gatherings would probably be more pleasant and productive, anyway, with fewer sleep-deprived and circadian-disrupted participants. And who wouldn’t also appreciate a means to stem the recent rebound in traffic congestion?Some secondary schools in Europe similarly offer students the choice of earlier or later electives while concentrating core subjects to midday periods. And a growing number of middle and high schools in the US have delayed their first bell, acknowledging that traditionally early start times are biologically backwards. Rhythms don’t just vary between us; they also change within us, drifting significantly later during adolescence. But overall progress remains slow.The consequences of permanent DST would disproportionately impact teens and other night owls. When required to arrive at a strict time for work or school, DST effectively forces them up an hour earlier than their already-late preference. The later sunrise also means they get less of the morning light that their rhythms rely on to avoid drifting even later. Some early birds, on the other hand, might appreciate the additional evening light with DST. It can nudge their bodies to postpone pumping out melatonin and let them enjoy a night out with friends.But rather than arguing over whether or how to lock the clock, a more efficient use of regulatory resources is to steer society away from strict schedules, as well as non-essential shift work and illogically drawn time zones. (For the record, there is still one wrong answer: Permanent DST would steal an hour of morning light and tack it onto the evening, further blurring the day-night contrast our inner clocks crave.)Neither Trump nor Musk appear conscious of the value and vulnerability of their inner clocks. Trump regularly posts on social media in the early hours of the morning; Musk wore sunglasses throughout last week’s CPAC conference. Still, it is in their power to help themselves and the American people better live and work with–rather than against–their inner clocks, regardless of whether the clock on the wall reads DST or standard time. It is a matter of efficiency that they would be foolish not to embrace.

      Lynne Peeples is a science journalist and author of the new book The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms More

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      in US Politics

      Even rightwingers are mocking the ‘Epstein files’ as a lot of redacted nothing

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      The Epstein files fiascoDrum roll, please: the “most transparent administration in American history” is declassifying shocking new information about Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. After years of speculation that powerful people have been concealing information related to the late financier and convicted sex offender, the Trump administration said earlier this week that it would release unseen details about the case.“Breaking news right now, you’re going to see some Epstein information being released by my office,” Pam Bondi, the attorney general, told Fox News on Wednesday night. “This will make you sick.”Apparently intent on treating this “new” Epstein information like an album drop rather than a horrific sex-trafficking case involving the abuse of young girls, the White House gave a bunch of influencers a first look at the information. On Thursday, Bondi’s team handed out big white binders labelled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “The Most Transparent Administration in History” to a group of 15 rightwing activists and self-styled “citizen journalists” visiting the White House. Grinning gleefully, these influencers proceeded to pose for the press with the binders like they were trophies from a school sports day.So what was in those binders? A whole lot of heavily redacted nothing, basically. A bunch of people at Bondi’s office appear to have hastily printed out Epstein’s contact book, which was published by the (now shuttered) website Gawker a decade ago, along with other information that has been in the public domain for years. They then shoved 200 pages of printouts into binders and gave them to a handpicked collection of useful idiots. Being as they’re the most transparent administration in American history, the justice department also made the information available on its website later that day – along with a note acknowledging that there wasn’t actually much to see. “The first phase of declassified files largely contains documents that have been previously leaked but never released in a formal capacity by the U.S. Government,” the note said.“This isn’t a news story, it’s a publicity stunt,” the Palm Beach lawyer Spencer Kuvin, who has worked on the case since 2005, representing nine victims, told the Miami Herald. He added that he feared that the Trump administration was using Epstein’s victims for political purposes. But then what do you expect from Trump – a guy who, in 2002 said of Epstein: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It’s even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do. And many of them are on the younger side.”In short, this whole big “reveal” was an embarrassing flop – so much so that it was mocked by people on the right. Even Laura Loomer, a white nationalist conspiracy theorist, thought the stunt was distasteful.“I hate to say it, but the American people can’t trust the validity of the Epstein files released today. It was released in an unprofessional manner with paid, partisan social media influencers to curate their binders for us,” Loomer tweeted on Thursday. She later added: “Sorry I won’t celebrate dancing like a school girl with a binder full of pedophile names.” When even Loomer thinks you’ve gone low, you’ve gone very low indeed.Ultimately, however, while nothing new may have been revealed in Bondi’s “Epstein files”, this grotesque stunt was very revealing. It was yet another reminder that there is nothing – not even the sex trafficking of minors – that Donald Trump and his associates won’t cynically turn into a self-serving photo opportunity. Or, I should add, an opportunity to “Rickroll” people: midday Thursday, while people were waiting for the documents to be published online, the House judiciary GOP account on X posted in all-caps: “#BREAKING: EPSTEIN FILES RELEASED.” This then redirected users to the YouTube music video for Rick Astley’s 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. Classy.Also revealing was who the White House thought should get a first look at documents involving sex trafficking. Among the influencers assembled was Mike Cernovich. Who is he? Just a rightwing manosphere influencer who has said things like “rape via an alpha male is different from other forms of rape” and told men that women exist “for your sexual pleasure”.The reaction to the backlash over the Epstein files fiasco also shows how, when anything goes wrong, people in Trump’s orbit are quick to point fingers and turn on each other rather than take responsibility. Bondi, for example, responded to all the criticism by accusing the FBI of withholding information from her. Meanwhile, some of the conservative influencers who got the binders full of nothing accused the southern district of New York of hiding information.