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      US immigration officials raid California farms as Trump ramps up conflict

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      US immigration officials carried out further “enforcement activity” in California’s agricultural heartland and the Los Angeles area as the conflict between the state and Donald Trump’s administration intensified on Wednesday.Immigrant advocacy groups reported multiple actions across the state, where an estimated 255,700 farm workers are undocumented, and said agents pursued workers through blueberry fields and staged operations at agricultural facilities.The raids have been sharply criticized by advocacy groups and local officials, who said they were “outraged and heartbroken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) activities targeting immigrant families”.“When our workforce’s lives are in fear, the fields will go unharvested, the impact is felt not only at the local level, but it will also be felt at the national level,” said Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios, the mayor of Ventura, a coastal city just north of Los Angeles. “Everything will be affected and every American who is here and relies on the labor of these individuals will be affected.”Immigration activities have continued in the Los Angeles area as well, where officials say people have been detained outside Home Depots and in front of churches. Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, said the raids have created a deep sense of fear in the region and that the White House has provoked unrest. The nighttime curfew she put in place this week will stay in place as long as needed, including while there are ongoing raids and a military presence in the city, Bass said at a press conference on Wednesday.Hilda Solis, an LA county supervisor, said Wednesday evening she was concerned about a “deeply disturbing incident” in the city’s Boyle Heights neighborhood involving two unmarked vehicles operated by Ice agents crashing in to a civilian car with two children inside and deploying teargas to apprehend an individual. She said she had also learned of an incident of Ice attempting to detain a member of the press.The nearly 5,000 US military personnel in the city now exceeds the number of US troops in both Iraq and Syria.The increasing raids come as Ice ramps up its efforts to meet a reported quota of 3,000 detentions a day set by Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff. The city has seen days of protest over Trump’s immigration crackdown and the subsequent military deployment.Los Angeles police announced they arrested more than 200 people in the city’s downtown area on Tuesday, after crowds gathered in defiance of the overnight curfew in the neighborhood. The LAPD said it had carried out more than 400 arrests and detentions of protesters since Saturday.The crackdown came after California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, filed an emergency request to block the Trump administration from using military forces to accompany Ice officers on raids throughout LA.Trump has ordered the deployment of 4,000 national guard members and 700 marines to LA after days of protests driven by anger over aggressive Ice raids that have targeted garment workers, day labourers, car wash employees and members of immigrant communities.Across the country, NBC reported that Ice was preparing to deploy tactical units to several more cities run by Democratic leaders, citing two sources familiar with the plans, who named four of the cities as Seattle, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.On Wednesday, dozens of mayors from across the Los Angeles region banded together to demand that the Trump administration stop the stepped-up immigration raids that have spread fear across their cities.“I’m asking you, please listen to me, stop terrorizing our residents,” said Mayor Jessica Ancona of El Monte, who said she was hit by rubber bullets during a raid in her city.Speaking alongside the other mayors at a news conference, Bass said the raids spread fear at the behest of the White House.“We started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons, gang members, drug dealers. But when you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe,” she said. “You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”Newsom and the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, have alleged in a pair of lawsuits filed on Monday and Tuesday that Trump’s takeover of the state’s national guard, against the governor’s wishes, was unlawful. On Tuesday, a federal judge declined to immediately rule on California’s request for a restraining order and scheduled a hearing for Thursday.In a speech, Newsom condemned Trump for “indiscriminately targeting hard-working immigrant families” and militarising the streets of LA, recounting how in recent days Ice agents had grabbed people outside a Home Depot, detained a nine-months-pregnant US citizen, sent unmarked cars to schools, and arrested gardeners and seamstresses.