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      Bhutan tried to erase us. Now, Trump’s America is helping | Lok Darjee

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      In mid-March 2025, I sat quietly in the back of a small, crowded room at the Asian Refugees United center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, surrounded by members of the Bhutanese diaspora. The silence was heavy, thick with fear and uncertainty. This modest office, once a vibrant hub for refugee youth, cultural celebrations, and literary competitions, had become an impromptu crisis center, where community leaders scrambled to make sense of the Trump administration’s escalatingimmigration crackdown on Bhutanese refugees across the country.Robin Gurung, the organization’s executive director, briefly outlined our legal rights. Another organizer then read aloud the names of those detained, awaiting deportation – or worse, already deported to Bhutan, the very country that once expelled them.As their names echoed through the room, an elderly man, a former student activist who had protested Bhutan’s repressive monarchy decades ago, stood. His voice trembled as he asked: “Where are we supposed to go?”This question of belonging has haunted my entire life. I was born stateless in a refugee camp in eastern Nepal after Bhutan forcibly expelled more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese citizens in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Our language was banned, our citizenship revoked, and our books burned in an ethnic cleansing campaign Bhutan still denies. Nepal refused us citizenship, asserting children born behind barbed wire weren’t its responsibility. Even now, Bhutan maintains its pristine global image, recently praised by 60 Minutes for “zero-carbon cities”, with no mention of the atrocities that cleared land for these “mindfulness cities”.My childhood unfolded behind fences and military checkpoints, in a hut occasionally set on fire by local mobs who viewed refugees as threats to their livelihood. I was a child no country wanted. For years, I lived in limbo – stateless, invisible, expendable. I believed I had finally found a home in 2011, when, after rigorous vetting, my family was resettled in a small town in Idaho.Since then, I’ve navigated the complexities of belonging as a former refugee turned new American. My work at the non-profit Refugee Civic Action now focuses on empowering former refugees through civic education and engagement, echoing Frederick Douglass’s belief that voting rights carry an obligation to build an inclusive democracy for “unborn and unnumbered generations”.Yet no moment revealed the fragility of American citizenship more starkly than the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. What unfolded was not merely a shift in policy, but the emergence of a constitutional crisis – one in which due process, equal protection, and the rule of law became contingent upon a person’s immigration status, background or national origin. Refugee communities, legal immigrants and even naturalized citizens suddenly found their rights precarious and their sense of belonging under threat.This crisis, while alarming, is hardly unprecedented. It echoes America’s historical pattern – visible in the failure of Reconstruction after the American civil war, when the nation struggled over defining citizenship, often through violence and exclusion. It is the same logic that incarcerated Japanese Americans during the second world war, denied Black Americans civil rights for generations, and justified the surveillance of Muslim communities after September 11. Today, cloaked in the language of national security, that same impulse returns, driven by politics intent on reshaping US identity through exclusion rather than constitutional principles.For my Bhutanese community, these recent crackdowns on legal residents have felt like a haunting repetition of history. Trauma we thought we had left behind in Bhutan now replays in Harrisburg, Cincinnati, Rochester and so many other towns, including relatively quiet suburbs of Boise, Idaho. Ice raids targeting legally resettled Bhutanese refugees have rekindled deep, collective fear. More than two dozen refugees have been deported back to Bhutan, the very country that violently expelled us. While some deportees had minor offenses from years ago, their punishments – exile to a regime that once tortured them – are grotesquely disproportionate. Raids have reopened wounds we spent decades healing. These are legal residents, thoroughly vetted through one of the world’s strictest refugee resettlement programs. Yet their deportation has shattered the fragile sense of safety we once believed America guaranteed.America is not Bhutan; their histories, cultures and institutions differ profoundly. Yet I see troubling echoes emerging here. In Bhutan, exclusion began subtly with slogans promoting national unity – “One nation, one language, one people” – initially appearing patriotic, even benign. Soon, our Nepali language was banned, books burned and cultural practices outlawed. Families like mine were categorized arbitrarily to divide and destabilize. People were disappeared, tortured and jailed. Citizenship became conditional, a prize easily revoked. I see shadows of this pattern now emerging in the US as the president erodes checks and