“These swamp creatures at SDNY deceived Bondi, Kash, and YOU,” the conservative media personality Liz Wheeler tweeted. “Be outraged that the binder is boring. You should be. Because the evil deep state LIED TO YOUR FACE.”Perhaps what is most revealing about this fiasco, however, is that it is a stark reminder of how justice still hasn’t been served when it comes to Epstein’s many victims. Apart from Ghislaine Maxwell, none of Epstein’s many enablers and associates have faced any real consequences. A lot of rich and powerful people have got away with disgraceful things. And that’s not a conspiracy theory; that’s just our legal system.Andrew Tate and brother land in US from Romania after travel ban liftedSpeaking of predators evading accountability, the Tate brothers, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, landed in the US on Thursday. This comes after it was reported last week that the Trump administration had asked Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on the pair.View image in fullscreen‘Pro-lifers’ are demanding women face the death penaltySelf-described “abortion abolitionists” – who oppose all abortions without any exceptions and want to criminalize the procedure and ban IVF – used to be at the fringes of the anti-abortion movement. Now, people who believe that the death penalty should be considered for women who have abortions are slowly moving into the US mainstream. Mother Jones looks at how some of these abolitionist men have turned on women in the anti-abortion movement. “We need Christian men leading the fight against abortion, not feminist women,” one of those “TheoBros” recently wrote.At least six children die of hypothermia amid freezing conditions in GazaI haven’t heard any pro-lifers get upset about this.Jeff Bezos is sending Katy Perry to spaceLast year, Perry came out with Woman’s World, her first solo single in three years and, she said, “the first contribution I have given since becoming a mother and since feeling really connected to my feminine divine”. Unfortunately, her contribution was panned so mercilessly that Perry is now taking her feminine divine as far away from the world as possible: the singer will fly to space during Blue Origin’s next (all-female) crewed mission, the Jeff Bezos-owned space company has announced. Rumour has it that if you work at the Washington Post and have any opinions that have the temerity to clash with Bezos’s, then you’ll get shot into space, too.The pill hasn’t been improved in years – no wonder women are giving up on itMisinformation from wellness influencers along with a conservative backlash against birth control is causing more people to stop taking the pill. “But there’s another, underlying problem when it comes to contraception,” writes Martha Gill. “It needs to improve … It’s common for women to be using the same methods as their mothers – or even their grandmothers. Why aren’t contraceptives getting better?”The week in porktriarchyBig news for anyone with a small child: Peppa Pig’s mother (Mummy Pig) is having a new little piglet. Not sure how they can afford three children in this day and age but maybe Mummy Pig has been trading meme coins. While I’m sure Elon “have more babies” Musk is thrilled by the baby announcement, it is not clear how Cardi B feels. The rapper has been in a feud with Peppa since 2020, ever since her daughter started ruining her Uggs by jumping in muddy puddles. More

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      Sold-out farm shops, smuggled deliveries and safety warnings: US battle over raw milk grows

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      It’s 8am, and Redmond, an 11-year-old Brown Swiss dairy cow and designated matriarch of the Churchtown Dairy herd, has been milked in her designated stall. She is concentrating on munching hay; her seventh calf is hovering nearby.The herd’s production of milk, sold unpasteurised in half-gallon and quart glass bottles in an adjacent farm store, sells out each week. It has become so popular that the store has had to limit sales.Redmond and her resplendent bovine sisters, wintering in a Shaker-style barn in upstate New York, appear unaware of the cultural-political storm gathering around them – an issue that is focusing minds far from farmyard aromas of mud and straw.The production and state-restricted distribution of raw milk, considered by some to boost health and by ­others to be a major risk to it, has become a perplexing political touchstone on what is termed the “Woo-to-Q pipeline”, along which yoga, wellness and new age spirituality adherents can drift into QAnon conspiracy beliefs.Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to run the US Department of Health, is an advocate. He has made unpasteurised milk part of his Make America Healthy Again movement and recently tweeted that government regulations on raw milk were part of a wider “war on public health”.View image in fullscreenRepublican congresswoman and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene has posted “Raw Milk does a body good”. But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that “raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as salmonella, E coli, listeria, campylobacter and others that cause foodborne illness”.Last week, the US Department of Agriculture issued an order to broaden tests for H5N1 – bird flu – in milk at dairy processing ­facilities, over fears that the virus could become the next Covid-19 if it spreads through US dairy herds and jumps to humans. Since March, more than 700 dairy herds across the US have tested ­positive for bird flu, mostly in California. But the new testing strategy does not cover farms that directly process and sell their own raw milk.At the same time, another dairy product has become the subject of conspiracy theories after misinformation spread about the use of Bovaer in cow feed in the UK. Arla Foods, the Danish-Swedish company behind Lurpak, announced trials of the additive, designed to cut cow methane emissions, at 30 of its farms. Some social media users raised concerns over the additive’s safety and threatened a boycott, despite Bovaer being approved by regulators.In the US, raw milk is seen as anti-government by the right, anti-corporate by the left, and amid the fracturing political delineations, lies a middle ground unmoved by either ideology.