“That’s just weakness masquerading as strength,” the governor said. “If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant based only on suspicion or skin colour, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”In past days, thousands of troops have been deployed to LA over the objections of Democratic officials and despite concerns from local law enforcement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUS military troops in the city do not have the authority to arrest people, but they are allowed to temporarily detain individuals until law enforcement agents arrest them, Maj Gen Scott Sherman, who is leading the deployment, said on Wednesday. National guard troops on the ground in Los Angeles have already done so, he said.View image in fullscreenThe 700 US marines who will be deployed are receiving training on civil disturbances and will not have live ammunition in their rifles while in the city, Sherman said.The Los Angeles county sheriff, Robert Luna, said on Wednesday, however, that federal troops do not have the power to arrest or detain: “So if they are out in the field, they may be there, but they are working in conjunction with federal authorities. It could be Ice, border patrol, there’s a whole host of acronym federal agencies that they’re working with.” Luna also said he was unaware whether Marines were already on the ground in the city, but that local law enforcement was trying to “improve communication” with the military.Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said he expected the military would remain in the city for 60 days at a cost of at least $134m.Trump defended the military deployment on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday morning, writing: “If our troops didn’t go into Los Angeles, it would be burning to the ground right now, just like so much of their housing burned to the ground. The great people of Los Angeles are very lucky that I made the decision to go in and help!!!”The deployment of the national guard and marines is strongly opposed by California Democrats, as well as by every Democratic governor in the US. Alex Padilla, a California senator, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that protests against Ice and the subsequent legal showdown between his state and the government was “absolutely a crisis of Trump’s own making”.He said: “There are a lot of people who are passionate about speaking up for fundamental rights and respecting due process, but the deployment of national guard only serves to escalate tensions and the situation. It’s exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do.”Padilla said the Los Angeles sheriff’s department had not been advised of the federalisation of the national guard. He said his office had pressed the Pentagon for a justification, and “as far as we’re told, the Department of Defence isn’t sure what the mission is here”.Meanwhile, officials in Los Angeles have sought to reassure the public that the situation in the city remains largely peaceful and calm. At a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Hochman, the district attorney of Los Angeles county, pointed out how images of unrest on television and social media have misled many Americans about the nature and scale of the mayhem.“If you only saw the social media and the media reports of what’s going on over the last five days, you would think that Los Angeles is on the brink of war,” Hochman said.“But let me put this in perspective for you. There are 11 million people in this county; 4 million of which live in Los Angeles city. We estimate that there’s probably thousands of people who have engaged in legitimate protest, let’s say 4,000 people,” Hochman said.“That means that 99.9% of people in Los Angeles city or generally Los Angeles county have not engaged in any protest at all,” he continued. “Now, amongst the people who have engaged in protest, we estimate that there are hundreds of people, let’s say maybe up to 400, to use rough percentages, who have engaged in this type of illegal activity.”“So what does that mean?” Hochman asked. “That means that 99.99% of people who live in Los Angeles … have not committed any illegal acts in connection with this protest whatsoever.”Lauren Gambino, Sam Levin, Lois Beckett, Joseph Gedeon and agencies contributed reporting More