balances, attacks public institutions, and scapegoats vulnerable immigrant communities.But when it comes to Bhutanese refugees, Democratic leaders have remained troublingly silent.While Pennsylvania’s senator John Fetterman and governor Josh Shapiro have acknowledged the concerns of Bhutanese refugees through public statements and tweets, their engagement has fallen short. What’s needed now is not just words, but action: oversight, hearings and direct intervention. Democrats must speak up for the likes of Santosh Darji, a Bhutanese refugee quietly deported to a regime that once tried to erase him. Failing to do so risks eroding public trust in the party’s moral commitments.The Republican party, once a vocal supporter of refugee resettlement, has largely aligned itself with Trumpism – a politics rooted in fear, exclusion and racial hierarchy. During Trump’s first term, a few Republican governors resisted efforts to suspend refugee admissions by calling for more legal refugees. Today, that resistance is utterly gone; no single Republican governor resists nor demands that the president reverse his decision on refugee admission. The party that once embraced Ronald Reagan and George Bush can no longer credibly claim their legacies. Those presidents, whatever their flaws, understood that America’s greatness was built on its openness to refugees and immigrants.The Trump administration’s actions aren’t merely cruel; they may violate international law. Deporting refugees back to the country that ethnically cleansed them breaches the principle of non-refoulement – enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention – which prohibits returning refugees to countries where their lives or freedoms are threatened. Now, some deportees find themselves stateless once again, rejected by Bhutan, detained by Nepal police and trapped in legal limbo.America’s moral and constitutional credibility hinges on defending not just those who command headlines or electoral power but precisely those who do not. If legal refugees can be quietly deported to countries from which they fled persecution, America’s claim as a beacon of freedom is dangerously hollow. The haunting question “Where are we supposed to go?” must be answered by American institutions, unequivocally affirming that due process and human dignity apply universally.

      Lok Darjee is a former refugee, columnist and founder of Refugee Civic Action, who writes on immigration, identity and democracy More

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      Democrats and climate groups ‘too polite’ in fight against ‘malevolent’ fossil fuel giants, says key senator

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      The Democratic party and the climate movement have been “too cautious and polite” and should instead be denouncing the fossil fuel industry’s “huge denial operation”, the US senator Sheldon Whitehouse said.“The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview Monday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy” of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by burning fossil fuels. “I think the more people understand that, the more they’ll be irate [that] they’ve been lied to.” But, he added, “Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.”Whitehouse is among the most outspoken climate champions on Capitol Hill, and on Wednesday evening, he delivered his 300th Time to Wake Up climate speech on the floor of the Senate.He began giving these speeches in 2012, when Barack Obama was in his first term, and has consistently criticized both political parties for their lackluster response to the climate emergency. The Obama White House, he complained, for years would not even “use the word ‘climate’ and ‘change’ in the same paragraph”.While Whitehouse slams his fellow Democrats for timidity, he blasts Republicans for being in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, an entity whose behavior “has been downright evil”, he said. “To deliberately ignore [the laws of physics] for short-term profits that set up people for huge, really bad impacts – if that’s not a good definition of evil, I don’t know what is.”The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s trade association, says on its website that “API and its members commit to delivering solutions that reduce the risks of climate change while meeting society’s growing energy needs”.Long before Donald Trump reportedly told oil company CEOs he would repeal Joe Biden’s climate policies if they contributed $1bn to his 2024 presidential campaign, Republicans went silent on climate change in return for oil industry money, Whitehouse asserted. The key shift came after the supreme court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which struck down limits on campaign spending. Before that, some GOP senators had sponsored climate bills, and John McCain urged climate action during his 2008 presidential campaign.But Citizens United, Whitehouse said, “told the fossil fuel industry: ‘The door’s wide open – spend any money you want in our elections’”. The industry, he said, promised the Republican party “unlimited amounts of money” in return for stepping away from bipartisan climate action: “And since 2010, there has not been a single serious bipartisan measure in the Senate.”Whitehouse said that after delivering 300 climate speeches on the Senate