“Food production has always been political,” says Churchtown Dairy owner and land reclamation pioneer, Abby Rockefeller.Churchtown manager Eric Vinson laments raw milk has been lumped in with QAnon and wellness communities. “There’s an idea around that ­people who want to take ownership of their health have started to become conspiratorial,” he says. “It’s unfortunate. Raw milk may be a political issue but it’s not a right-left issue.”Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Georgia, and Wyoming have passed laws or changed rules to allow the sale at farms or shops since 2020. In New York, sales are legal at farms with permits, although supplies are smuggled into the city marked “for cats and dogs”. There is no suggestion Churchtown is involved in that.Amish communities abandoned a non-political stance in the national elections in November and voted Republican, in part over the raw milk issue. An Amish organic farm was raided by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in January.There are also the health-aware “farmers’ market mums”, who say they are looking to raw milk for an immunity boost, and who harbour latent anger over the government pandemic response and vaccine mandates.View image in fullscreenRachel, a Manhattan mother of a three-year-old, who declined to be fully identified, citing potential social judgment, said: “After Covid, more of us started thinking about our bodies and health because of scepticism around doctors, hospitals and a corrupted health care system.” But like many people, she said, she felt she’d been “caught in the middle” of a political battle.Sales of raw milk are up between 21% and 65% compared with a year ago, according to the market research firm NielsenIQ. Mark McAfee, California raw milk advocate and owner of Raw Farm USA in Fresno, says production and supply across the state is growing at 50% a year. But the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call raw milk one of the “riskiest” foods people can consume. Experts say they are “horrified” by a trend they consider a roll-back of Louis Pasteur’s 19th-century invention of pasteurisation.Vinson disagrees with the idea that raw milk is “inherently dangerous” and argues, because conventional dairies rely on pasteurisation, “they don’t have to worry about sanitation around the milking practices – they can cut corners”. “You have to be more careful producing raw milk but it brings a higher price,” he adds.View image in fullscreenSince the pandemic, visitors to Churchtown have increased.Earlier this month, McAfee’s Raw Farm was hit by a notice from the California Department of Health warning that H5 virus, better known as bird flu, had been detected in a batch of cream-top whole raw milk.It’s not yet known if the virus can be transmitted to people who consume infected milk but the CDC officials warn that people who drink raw milk could theoretically become infected.Back at Churchtown Dairy, Vinson is tending the herd. A huge Jersey cow shadows her four-day old calf. At weekends, he offers tours of the barn to raw milk-curious visitors. “One of my main jobs is informing the public about farming and agricultural issues,” he says. That includes being receptive to changes. “It is important to say we don’t know everything and keep an eye open.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘I hate lying to her’: US couples on voting against their partners’ candidates

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      In the 2024 election, women turned out for Kamala Harris, while men were instrumental in securing Donald Trump’s win, according to early polling information. In some cases, those women and men were married to each other or otherwise romantically involved. In other relationships, it was the men who voted for Harris, while their female partners voted for Trump.Here, Americans who voted differently from their partners shared with the Guardian how such partisan views have affected their relationship, what it was like to “cancel out” a loved one’s vote, and why some kept their votes secret. Some requested to keep their identities anonymous to discuss personal matters.‘The only thing keeping me in this marriage is my teenagers’I’m voting for Harris, and I fight about it often with my husband. I’m disgusted with him for how he has changed from the man I married to supporting a candidate who is anti-everything in our personal lives. We have a trans child, a female child, a disabled child, mixed-race grandchildren, all of whom are hated by the Maga party. I’ve always been an independent feminist who bases beliefs on logic, facts and empathy. Living with a person who can’t admit to being wrong when facts are presented and no longer supports independent women is its own sort of hell. The only thing keeping me in this marriage is my teenagers. Thankfully, they’re juniors in high school, so I only have one and a half years to be stuck in it. Anonymous, caretaker, indie author and editor, 47, IllinoisView image in fullscreen‘I hate lying to her, but it’s for the best’I’ve been dating my girlfriend for 10 months. We met through a mutual friend at her church, and got along instantly. I love her to death. We celebrated Halloween and dressed up as ghosts.I secretly voted for Kamala Harris. I told my girlfriend that I wasn’t voting, and she doesn’t doubt it. She once said that Trump is America’s last hope, and that he is God’s chosen candidate. It was horrifying. I was internally screaming “WTF”. She has also said that the allegations against him are all lies; part of a “secret plot” to destroy him. But I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I feel dishonest. I hate lying, but it’s for the best. I’d hate to see her go insane over my vote, but I know she would. Not only that, but her father would disapprove of our relationship if he knew. He would disapprove of her just for dating me. I can’t