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      Trump is waging war against his own citizens in Los Angeles | Judith Levine

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      On Monday, the Pentagon sent 700 active-duty marines to Los Angeles and doubled the number of national guard troops deployed there to 4,000, to quell protests Donald Trump said on Sunday were already “under control”, “still simmering … but not very much”.The same day, the US president used the word “insurrectionists” to describe demonstrators against the unprecedentedly large and fierce immigration deportation raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) that started on Friday in that city. The remark echoed his long-held desire to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which would authorize him to send the military anywhere in the country to put down dissent.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, sued the Trump administration, arguing that it is unconstitutional to use the armed forces inside the US, except in the most extreme situations.Put another way, the government is not allowed to wage war against its own citizens. But this is what it is doing.In its first months in office, the Trump administration enacted what could be called soft authoritarianism: rhetorical glorification of white masculinity and derision of frailty and difference; intimidation of liberal democratic institutions – universities, law firms, the press, and the arts; weaponization of the judicial system against Trump’s perceived foes.Laced through this non-violent aggression are real violence and reward for violence toward selective populations: the denial of life-saving medical care for transgender people and pregnant women in distress, in deference to the “personhood” of their fetuses; the pardon of the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol and killed officers on 6 January 2021. And most prominent, the kidnap, deportation without due process, and rendition of immigrants to foreign gulags.But in the last week or so, a second phase has begun unfolding: the literal weaponization of the government to contain dissent. It is no hyperbole to call this, and the less visible mechanisms that reinforce it, fascism.This weekend in Los Angeles, protests broke out over Ice raids across the city, especially at workplaces including a clothing warehouse and Home Depot, where migrants muster for day labor. The raids were aimed at meeting an unattainable quota of 3,000 arrests a day. In this diverse city, which immigrants are rebuilding after the devastating fires, the outrage Ice provoked was inevitable.Some of the resistance was not peaceful – objects were thrown at cars, for instance – but the LA police got matters in hand. Still, over the objections of Newsom and LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, Trump deployed 300 national guard troops to the scene. They carried long guns and shields and fired “less-lethal munitions”, including flash-bangs, teargas and rubber bullets into the crowds; they also wielded their batons.At the same time as repressing citizens’ free speech, Ice is preventing elected officials from fulfilling their responsibility to oversee federal detention facilities in their jurisdictions. On Sunday, two US representatives from New York were denied entry to the federal building in downtown Manhattan where about 100 immigrants had been kept for days in small, short-term holding cells, some sleeping on bathroom floors. A month earlier, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was arrested outside a federal detention center for attempting to do the same thing.Speaking on Friday with NBC News, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, would not rule out arresting Newsom or Bass if they interfered with the deportation raids. “I’ll say it about anybody,” he proclaimed. “You cross that line, it’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It is a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”Homan later walked back his threat to arrest Newsom, who had dared him to do so. Trump expressed no reservations. “I think it’s great,” he told the press.Like every authoritarian regime, this one justifies doing its “job” as a defense of public safety necessitated by lawlessness. “Despite what you may be hearing, the record checks show that we arrested illegal aliens with criminal histories including CHILD CRUELTY, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, DRUG TRAFFICKING, ASSAULT, ROBBERY, HUMAN SMUGGLING,” Homan posted on X. Did they? Ice always says it is arresting only criminals, but it conflates undocumented status with criminality. Yes, it is a felony to conceal or harbor an “alien” – but giving sanctuary, as churches have long done, was rarely penalized until now. Being in the US without documentation, meanwhile, is not a crime. It is a civil, administrative offence.Nor is it a crime to peacefully resist the government’s torment of one’s family and neighbors. “Our officers and agents continued to enforce immigration law in LA, despite the violent protesters,” Homan continued. Some news outlets have called the protests “riots”, a characterization that local observers, including the governor, the mayor and radio host Charlamagne the God, reject. They counter that the demonstrations were loud, angry and almost entirely nonviolent before the national guard arrived to escalate the tension.This sequence of events is not accidental. On Facebook, Katherine Franke, a tenured Columbia law school professor who was forced to resign after defending student protesters against the war on Gaza, recounted a recent conversation with “a prominent Democratic attorney general”. Asked where things were going, he predicted, on “good information”, Franke paraphrased, that in May or June the federal government would intensify the crackdowns to provoke resistance, “then use that provocation as a justification for declaring martial law”. The declaration, she continued, could free the administration not just to deploy troops but also to suspend elections or the writ of habeas corpus.Trump seems to be affirming these predictions. “We’re gonna have troops everywhere,” he told reporters. “If we see danger to our country and to our citizens [the response] will be very, very strong.” He nattered on about protesters spitting on police. “They spit, we hit,” said the poet-president, looking pleased with himself.While manufacturing peril, authoritarian regimes seek to manufacture consent, as Noam Chomsky put it – or, better, enthusiasm – for the exercise of their power. To do so, they stage mass rituals of adulation and spectacular displays of the military might at the beloved leader’s command. On the US army’s official Facebook page, the ad campaign for the 14 June military parade celebrating the army’s and Trump’s simultaneous birthdays is unceasing. Repeatedly refreshed is a video of him at his desk. “I am thrilled to invite everyone to an unforgettable celebration, one like you’ve never seen before,” he reads woodenly. “This is your army. This is your country. This is America250,” says the quietly awed narrator of another video. The first eight seconds of the one-minute spot feature Trump.But enthusiasm is not easily won, and trying to compel obedience through force creates backlash. Better to attain anticipatory consent through fear. This is where surveillance comes in. To complement the FBI, the National Security Agency and myriad state-level snitching mechanisms for everything from abortion to teaching Black history, the administration has, perhaps unintentionally, created a sophisticated spying apparatus at the so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.The Heritage Foundation wrote the plan to reduce the administrative state to the size of a supply closet; thus, Doge was born. But Trump never cared about waste, fraud and abuse (he believes in them all). For him, the aim was to build a force of unswervingly loyal apparatchiks. In fact, as the Washington Post reports, the department is now scrambling to rehire federal employees. It turns out that things the government does, such as process tax filings and fly weather balloons, need people who know how to do them.But Doge is not obsolete. Now that the supreme court has turned over the nation’s personal data to Big Balls and the boys, and AI is connecting every dataset with every other dataset, it may have a more useful function: coordinating the surveillance state. Homeland security is already spidering through IRS data to locate undocumented immigrants through their tax filings ($96.7bn in federal, state and local taxes in 2024).While the shock troops do the dirty work and the marching bands inspire the masses, Doge may expand from enforcing fealty in the federal workforce to exacting it from everyone. Violence, propaganda and surveillance: the triumvirate makes fascism.

      Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist, and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More

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      Misinformation about LA Ice protests swirls online: ‘Catnip for rightwing agitators’

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      Since protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles began, false and misleading claims about the ongoing demonstrations have spread on text-based social networks. Outright lies posted directly to social media mixed with misinformation spread through established channels by the White House as Donald Trump dramatically escalated federal intervention. The stream of undifferentiated real and fake information has painted a picture of the city that forks from reality.Parts of Los Angeles have seen major protests over the past four days against intensified immigration raids by the US president’s administration. On Saturday, dramatic photos from downtown Los Angeles showed cars set aflame amid confrontations with law enforcement. Many posts promoted the perception that mayhem and violence had overtaken the entirety of Los Angeles, even though confrontations with law enforcement and vandalism remained confined to a small part of the sprawling city. Trump has deployed 2,000 members of the national guard to the city without requesting consent from California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, which provoked the state to sue for an alleged violation of sovereignty. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has also ordered the US military to deploy approximately 700 marines to the city.Amid the street-level and legal conflicts, misinformation is proliferating. Though lies have long played a part in civil and military conflicts, social media often acts as an accelerant, with facts failing to spread as quickly as their counterparts, a dynamic that has played out with the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, a devastating hurricane in North Carolina and the coronavirus pandemic.Among the most egregious examples were conservative and pro-Russian accounts circulating a video of Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, from before the protests with the claim that she incited and supported the protests, which have featured Mexican flags, according to the misinformation watchdog Newsguard. The misleading posts – made on Twitter/X by the conservative commentator Benny Johnson on pro-Trump sites such as WLTReport.com or Russian state-owned sites such as Rg.ru – have received millions of views, according to the organization. Sheinbaum in fact told reporters on 9 June: “We do not agree with violent actions as a form of protest … We call on the Mexican community to act pacifically.”A post about bricks stirs a mixture of real and fake newsConspiratorial conservatives are grasping at familiar bogeymen. A post to X on Saturday claiming that “Soros-funded organizations” had dropped off pallets of bricks near Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities received more than 9,500 retweets and was viewed more than 800,000 times. The Democratic mega-donor George Soros appears as a consistent specter in rightwing conspiracy theories, and the post likewise attributed the supply drop to LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, and California governor, Gavin Newsom.“It’s Civil War!!” the post read.The photo of stacked bricks originates from a Malaysian construction supply company, and the hoax about bricks being supplied to protesters has spread repeatedly since the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the US. X users appended a “community note” fact-checking the tweet. X’s native AI chatbot, Grok, also provided fact-checks when prompted to evaluate the veracity of the post.In response to the hoax photo, some X users replied with links to real footage from the protests that showed protesters hammering at concrete bollards, mixing false and true and reducing clarity around what was happening in reality. The independent journalist who posted the footage claimed the protesters were using the material as projectiles against police, though the footage did not show such actions.The Social Media Lab, a research unit out of Toronto Metropolitan University, posted on Bluesky: “These days, it feels like every time there’s a protest, the old clickbaity ‘pallets of bricks’ hoax shows up right on cue. You know the one, photos or videos of bricks supposedly left out to encourage rioting. It’s catnip for right-wing agitators and grifters.”Trump and the White House muddy the watersTrump himself has fed the narrative that the protests are inauthentic and larger than they really are, fueled by outside agitators without legitimate interest in local matters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists,” Trump posted to Truth Social, which was screenshotted and reposted to X by Elon Musk. Others in the administration have made similar points on social media.A reporter for the Los Angeles Times pointed out that the White House put out a statement about a particular Mexican national being arrested for allegedly assaulting an officer “during the riots”. In fact, Customs and Border Protection agents stopped him before the protests began.Sowing misleading information, reaping distrustTrump has increased the number of Ice raids across the country, which has stoked fears of deportations across Los Angeles, heavily populated with immigrants to the US. Per the Social Media Lab, anti-Ice posts also spread misinformation. One post on Bluesky, marked “Breaking”, claimed that federal agents had just arrived at an LA elementary school and tried to question first-graders. In fact, the event occurred two months ago. Researchers called the post “rage-farming to push merch”.The conspiratorial website InfoWars put out a broadcast on X titled: Watch Live: LA ICE Riots Spread To Major Cities Nationwide As Democrat Summer Of Rage Arrives, which attracted more than 40,000 simultaneous listeners when viewed by the Guardian on Tuesday morning. Though protests against deportations have occurred in other cities, the same level of chaos as seen in Los Angeles has not. A broadcast on X by the news outlet Reuters, Los Angeles after fourth night of immigration protests, had drawn just 13,000 viewers at the same time.The proliferation of misinformation degrades X’s utility as a news source, though Musk continually tweets that it is the top news app in this country or that, most recently Qatar, a minor distinction. Old photos and videos mix with new and sow doubt in legitimate reporting. Since purchasing Twitter and renaming it X in late 2022, Musk has dismantled many of the company’s own initiatives for combatting the proliferation of lies, though he has promoted the user-generated fact-checking feature, “community notes”. During the 2024 US presidential election in particular, the X CEO himself became a hub for the spread of false information, say researchers. In his dozens of posts per day, he posted and reposted incorrect or misleading claims that reached about 2bn views, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. More