floor, he has learned to shift from talking about the “facts of climate science and the effects on human beings to calling out the fossil fuels’ massive climate denial operation”.He said: “Turns out, none of [the science] really matters while the operation is controlling things in Congress. I could take facts from colleagues’ home states right to them, and it would make no difference because of this enormous, multibillion-dollar political club that can [punish] anyone who crosses them.”Most Republicans even stay silent despite climate change’s threat to property values and other traditional GOP priorities, Whitehouse said. He noted that even the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell – who is not known for climate bona fides, he said – testified before the Senate in February that in 10-15 years there will be whole regions of the country where nobody can get a mortgage because extreme weather will make it impossible to afford or even obtain insurance.Democrats can turn all this to their advantage if they get “more vocal and aggressive”, Whitehouse argued. “The good news is that the American people hate dark money with a passion, and they hate it just as much, if not more, in districts that went for Trump as in districts that went for Biden.”Democrats also need to recognize “how much [public] support there is for climate action”, he said. “How do you have an issue that you win 74 [percent] to 12 [percent] and you don’t ride that horse as hard as you can?”Whitehouse said he was only estimating that 74% figure, but that’s exactly the percentage of Americans who want their government to take stronger climate action, according to the scientific studies informing the 89 Percent Project, the Guardian and other Covering Climate Now partner news outlets began reporting in April. Globally, the percentage ranges from 80% to 89%. Yet this overwhelming climate majority does not realize it is the majority, partly because that fact has been absent from most news coverage, social media and politicians’ statements.Democrats keep “getting caught in this stupid doom loop in which our pollsters say: ‘Well, climate’s not one of the top issues that voters care about, so then we don’t talk about it’,” said Whitehouse. “So it never becomes one of the top issues that voters care about. [But] if you actually go ask [voters] and engage on the issue, it explodes in enthusiasm. It has huge numbers when you bother to engage, and we just haven’t.”Nevertheless, Whitehouse is optimistic that climate denial won’t prevail forever. “Once this comes home to roost in people’s homes, in their family finances, in really harmful ways, that [will be] motivating in a way that we haven’t seen before around this issue,” he said. “And if we’re effective at communicating what a massive fraud has been pulled on the American public by the fossil fuel industry denial groups, then I think that’s a powerful combination.”This story is part of the 89% Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now More

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      Trump announces 50% tariff on Brazil, citing what he claims is a ‘witch-hunt’ against Bolsonaro – live updates

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      Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil in a letter posted on social media in which he began by complaining about the the prosecution of his ally, the former president Jair Bolsonaro.Until now, Trump’s tariff letters have been nearly identical, changing little more than the names of countries and leaders and the tariff rates, but the intemperate letter addressed to Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was markedly different, beginning with a diatribe about the supposed “international disgrace” of the “Witch Hunt” against Bolsonaro, who is now standing trial before the country’s supreme court for his role in an alleged coup attempt on 8 January 2023, following his election defeat.The pro-Bolsonaro riots at the seat of Brazil’s federal government in Brasília that day closely echoed the pro-Trump riot at the US capitol on January 6 2021.“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader during his Term , including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt THAT should end IMMEDIATELY!”, Trump wrote, employing the idiosyncratic writing style of his social media posts in a formal letter.“Due in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from Brazilian Social Media market),” Trump added, “starting on August 1, 2025, we will charge Brazil a Tariff of 50% on any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States, separate from all Sectoral Tariffs.”In addition to his outrage over the prosecution of Bolsonaro, over the failed coup attempt, Trump’s letter referred to the country’s decision to ban the former president from running in the next election, and to a dispute over a Brazilian supreme court judge ordering Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, and Rumble, a video-sharing platform JD Vance invested in, to remove the US-based accounts of a leading supporter of Bolsonaro.As the Guardian reported in February, Trump’s company and Rumble, which is backed by the far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sued the Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes over the orders in federal court in Florida.Donald