risk that, ever. Anonymous, computer science student, 22, Joplin, MO‘He calls me stupid’It has been hell since the moment Trump announced his candidacy. Hubby, who voted for Clinton and Obama (he says he now regrets doing that), is brainwashed Maga to the core and watches Fox incessantly. It was affecting my physical and emotional health. He uses abusive language, calls me stupid when I explain my main concerns are education, health, climate change, moral standards and so on. He is an old man who has felt disenfranchised and diminished by social change.I met him in a club on a girls’ night, and we’ve been married for 37 years. No children, but he has a daughter and two granddaughters from a previous marriage who I have a great relationship with. And we have a cat! The evil spewed by Trump has made our life bizarre. But at this point, I’m in it for the long haul. Anonymous, retired educator and scientist , Florida‘We will still have sex tonight’It is election night as I write this. I’m sitting in the nursery holding our five-month old baby while he naps. My conservative husband is downstairs with our six-year old, probably listening to live election coverage that leans far right in perspective. He asked me how I was feeling today and I said fine. I know when I’m on my deathbed, I will not be thinking about Donald Trump, I’ll be thinking of my family. I’ll be thinking of my husband who yes, voted for Trump not once but three times but is also smart (yes, very smart), and my favorite person in the world. Now that the poll results are pouring in, I feel upset that my husband can support a misogynistic, racist and manipulative candidate. I also heard my husband’s concerns about another four years of a liberal leadership, and he is not wrong. He is just less right. And we will still have sex tonight. Susie, 39, from Colorado‘My wife expects Trump to stop funding mass slaughter’I voted for Jill Stein. Almost every Democrat we met voted for Jill Stein because she opposes what is happening in the Ukraine and Gaza (and the West Bank), especially Gaza. My wife voted for Donald Trump because she doesn’t believe a word he actually says and she expects him to stop funding mass slaughter. We think similarly about politics, but my wife doesn’t want the Democrats in power because they are warmongers, whereas I will not vote for anyone who endorses a genocide or an unjust war. Voting differently hasn’t affected our relationship in the least. Anonymous, artist, 69, Tucson, ArizonaView image in fullscreen‘I wrote in Jesus Christ, my husband voted Trump’I couldn’t vote for Harris because she is pro-abortion, and strong on that. Although I am strongly pro-life, I do think laws need to be refined to protect women who are miscarrying and to protect the life of the mother. I could not vote for Trump because he is mentally ill and unstable. I think he has turned the immigration issue into racism. My biggest issues are to protect and support Israel, to find a humane way to screen immigrants and help true asylum seekers, while protecting our country from real criminals, not illegals. So I wrote in Jesus Christ. My husband voted Trump. We can agree to disagree. We both have freedom to vote our conscience. Anonymous, retired RN and homeschool teacher, 58, Kingston, Tennessee‘Our love is more important than our disagreements’My wife and I have been together since 2019, married in 2022. I voted for Harris, she didn’t. It’s been a strain on our relationship and we have developed policies – such as when it gets too heated, either of us can say “peace out” – and we are working on listening thoroughly to each other. The election won’t affect our relationship. We’ve agreed on that! Our love is more important than our disagreements. Ross R Mason, 62, vice-president at EarthX Media Inc, Dallas, Texasskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion‘I don’t feel like my best self when I have to defend my values to my spouse’I really don’t understand how my husband can like Trump. We used to make fun of him when he was on The Apprentice. He is a smart man, and he believes these buffoons. I voted for Harris. I support women’s reproductive rights, and that was one of the most important issues for me. I also feel that she is sane and not divisive. My husband and I agreed when Harris got on the ticket that we would not discuss politics. If we do, it sours our relationship. It has worked for the most part. I don’t feel like my best self when I have to defend my values to my spouse. Anonymous, librarian, 47, from Oregon‘I love his determination to do his best’About 27 years ago, I met my husband on a blind date. Two years later, we married. He voted for Trump, I voted for Harris. It’s not a secret; my husband knows what’s important to me. I’m extremely aggravated by his preference for Fox News, which I see as a successful propaganda machine. However, while I don’t care for his political perspectives and practices, I love his intellectual capacity, his sense of humor and his determination to do his best. Anonymous, retired educator, 78, from Tucson, ArizonaView image in fullscreen‘He chose a misogynistic racist over me’We’ve been married 40 too many years and basically canceled each other’s votes. I’ve been involved in politics since my 20s and consider myself as a liberal. There have been many arguments since my husband started to espouse Trump gaslighting. I hate the fact that he would choose a misogynistic racist over me, a woman. Abortion and immigration issues mattered to me this election. Most of our relatives came to the US as illegals and now this immigration rhetoric comes up? We both agreed not to discuss politics, though. We’ll keep on keeping on. Rebeca Guevara, 76, retired nurse from Laredo, Texas‘This makes me question the relationship’My partner knows who I voted for, but we just don’t talk about politics. I’d love to be able to have a discussion with him about the issues, but he usually changes the subject. While I consider myself a moderate (I’d vote for someone like Mitt Romney if he was the Republican candidate), he gets most of his political insights from Fox News. He sees Trump as strong and believes that he’d be worse off financially if Harris had won (he and I are both in a good position financially, but we’re not nearly rich enough to be better off under Trump).We met online almost two years ago and are in a committed relationship, but we both have kids from previous marriages and are not planning to live together anytime soon. The fact we can’t even have a discussion about the election makes me question the relationship. Anonymous, 51, Columbus, Ohio, with a management position in engineeringResponses have been edited for clarity. Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      ‘People are complex’: Maria Bakalova on Donald Trump – and playing Ivana in The Apprentice