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      ‘These guys are idiots’: Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black call out government’s Harvey Milk erasure

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      Sean Penn, the Oscar-winning actor of the 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk and Milk writer Dustin Lance Black have spoken out against US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to remove the gay rights icon’s name from a navy ship.“This is yet another move to distract and to fuel the culture wars that create division,” Black told the Hollywood Reporter in a phone call on Wednesday. “It’s meant to get us to react in ways that are self-centered so that we are further distanced from our brothers and sisters in equally important civil rights fights in this country. It’s divide and conquer.”Penn, who won his second best actor Oscar for playing the former San Francisco supervisor, added in an email: “I’ve never before seen a Secretary of Defense so aggressively demote himself to the rank of Chief PETTY Officer.”The order to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, christened in San Diego in 2021 for the prominent gay rights and navy veteran, was part of an internal memo that was leaked on Tuesday. The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson confirmed that the ship’s new name “will be announced after internal reviews are complete”.The timing of the decision for mid-June, a month meant to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, was reportedly intentional. The renaming is supposed to ensure “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture”, referring to Donald Trump, Hegseth and navy secretary John Phelan, according to the memorandum.“Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the commander in chief’s priorities, our nation’s history and the warrior ethos,” the Pentagon said in a statement.“These guys are idiots,” Black told the Hollywood Reporter. “Pete Hegseth does not seem like a smart man, a wise man, a knowledgeable man. He seems small and petty. I would love to introduce him to some LGBTQ folks who are warriors who have had to be warriors our entire life just to live our lives openly as who we are.”Milk, written by Black and directed by Gus Van Sant, depicted Milk’s political ascendancy in San Francisco, where he became the first publicly gay man to be elected to public office when he won a seat on the city’s board of supervisors. He was assassinated along with mayor George Moscone by former city supervisor Dan White in 1978. White was convicted on two counts of voluntary manslaughter and served just five years in prison.The USNS Harvey Milk was initially named in 2016 during the administration of Barack Obama. According to the leaked memo, Phelan is also considering new titles for vessels named after such civil rights icons as Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman and Cesar Chavez.“Harvey Milk is an icon, a civil rights icon, and for good reason,” Black said. “That’s not going to change. Renaming a ship isn’t going to change that. If people are pissed off, good, be pissed off – but take the appropriate action. Do what Harvey Milk had said we need to do, and it’s about bringing back together the coalition of the ‘us’-es that helps move the pendulum of progress forward. Stop the infighting and lock arms again. That’s what Harvey would say.” More