Trump’s enraged letter to his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, announcing that the US would impose a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil, said that the move was motivated in part by the treatment of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was barred from running for office until 2030 and is on trial for allegedly plotting to remain in office after losing his bid for re-election in 2022.The culmination of Bolsonaro’s efforts to hold on to power was a riot by his supporters in the nation’s capital who tried to prevent the transfer of power to the election’s winner, Lula, on 8 January 2023.Given that Trump still maintains that he was within his rights to plot to remain in office himself, after losing his bid for re-election in 2020, and the efforts culminated in a riot by his supporters on January 6 2021, it is not hard to see why Trump seems to be so dedicated to the idea that Bolsonaro did nothing wrong.As our colleague Tiago Rogero reported last month, Bolsonaro denied masterminding a far-right coup plot during testimony in his trial before Brazil’s supreme court, but did admit to taking part in meetings to discuss “alternative ways” of staying in power after his defeat in the 2022 election.In just over two hours of questioning, the 70-year-old said that after the electoral court confirmed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s election victory, “we studied other alternatives within the constitution.”Those options included the deployment of military forces and suspension of some civil liberties, Bolsonaro said, but he argued that such discussions could not be considered an attempted coup.During his first term in office, it was obvious that Trump saw then president Bolsonaro – a far-right, climate-change denier – as a kindred spirit, and Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, cultivated close ties to Trump’s inner circle, and family, during visits to the US.Eduardo Bolsonaro took leave from his post as a congressman in Brazil and has been living in the US since March, lobbying Trump and Republican politicians to impose sanctions on Brazil.Brazil’s currency, the real, fell over 2% against the dollar late on Wednesday after Trump posted a letter online imposing a 50% tariff on imports and scolding the nation for its supposed mistreatment of its former leader, Jair Bolsonaro, who stands accused of trying to overturn his 2022 election loss through a coup.Trump’s letter said his administration will start collecting the 50% tariff on products imported to the US from Brazil, “separate from all sectoral tariffs”, starting on 1 August.Donald Trump announced a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil in a letter posted on social media in which he began by complaining about the the prosecution of his ally, the former president Jair Bolsonaro.Until now, Trump’s tariff letters have been nearly identical, changing little more than the names of countries and leaders and the tariff rates, but the intemperate letter addressed to Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was markedly different, beginning with a diatribe about the supposed “international disgrace” of the “Witch Hunt” against Bolsonaro, who is now standing trial before the country’s supreme court for his role in an alleged coup attempt on 8 January 2023, following his election defeat.The pro-Bolsonaro riots at the seat of Brazil’s federal government in Brasília that day closely echoed the pro-Trump riot at the US capitol on January 6 2021.“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader during his Term , including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt THAT should end IMMEDIATELY!”, Trump wrote, employing the idiosyncratic writing style of his social media posts in a formal letter.“Due in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from Brazilian Social Media market),” Trump added, “starting on August 1, 2025, we will charge Brazil a Tariff of 50% on any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States, separate from all Sectoral Tariffs.”In addition to his outrage over the prosecution of Bolsonaro, over the failed coup attempt, Trump’s letter referred to the country’s decision to ban the former president from running in the next election, and to a dispute over a Brazilian supreme court judge ordering Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, and Rumble, a video-sharing platform JD Vance invested in, to remove the US-based accounts of a leading supporter of Bolsonaro.As the Guardian reported in February, Trump’s company and Rumble, which is backed by the far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel, sued the Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes over the orders in federal court in Florida.In brief remarks to the press earlier, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that following his second meeting with Donald Trump in two days: “President Trump and I have a common goal: we want to achieve the release of our hostages, we want to end Hamas rule in Gaza, and we want to make sure that Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel any more.”On the ceasefire negotiations, the Israeli leader, who was at the US Capitol for meetings with lawmakers, went on:
      President Trump wants a deal, but not at any price. I want a deal, but not at any price.