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      The week Maria Bakalova was asked to consider playing Ivana Trump for the new film The Apprentice, she was in New York filming something else. With the meeting scheduled for her one day off, she spent the evening before trying to channel Donald Trump’s first wife. The film is set in the 70s and 80s, so she spent hours wading through photos of Ivana in that era. “A lot of makeup, a lot of hair,” she says. Bakalova laughs as she remembers spending the evening experimenting with a mushroom-like hairstyle and “heavy eyeliner with a lot of powder, like inches”, although she didn’t have an Ivana-esque wardrobe – “Am I gen Z or a millennial?” asks the 28-year-old. Either way, “We wear a lot of baggy clothes”, so she chose her most skintight outfit.She met the director Ali Abbasi in the middle of the day, feeling a little clownish in her Ivana cosplay. They spoke for a couple of hours, “about people growing up in post-communist countries – because [Ivana] was from Czechoslovakia, and I was born and raised in Bulgaria – which shapes your inner world, your thoughts. We talked a lot about the similarities of our stories.”View image in fullscreenIvana had been a competitive skier, with a place on the national junior team that allowed her to compete outside communist Czechoslovakia in the late 60s. By the mid-90s, when Bakalova was born, Bulgaria was no longer a socialist republic but, for most people, travel outside the country was still rare. As a child, Bakalova, a competitive singer, got to travel to competitions all around Europe. It opened her eyes and instilled a sense of independence.This is Bakalova’s highest profile role since her big break in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2020 mockumentary sequel about the Kazakhstani reporter Borat Sagdiyev. She played Borat’s daughter, Tutar, in a performance so cringingly brilliant it got her an Oscar nomination. Despite this early success, Bakalova says her agents warned her not to get her hopes up about the role of Ivana – higher profile US actors were also in the running. “What I think is important is that [Abbasi] gave a chance to an eastern European to compete,” she says. “To have the opportunity, rather than just playing a prostitute or a crazy Russian scientist or a mobster or somebody that is just in the background with a few lines.”It was six months before she found out that she’d got the role, followed by a tortuous journey to get the film made and released. In a Vanity Fair piece, the film’s screenwriter, Gabriel Sherman, detailed the various obstacles – actors who didn’t want to “humanise” Trump, Hollywood studios and streamers who wouldn’t finance it, Trump’s Muslim travel ban that made it difficult for Abbasi, who is Iranian and based in Denmark, to work in the US (as well as the actors’ strikes and a global pandemic). The Apprentice’s largest investor, a film-making son-in-law of a billionaire and prominent Trump donor, reportedly threatened to sink the film once he’d seen it, because of a scene in which the Trump character appears to rape his wife. Ivana alleged Trump raped her in her divorce deposition, but later retracted. Trump’s lawyers sent the film-makers cease-and-desist letters and the big American distributors wouldn’t touch it. “Hollywood fashions itself as a community of truth tellers,” wrote Sherman, “but here they were running from a movie to prepare for a Trump presidency.”“We’ve been facing a bit of difficulty to release it,” says Bakalova, with comic understatement.In the film, Trump (played by a toupeed Sebastian Stan) is ambitious but slightly awkward and in the shadow of his father, then mentored and moulded by nefarious lawyer Roy Cohn (played, typically magnificently, by Succession’s Jeremy Strong). A cinephile, Bakalova was desperate to work with Abbasi – she was a huge fan of his work, including Holy Spider, the Iranian serial killer film. She wanted, she says, to be involved in his “dive into the underbelly of the American empire”. The more she researched Trump’s first wife – and the mother of three of his children – the more she found herself fascinated by how much Ivana achieved on her own. “She wanted to be Donald’s partner,” she says. Ivana is credited with promoting the couple’s 80s glitz, she was involved in running part of his businesses and managed New York’s Plaza hotel. “I think she was the reason he achieved so much early because she was very smart, very ambitious.”In the film, the power balance between Ivana and Donald is in her favour at the start of their relationship; Ivana is horrified at the idea of a prenup, and the measly amount it would give her in the event of a separation, and negotiates a better deal. “I saw an interview with her after the divorce, saying she didn’t know anything about prenups, and why do you need to have them? But if you’re going to play this game that way, if that’s going to be the picture of our marriage, OK, I’m going to play the same way.”How did she feel about the inclusion of the alleged rape in the film? Trump has always denied the allegations, since retracted by Ivana, who died in 2022. Bakalova says she trusted Sherman. “Do I think it’s important to have it out there?” she says. “Do I think it’s a crucial scene for both of the characters? It is, because we see somebody completely dismissing the person who built him in a lot of ways, who gave birth to his children. Not only physically, but verbally as well.”She says she doesn’t think it matters if the film “humanises” Trump (reviews have said it lacks bite). “When you dive deeper into a human being, there’s always good and bad sides, and there are always decisions that you make based on circumstances, people you surround yourself with, that change your point of view … I think we should step away from the idea of demonising people or creating idols, because people are complex.”View image in fullscreenThe Borat sequel was released less than two weeks before the 2020 US election, with the words “now vote” flashed up at the end. The Apprentice is also coming out around election time. Is it intended to have any influence? No, says Bakalova – it’s been too long in the making for any kind of intentional timing. “This is not a political film, this is not a hit piece,” she says. Although there are clear echoes, deafening in parts, of who the Trump character will later become. “Will it change opinions? I don’t know. But I feel like the biggest privilege that we have living in a democracy is to share our voices and to have an opinion, one way or another.”Bakalova grew up in Burgas, a city on the Black Sea coast. Her mother was a nurse, and her father a chemist; she is an only child. They were considered middle-class, she says, but she remembers as a child that nobody in Bulgaria had much.