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      LGBTQ+ leaders condemn Trump plan to drop Harvey Milk’s name from navy ship

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      Leaders in San Francisco are blasting the Trump administration for stripping the name of the gay rights activist Harvey Milk from a US naval ship, and especially during Pride month, when people gather to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.Milk is a revered figure in San Francisco history, a former city supervisor and gay rights advocate who was fatally shot along with Mayor George Moscone in 1978 by disgruntled former supervisor Dan White. Just last month, California marked what would have been Milk’s 95th birthday with proclamations heralding his authenticity, kindness and calls for unity.He served for four years in the navy during the Korean war, before he was forced out for being gay. Milk later moved to San Francisco, where he became one of the first openly gay politicians in the world with his election to the board of supervisors in 1977.Cleve Jones, a close friend and LGBTQ+ activist, dismissed the renaming as an attempt by the Trump administration to distract the American public from far more serious concerns, including the ongoing war in Gaza and looming cuts to Medicaid and social security.“Yes, this is cruel and petty and stupid, and yes, it’s an insult to my community,” Jones said. “I would be willing to wager a considerable sum that American families sitting around that proverbial kitchen table this evening are not going to be talking about how much safer they feel now that Harvey’s name is going to be taken off that ship.”The Pentagon has not confirmed news of the renaming, a highly rare move, but unnamed officials say the change was laid out in an internal memo. It is in keeping with attempts by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the broader Trump administration to purge all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion. A new name has not yet been selected for the USNS Harvey Milk.Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, said in a phone call on Wednesday that he and the Harvey Milk Foundation have reached out to the Pentagon, which confirmed a proposed name change was on the table.“And our hope is that the recommendation is put aside, but if it’s not, it will be a rallying cry not just for our community but for all minority communities,” said Stuart Milk, who is executive chair of the foundation, adding that his uncle always said that gay rights, and those of other marginalized communities, required constant vigilance.“So I don’t think he’d be surprised,” Milk said, “but he’d be calling on us to remain vigilant, to stay active.”Elected officials, including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called the move a shameful attempt to erase the contributions of LGBTQ+ people and an insult to fundamental American values of honoring veterans and those who worked to build a better country. Pelosi and Newsom are both San Francisco Democrats.Newsom took aim at Hegseth, calling the attempt: “A cowardly act from a man desperate to distract us from his inability to lead the Pentagon” on the social media platform X.The USNS Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by then-navy secretary Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights.Sean Penn portrayed Milk in an Oscar-winning 2008 movie depicting his audacious rise in politics and his death by a supervisor who cast the sole “no” vote on his legislation banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.Milk’s career, and his killing, was also the subject of a documentary that won an Academy Award in 1985.While the renaming attempt is rare, the Biden administration changed the names of two navy ships in 2023 as part of the effort to remove Confederate names from US military installations. More

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      Trump rolls out Golden Dome missile defense project and appoints leader