      Israel has security requirements and other requirements, and we’re working together to try to achieve them.
      Donald Trump earlier told reporters there is a “very good chance” of a ceasefire in Gaza this week or next. He said
      There’s a very good chance of a settlement this week on Gaza. We have a chance this week or next week.
      Trump made it clear several times that his priority was achieving “peace” and getting the hostages back, but – like Netanyahu – he made no mention of other urgent matters like the desperate need to safely get aid to starving Palestinians in the strip.Asked by a reporter whether pushing out Palestinians to third countries they have no connection to will make Israel safer in the long run, Netanyahu said:
      We’re not pushing out anyone, and I don’t think that’s President Trump’s suggestion. His suggestion was giving them a choice.
      He claimed Palestinians should have “freedom of choice” to leave Gaza, “no coercion, no forcible dislocation. If people want to leave Gaza they should be able to do so,” he said of the besieged territory, much of which his military has flattened to rubble.Israel stands accused of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and has made clear its intention to seize parts of the territory and remain there indefinitely.The US supreme court has maintained a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for immigrants in the US illegally to enter the state.The justices denied a request by state officials to lift an order by Florida-based US district judge Kathleen Williams that barred them from carrying out arrests and prosecutions under the law while a legal challenge plays out in lower courts. Williams ruled that Florida’s law conflicted with the federal government’s authority over immigration policy.Florida’s attorney general James Uthmeier and other state officials filed the emergency request on 17 June asking the supreme court to halt the judge’s order. Williams found that the Florida law was likely unconstitutional for encroaching on the federal government’s exclusive authority over US immigration policy.The state’s request to the justices was backed by America First Legal, a conservative group co-founded by Stephen Miller, a senior aide to Donald Trump and a key architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies.Florida’s immigration measure was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law in February by governor Ron DeSantis. It made Florida one of at least seven states to pass such laws in recent years, according to court filings.The American Civil Liberties Union in April sued in federal court to challenge the law. Bacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, in a statement issued after the challenge was filed said that Florida’s law “is not just unconstitutional – it’s cruel and dangerous”.Williams issued a preliminary injunction in April that barred Florida officials from enforcing the measure.The Atlanta-based 11th US circuit court of appeals in June upheld the judge’s ruling, prompting the Florida officials to make an emergency request to the supreme court.On the same day that Florida’s attorney general filed the state’s supreme court request, Williams found him in civil contempt of court for failing to follow her order to direct all state law enforcement officers not to enforce the immigration measure while it remained blocked by the judge.Williams ordered Uthmeier to provide an update to the court every two weeks on any enforcement of the law.The Senate has voted 53 to 43 approve Republic Airways CEO Bryan Bedford to head the Federal Aviation Administration.Bedford, the head of the regional air carrier nominated by Donald Trump and approved for a five-year-term, will oversee $12.5bn in funding over five years to remake the aging US air traffic control system passed by Congress last week.Bedford has also pledged to maintain tough oversight of Boeing, which came under harsh criticism from the National Transportation Safety Board last month for a mid-air emergency involving a new Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 missing four key bolts.The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be eliminated in its current form and reformed so it responds more effectively to disasters, homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said at a meeting on reforming Fema on Wednesday.Speaking at a review council discussing reforms of Fema, Noem said the “entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today, and remade into a responsive agency”.Noem’s comments were a restatement of her thinking on Fema’s future but notable given that Fema personnel have been deployed to Texas to help in search and rescue efforts following flash floods on 4 July that have killed at least 119 people, with scores more still unaccounted for.Noem, who chairs the Fema Review Council, noted that the agency had provided resources and supported the search and recovery efforts in Texas, but criticized the agency for what she called past failures to respond to disasters effectively.“It has been slow to respond at the federal level,” Noem said. “That is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today, and remade into a responsive agency.”Defenders of the agency have said the Trump administration is seeking to politicize a vital agency that helps states both prepare for natural disasters like hurricanes and floods and clean up in the aftermath.Further to my earlier post on this, Donald Trump said that five west African nations are going to lower their tariffs and that the United States treats the continent better than China does.At a meeting with the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal at the White House, Trump added that he did not think those countries at the gathering were likely to see any US tariffs.Donald Trump also said that his administration will reach a deal with Harvard University.