“Because of communism and because of inflation, because of a lot of things. I remember back in the 90s, chewing gum going from 100 bucks to 10 bucks to one penny.” They were comfortable, financially, she says, “but it’s not so easy that you can allow yourself to just rest and wait for something to happen. You know that you have to do something if you’re going to succeed.”Her love of the arts started with music. Her father would play the guitar at home, and she grew up listening to rock music and wanting to emulate those musicians. “Unfortunately, again, growing up in Bulgaria and in a place that still has some kind of patriarchy mindset, playing guitar is a little bit too masculine.” Instead, she became a flautist and was also singing in the choirs that would take her around Europe to various competitions.When she was 12, she damaged her voice and stopped singing for several months to rest it. “I started reading a lot of books and imagining that I’m in different places, I want to be like these characters. How can you somehow escape real life and imagine that you’re somebody else? That was the starting point of me falling in love with acting.” Later, Bakalova would study at Sofia’s National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts.She loves theatre and arthouse cinema, but she laughs and says “I’m not going to hide that I was always dreaming about Hollywood and America and cinema.” She remembers drawing the Hollywood sign in an exercise book at school, and writing that she was going to be “a great movie star someday. But of course, my last name finishes with ‘o-v-a’, and I didn’t see that in a lot of credits at the end of films.” One teacher told her that if she wanted to expand beyond Bulgarian film, she should try to get involved in the types of films shown on the European festival circuit.View image in fullscreenBakalova discovered the Danish avant garde Dogme 95 movement and, during her final year of university, used some of her scholarship money to buy flights to Copenhagen for her and her parents. She had an ambitious plan to march into the offices of Lars von Trier’s production company, Zentropa. “I was, like, ‘I’m going there, and I’m going to say, ‘I am willing to work here for free, to study, to learn how you guys do all of these incredible movies.’” She laughs, remembering her and her mother in the rain, Googling the office address. (They were kind, but sent her away, saying she would have to be fluent in Danish, which she then vowed to study.)Not long afterwards, Bakalova was shooting a Bulgarian French film, Women Do Cry, in which she played a young woman with HIV, when she heard through a friend about a project, which she would later find out was Borat, which required an eastern European actor. So secretive was the process that she feared she was being conned into human trafficking, but she was also tempted by the chance to audition in the UK – she thought she might get a chance, somehow, to meet the British director Andrea Arnold.In Borat, her character Tutar dreams of becoming like “Princess Melania” and becomes the “gift” Borat is supposed to deliver to one of Trump’s men, first the vice-president Mike Pence, and then Rudy Giuliani, to strengthen relations between their countries. Bakalova was a revelation in the film, infusing her character with a life-changing feminist trajectory while also having to pull off some excruciating scenes with “real” people, including leading an anti-abortion campaigner at a clinic to believe she was pregnant with her father’s baby and describing, to a group of women at a Republican conference, having just masturbated for the first time in the loos.“I don’t know how I did it,” she laughs. “I don’t know if I will I ever be able to do it again. It’s so strange, and I think that is why Sacha’s work is so brilliant. He challenges people, he does these movies that are like a social experiment of how far can you go?” It was “definitely difficult” she says. With only one shot, did it feel like a lot of pressure not to mess it up, or come out of character? “Sacha was so gracious, he was holding my hand every step of the way and guiding me, and I trusted him.”View image in fullscreenThere is a scene with Giuliani, which created a lot of attention. Tutar, by now a reporter for a rightwing news channel, is conducting a fawning interview with the former New York mayor and attorney to Trump in a hotel suite, before suggesting they go to the bedroom. Giuliani is filmed lying back on the bed with his hands down the front of his trousers (later, he claimed he was rearranging his clothes after removing a microphone). Was it the plan to get him in the bedroom? “You can only plan so much, but it’s about real people, real places, real situations. You can have goals that you want to achieve, but it depends on the moment. It was ideal to see how far things can get.” Was she nervous? “It was nerve-racking, because you don’t know how these things are going to turn. We worked with a great team of people. We had a great security team, we had a great stunt team. We had a lot of people that made sure we were all safe.”It helps, she says, having female producers – Monica Levinson on Borat, and Amy Baer on The Apprentice. “It’s important to have a female perspective behind the scenes, [and] if you’re doing such challenging roles, both as Ivana or Tutar, having a female there looking after you, looking after the story.”Bakalova has voiced a character in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (Cosmo the Spacedog), was in the dark comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies and has just finished shooting a family drama, Learning to Breathe Underwater – but in Borat and The Apprentice, her two standout films are about Trump. It is strange, she admits, but adds: “I think Borat is not about Trump. I do find a few similarities between the movies because they explore the American empire, and that land that we all have heard is the place you can feel freedom and opportunity. But both movies show there is always a dark side to it.” The Apprentice is released in cinemas on 18 October. More