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      Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration will move forward with developing a multibillion-dollar missile defense system, called “Golden Dome,” that he envisions will protect the United States from possible foreign strikes using ground and space-based weapons.Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in the Oval Office, Trump also said that he wanted the project to be operational before he left office. He added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part.“Once fully constructed, the golden dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space,” Trump said. “Forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland.”What exactly Golden Dome will look like remains unclear. Trump has not yet decided which of three options proposed by the defense department that he wants to pursue. Pentagon officials recently drafted three proposals – small to medium to large – for Trump to consider.The proposals all broadly combine ground-based missile interceptors currently used by the US military with more ambitious and hi-tech systems to build a space-based defense program.But the option that Trump chooses will determine its timeline and cost. The $25bn coming from Republicans’ budget bill is only set to cover initial development costs. The final price tag could exceed $540bn over the next two decades, according to the congressional budget office.Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had settled on architecture for the project and suggested the total cost of putting it into service would reach $175bn. He provided no further details.US space force Gen Michael Guetlein will oversee implementation of the project, Trump said.View image in fullscreenThe selection of Guetlein, the vice-chief of space operations at the space force, to oversee the project means the elevation of a four-star general widely seen at the Pentagon to be competent and deeply experienced in missile defense systems and procurement.The project is expected to end up largely as a partnership with major defense contractors, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, given it has the capacity to manufacture rockets to launch military payloads into orbit and satellites that can deliver next generation surveillance and targeting tools.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt will also rely on companies that manufacture ordnance currently used by the US military. The project’s baseline capabilities are set to depend on existing systems including the Thaad and Aegis Ashore systems made by Lockheed Martin and Patriot surface-to-air missiles made by Raytheon.“Golden Dome” came into existence as Trump believes that the US should have a missile defense program to track and kill missiles headed towards domestic US targets, possibly sent by China, Russia, North Korea or other strategic foreign adversaries, similar to Israel’s “Iron Dome” program.Shortly after he took office again in January, Trump signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to develop proposals for a “next-generation missile defense shield” in order to upgrade the US’s missile defense capabilities, which he noted had not materially changed in 40 years.The order came as the defense department has become more concerned about the threat of long-range strikes from strategic adversaries. Last week, the Defense Intelligence Agency released an assessment that said China has about 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles, Russia has 350, and North Korea has a handful.Initially, the White House had named the options for a space-based missile defense system “Moonshot Plus” and “Moonshot Plus Plus”. They were later renamed by Hegseth to be called silver, gold and platinum-dome options based on the three tiers, two former Pentagon officials said. More

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      Pentagon orders military to pull books related to DEI and ‘gender ideology’

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      Military leaders and commanders at the Pentagon were ordered on Friday to go through their libraries and review all books that were related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), in the US military’s latest anti-DEI move.Leaders were ordered to “promptly identify” materials that promote “divisive concepts and gender ideology [that] are incompatible with the department’s core mission”, according to a memo sent to leaders that was seen by the Associated Press. The department gave leaders until 21 May to remove the books.Also on Friday, the Pentagon sent a separate memo to the military’s training academies that the institutions should have “no consideration of race, ethnicity or sex” in their admission process and should focus “exclusively on merit”, though they can allow for students who show “unique athletic talent”, according to the AP. The department ordered the administrations to certify these standards by mid-June.The memo to leaders on books follows a similar order that was given to the military academies, including the US Naval Academy, that led to the removal of nearly 400 books from its library. Books that were withdrawn from the library included Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, novels by writers of color including the Palestinian American Etaf Rum, and academic books that examine race and gender.The department said that a temporary “academic libraries committee” would convene to help the other colleges and academies remove similar books from their collections. Librarians and staff were ordered to use search terms like “affirmative action”, “anti-racism”, “critical race theory” and “white privilege” when determining which books could be subject for removal.The book bans also affect K-12 school libraries that are on military bases around the world. A list of banned children’s books, including books about LGBTQ+ teens and others dealing with race, has been issued by the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DoDEA, which oversees the schools attended by the children of military families abroad.On the list is a New York Times bestseller chronicling the true story of a teenager set on fire by a fellow teenager while riding an Oakland, California, bus, as HuffPost reported. The list also includes a collection of poems and short stories by a New York Times bestselling author documenting the feelings and experiences of teenagers in love.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has vowed to purge DEI from the Pentagon, saying when he took office earlier this year that “our diversity is our strength” is “the single dumbest phrase in military history”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSince January, the Trump administration has been overseeing a widespread culling of anything the White House considers to be DEI within the federal government. The specific number of DEI roles that have been removed is unclear as the federal government isn’t keeping track or reporting which roles have been eliminated, but estimates say hundreds or possibly thousands of employees have been fired since the start of the year. More