“Harvard’s been very bad – totally antisemitic. And, yeah, they’ll absolutely reach a deal,” he told reporters at the White House.Earlier we reported that his administration had escalated its feud with Harvard, declaring the Ivy League school may no longer meet the standards for accreditation and that it would subpoena it for records about its international students.Donald Trump said there is a “very good chance” of a ceasefire in Gaza this week or next, after meeting Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday for the second time in two days to discuss the situation.“There’s a very good chance of a settlement this week on Gaza,” Trump told reporters. “We have a chance this week or next week.”He made it clear several times that his priority was achieving “peace” and getting the hostages back, but made no mention of other matters like the desperate need to safely get aid to starving Palestinian people in the strip.Donald Trump said he would release more letters to countries notifying them of higher US tariff rates today and tomorrow, including Brazil.“Brazil, as an example, has not been good to us, not good at all,” Trump told reporters at the event with west African leaders at the White House. “We’re going to be releasing a Brazil number, I think, later on this afternoon or tomorrow morning.”Trump said the tariff rates announced this week were based on “very, very substantial facts” and past history.Donald Trump earlier told a table of west African leaders that he would like to travel to Africa “at some point”.Trump has never visited the continent in an official capacity, and his signaling that he’s open to doing so is no doubt tied to his view of the many commercial opportunities for the US in African countries.Trump’s guests today include the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal, and has so far concentrated on his “trade, not aid” policy.With all of these countries facing 10% tariffs on goods exported to the US, they seem keen to try to negotiate this rate down. Indeed several leaders have sought to flatter Trump as a “peace-maker” and said they want him to get a Nobel Peace Prize, while also touting their countries’ wealth in assets such as critical minerals and rare earths and their strategic importance in terms of migration and maritime security.War-torn South Sudan has said it is holding a group of eight men controversially deported from the United States.Only one of them is from South Sudan. The rest comprise two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico.The Trump administration is trying to move unwanted migrants to third countries as some nations refuse to accept returnees. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the US. The decision has been fought in US courts.“They are currently in Juba under the care of the relevant authorities, who are screening them and ensuring their safety and wellbeing,” the South Sudanese foreign ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday.It did not give details, but said the “careful and well-studied decision” was part of “ongoing bilateral engagement”.“South Sudan responded positively to a request from the US authorities as a gesture of goodwill, humanitarian cooperation and commitment to mutual interests,” it added.The deportations have raised safety and other concerns among some in South Sudan.“South Sudan is not a dumping ground for criminals,” said Edmund Yakani, a prominent civic leader.United Nations experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the UN, have criticised the move.“International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to … torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,” 11 independent UN rights experts said in a statement.As Donald Trump approaches six months in office as president, his administration’s agenda has shaken every corner of US life.According to research from Harris Poll, Americans are reconsidering major life events including marriage, having children and buying a home amid economic anxiety under the Trump administration.Six in 10 Americans said the economy had affected at least one of their major life goals, citing either lack of affordability or anxiety around the current economy.We want to hear from you. Have you been delaying major life decisions amid economic and political anxieties? When did things begin to feel destabilized? What effect in particular has delaying life decisions had on your household?Find the link to take part here:EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič has not had his scheduled call with US trade representative Jamieson Greer yet, so those on standby for a possible announcement by Donald Trump today on a deal with the bloc may have some time to wait. More

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      US supreme court blocks Florida from enforcing anti-immigration law