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      Thanks to Donald Trump, Apple’s new AirPods will make America hear again | John Naughton

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      Like many professional scribblers, I sometimes have to write not in a hushed study or library, but in noisy environments. So years ago I bought a set of Apple AirPods Pro, neat little gadgets that have a limited degree of noise-cancelling ability. They’re not as effective as the clunky (and pricey) headphones that seasoned transcontinental airline passengers need, but they’re much lighter and less obtrusive. And they have a button that enables you to switch off the noise cancellation and hear what’s going on around you.I remember wondering once if a version of them could also function as hearing aids, given the right software. But then dismissed the thought: after all, hearing aids are expensive, specialised devices that are often prescribed by audiologists – and also signal to the world at large that you are hard of hearing.But guess what? On 12 September, I open my laptop, click on the Verge website and find the headline: “Apple gets FDA authorisation to turn the AirPods Pro into hearing aids.” The new generation of the headphones will be able to serve as clinical-grade hearing aids later this autumn. More importantly, they can be bought over the counter (OTC in the lingo of the healthcare industry) and they will sell for $249 in the US (and £229 in the UK). Compare that with the prices of hearing aids sold by, say, Specsavers, which start at £495 and go all the way to £2,995 for the Phonak Infinio Sphere 90.Now of course price comparisons can be misleading. Vendors of conventional hearing aids will stress that customers get the undivided attention of an audiologist etc. And for customers with severe hearing difficulties, that’s fine. But for people with “mild to moderate hearing impairment”, even the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has concluded that the customisation software provided by Apple will be adequate.It works like this. You take an on-demand hearing test on your iPhone’s health app, which causes the earbuds to ping each ear with different frequencies at varying volumes. You tap the phone screen if you hear the sound. After a few minutes, the app will generate an audiogram that graphs your hearing deficits and this audiogram can then be used to program the AirPods Pro as hearing aids. Alternatively, you can upload an existing audiogram if you’ve had one generated by an audiologist.Neat, eh? And also a nice example of engineering ingenuity. But, as with most things, the technology is only part of the story. The healthcare industry in the US is tightly controlled by the FDA, which insisted for years that any device that goes into a human ear needs a prescription. As Matt Stoller, an antitrust expert and campaigner, points out, since 1993, campaigners have been calling for the FDA to loosen its stance on these devices and the calls got louder over the years. In 2015, the president’s council of advisers on science and technology issued a report seeking to make these devices more widely available. The next year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued a similar report.But eventually, in 2017, Congress passed the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act, proposed by senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Grassley and requiring the FDA to allow hearing aids without a prescription – and Donald Trump signed it! The act imposed a deadline of 2020 on the FDA, but the agency continually prevaricated until 2022, after the Biden administration compelled it to act with an executive order. Only then did the dam that had been building up since 1993 break.The moral of this story, in Stoller’s words, is simple: “How we deploy technology is not a function of engineering and science as much as it is how those interplay with law, in this case a law that fostered a hearing aid cartel and then a different law that broke it apart. So it’s not outlandish to say that Joe Biden designed Apple’s new hearing aid AirPods, with an assist from Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Grassley and Donald Trump. It’s just what happened.”This is perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but it captures an essential truth that Silicon Valley would prefer to ignore: technology does not exist in a vacuum, and the ways it is deployed and developed are shaped by social and political forces. Social media companies escape liability because of a 26-word clause in a 1996 law, for example. And millions of people in the US suffering from hearing impairment could have had hearing aids at affordable prices at least a decade ago. The problem was not that the technology didn’t exist, but that it wasn’t in the interest of the healthcare-regulatory establishment to make it available.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhat I’ve been readingBad pressJeff Jarvis, the veteran journalist and City University of New York emeritus professor, has an insightful analysis on his blog titled What’s become of The Times & Co? about why US mainstream media has gone wrong.Top MarxThe Enduring Influence of Marx’s Masterpiece is a marvellous introduction by Wendy Brown to a new translation of Das Kapital.Head case A lovely essay by Erik J Larson is The Left Brain Delusion, which argues that we’re too governed by one side of our grey matter. More

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      What does the American dream mean in 2024? New York fashion week had thoughts