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      White House to take choice of Pentagon chief of staff out of Hegseth’s hands

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      Exasperated by the turmoil that has dogged Pete Hegseth’s office in recent weeks, the White House will block the US defense secretary’s choice of chief of staff and select a candidate of its own, according to two people familiar with the matter.Hegseth had suggested giving the chief of staff position to Marine Col Ricky Buria after the first person in the role, Joe Kasper, left last month in the wake of a contentious leak investigation that brought the ouster of three other senior aides.But the White House has made clear to Hegseth that Buria will not be elevated to become his most senior aide at the Pentagon, the people said, casting Buria as a liability on account of his limited experience as a junior military assistant and his recurring role in internal office drama.“Ricky will not be getting the chief position,” one of the people directly familiar with deliberations said. “He doesn’t have adequate experience, lacks the political chops and is widely disliked by almost everyone in the White House who has been exposed to him.”The White House has always selected political appointees at agencies through the presidential personnel office, but the move to block Hegseth’s choice at this juncture is unusual and reflects Donald Trump’s intent to keep Hegseth by trying to insulate him from any more missteps.The intervention comes at a time when Hegseth’s ability to run the Pentagon has come under scrutiny. It also runs into the belief inside Trump’s orbit that even the president might struggle to justify Hegseth’s survival if the secretary does not have a scandal-free next few months.The secretary is not expected to have to fire Buria after he agreed to a compromise: to accept the White House’s choice for a new chief of staff in exchange for keeping Buria as a senior adviser, the people said. The White House and Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.The internal staffing situation at the Pentagon has outsize consequences because Hegseth’s front office is involved in policy deliberations and sensitive decision-making at the defense department, which has a budget of more than $800bn and oversees more than 2 million troops.Hegseth’s office is currently operating at a fraction of the size it normally does, with roughly five senior advisers. “There’s so much that’s not happening because no one is managing the front office,” an official with knowledge of the situation said.View image in fullscreenThe possibility of Buria becoming chief of staff spooked the White House for multiple reasons. For one, the White House presidential personnel office previously declined Hegseth’s request to make him a political appointee, but Buria has been operating in such a capacity anyway, two officials said.Buria appears to be considered by the career civilian employees in the deputy defense secretary’s office as the acting chief, not least because he recently moved into the chief of staff’s office and has taken steps to redecorate by bringing in new furniture, the officials said.Buria also recently failed to pass a polygraph test that was administered as part of the leak investigation. The polygraph came back as inconclusive, the officials said, a result that would ordinarily require him to retake the test before he could be cleared.In an additional twist, Buria was identified as having sent some of the messages in at least one Signal group chat about sensitive and imminent US missile strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, the officials said. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on Buria’s access to Hegseth’s personal phone.Buria, a former MV-22 pilot who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, started his ascent at the Pentagon as a junior military assistant (JMA) under Joe Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin. In the prestigious but unglamorous role, a JMA is something of a personal aide but with access to high-level operations.When Hegseth arrived, Buria continued his role as the JMA and quickly became close with Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer, traveling with the secretary and spending time at the secretary’s residence at Fort McNair.Buria’s influence expanded after Hegseth fired his boss, the air force Lt Gen Jennifer Short, who had been serving as the senior military assistant. Buria stepped into the job, typically held by a three-star officer, and joined bilateral meetings with foreign dignitaries. The National Pulse reported he also attended foreign policy briefings.When Army Lt Gen Christopher LaNeve arrived as Hegseth’s permanent senior military assistant, it was expected that Buria would return to his JMA position. Instead, he told officials he would retire from the military to become a political appointee in Hegseth’s office and took advantage of the power vacuum resulting from Kasper’s departure. More