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      I’m writing this as New York fashion week comes to a close, and it’s been a whirlwind six days of shows and antics. Rihanna kept everyone waiting for almost an hour at Alaïa. Wu-Tang Clan popped up with a surprise performance onboard the Tommy Hilfiger ferry and Luar closed out the week with a front-row appearance by Madonna. As for the catwalks? There was one dominant theme that you couldn’t miss, from chinos to varsity jackets and knitted sweaters: preppy is well and truly back.This way of dressing originally took its inspiration from Ivy League sports clubs and campuses. It is a trend that is heavily rooted in class and identity and it comes at a time when these issues are at the forefront of American politics, with the 2024 presidential election less than two months away. Politics was also, naturally, a hot topic on and off the catwalks. Prabal Gurung took his post-show bow in a T-shirt emblazoned with “VOTE” on the front and “Harris/Walz” on the back. Anna Wintour and Jill Biden hit the streets of Manhattan alongside designers including Thom Browne, Michael Kors and Tory Burch as part of a non-partisan voting awareness march organised by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Vogue. And fresh from her appearance at the DNC, Ella Emhoff, the 25-year-old stepdaughter of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, was the model and front-row guest of choice for a string of designers including Burch and Coach.But the preppy trend provided the most food for thought. It feeds into a wider commentary from designers on the American dream and what that concept means and looks like in 2024. Immigration is a key part of the notion, and it also happens to be one of the crucial policies that both US parties are grappling with.Ralph Lauren, the son of Jewish immigrants who grew up in the Bronx and now has a reported net worth of £5.3bn, is often held up as the embodiment of the term. His picture-perfect spectacle on Thursday night in the Hamptons oozed an old-money lifestyle that is certainly one version of the dream. Speaking at a reception before the show, where waiters clad in white RL polo tops handed out champagne and miniature lobster rolls, the actor Laura Dern mused on Lauren’s version of preppy. “There is always deep iconography connected to America,” she said. “He loves American traditions and family has always been embedded in his stories. It’s always playful and hopeful. With everything going on, to feel hopeful is a nice feeling.”View image in fullscreenIf Lauren’s world is a version of the American dream as lived by the 1%, Willy Chavarria’s commentary was a little more democratic. Chavarria, who was born in California near the Mexican border, is the son of an Irish-American mother and Mexican-American father. The designer said he wanted to “celebrate immigration and those people who have built the country and are still the backbone of the country”. His show was held in a disused bank on Wall Street, and guests arrived to find a giant US flag hoisted above them and a copy of the American constitution on their seats. Chavarria said he added the accent to the show’s name, América, because this is how the word “is heard through the voice of an immigrant or the child of an immigrant”. The clothes riffed on uniforms – cargo pants and neat button-down shirts – and were said to be a celebration of the workforce. In a nod to farm workers, some wore bandanas wrapped around their faces. “The collection is a story of empowerment,” the designer said. And while Chavarria’s price point is out of reach for most blue-collar workers (trousers cost about £600), it did feel as if he was planting the seed for a new type of American style. “It’s really about the fact that all of us belong, all of us have purpose, and all of us have the ability to make change in this country, especially starting with the vote.”With an invitation that mirrored the American green card, Off-White’s Ib Kamara was also thinking about immigration. Kamara said he had decided to show in New York rather than the brand’s usual slot at Paris because he wanted to bring the brand, which was founded by the late American designer Virgil Abloh, “home”. Kamara explained that, growing up in Sierra Leone, “America was a dream”. “If you want luxury, you come to America. It’s a dream place. You feel hopeful when you come.”Stuart Vevers, the British designer and creative director of Coach, who sent Emhoff down the catwalk wearing an “I heart NY” T-shirt, also spoke about hope. “There’s a sense of optimism in the next generation,” Vevers said. “There’s a lot of hope. They’re going to change things.”To read the complete version of this newsletter – complete with this week’s trending topics in The Measure and your wardrobe dilemmas solved – subscribe to receive Fashion Statement in your inbox every Thursday. More

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      ‘Very rude’: the late Queen’s salty verdict on Donald Trump

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      Name: Rude Trump.Age: The former US president, Donald Trump, met the late Queen Elizabeth II on a couple of occasions: tea at Windsor Castle in 2018 …The Tyrant Who Came to Tea. Melania came, too. And then the following year at Buckingham Palace during a state visit.I remember. He enjoyed it, no? His former Russia adviser Fiona Hill wrote in her White House memoir that he considered a “meeting with the Queen of England was the ultimate sign that he … had made it in life.” And paying tribute to the Queen when she died, Trump himself wrote that he would never forget her “generous friendship, great wisdom and wonderful sense of humour”.Yeah, like he would know anything about that! Anyway, was it mutual, this admiration and respect? Er, not so much, according to Craig Brown’s new biography, A Voyage Around the Queen, now being serialised in the Daily Mail.Which says? That she found Trump “very rude”.No way! Trump rude? Yeah, I know, but you might have expected him to behave for the Queen of all people.She must have hosted a few controversial leaders during her reign? Putin, Assad, Mugabe, Amin. “She may not have found their company convivial; upon their departure, she may even have voiced a discreet word of disapproval,” wrote Brown.And of all the leaders it was Trump who she found rude! Was it something to do with royal protocol? Well, he did break that, by walking in front of the monarch when they inspected a guard of honour.Probably broke wind too, Trump by name … If he did that’s not covered in the book. What the Queen is said to have “particularly disliked” was the way the former president “couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder, as though in search of others more interesting”.More interesting than the actual Queen! Well, quite. Plus, she also “believed Trump ‘must have some sort of arrangement’ with his wife, Melania, or else why would she have remained married to him?”Queen Elizabeth II, she certainly spoke for her people. She certainly did.Do say: [In the voice of King Charles] “Tea, President Harris?”Don’t say: [As above] “Oh God, it’s you again.” More