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      The US supreme court maintained on Wednesday a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants in the United States to enter the state.The justices denied a request by state officials to lift an order by the Florida-based US district judge Kathleen Williams that barred them from carrying out arrests and prosecutions under the law while a legal challenge plays out in lower courts. Williams ruled that Florida’s law conflicted with the federal government’s authority over immigration policy.The law, signed by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, in February and backed by the Trump administration, made it a felony for some undocumented migrants to enter Florida, while also imposing pre-trial jail time without bond.“This denial reaffirms a bedrock principle that dates back 150 years: States may not regulate immigration,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “It is past time for states to get the message.”After Williams blocked the law, Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, and other state officials filed the emergency request on 17 June asking the supreme court to halt the judge’s order. Williams had found that the Florida law was probably unconstitutional for encroaching on the federal government’s exclusive authority over US immigration policy.The state’s request to the justices was backed by America First Legal, a conservative group co-founded by Stephen Miller, a senior aide to Donald Trump and a key architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies.Florida’s immigration measure, called SB 4-C, was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law by DeSantis. It made Florida one of at least seven states to pass such laws in recent years, according to court filings.The American Civil Liberties Union in April sued in federal court to challenge the law, arguing that the state should not be able to “enforce its own state immigration system outside of federal supervision and control”. Williams agreed.The law imposed mandatory minimum sentences for undocumented adult immigrants who are convicted of entering Florida after arriving in the United States without following federal immigration law. Florida officials contend that the state measure complies with – rather than conflicts with – federal law.Sentences for violations begin at nine months’ imprisonment for first offenders and reach up to five years for certain undocumented immigrants in the country who have felony records and enter Florida after having been deported or ordered by a federal judge to be removed from the United States.The state law exempts undocumented immigrants in the country who were given certain authorization by the federal government to remain in the United States. Florida’s immigration crackdown makes no exceptions, however, for those seeking humanitarian protection or with pending applications for immigration relief, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued in federal court to challenge the law.The ACLU filed a class-action suit on behalf of two undocumented immigrants who reside in Florida, an immigration advocacy group called the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the non-profit group Farmworker Association of Florida, whose members include immigrants in the United States illegally who travel in and out of Florida seasonally to harvest crops. Some of the arguments in the lawsuit included claims that it violates the federal “commerce clause”, which bars states from blocking commerce between states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, in a statement issued after the challenge was filed said that Florida’s law “is not just unconstitutional – it’s cruel and dangerous”.Williams issued a preliminary injunction in April that barred Florida officials from enforcing the measure.The Atlanta-based 11th US circuit court of appeals in June upheld the judge’s ruling, prompting the Florida officials to make an emergency request to the supreme court.In a filing on 7 July, the state of Florida pointed to a brief filed by the Trump administration in the appeals case, in support of SB 4-C. “That decision is wrong and should be reversed,” administration lawyers wrote at the time.On the same day that Florida’s attorney general filed the state’s supreme court request, Williams found him in civil contempt of court for failing to follow her order to direct all state law enforcement officers not to enforce the immigration measure while it remained blocked by the judge. Williams said that Uthmeier only informed the state law enforcement agencies about her order and later instructed them to arrest people anyway. Williams ordered Uthmeier to provide an update to the court every two weeks on any enforcement of the law.Other states have tried to pass similar laws, including Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho and Iowa, which have attempted to make entering their jurisdictions, while undocumented, a state crime. More

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      Zelenskyy to replace Ukraine’s envoy to US in diplomatic shuffle

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy is replacing Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, who has been heavily criticised by leading Republicans, as part a diplomatic reshuffle designed to strengthen ties with the Trump administration.Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, confirmed on Wednesday that Oksana Markarova will be recalled from Washington after four years in the job. He described her as “extremely effective, charismatic and one of our most successful ambassadors”.He indicated that several top ambassadors to G7 and G20 countries would also be moved, telling Ukrainian radio “Every diplomat has a rotation cycle”.The diplomatic shake-up comes at a critical moment in the war. Russian troops have been attacking across the 600-mile frontline and in recent weeks the speed of their gains has increased, with the Kremlin spokesperson declaring: “We are advancing.”Russian combat units are for the first time close to crossing into Dnipropetrovsk oblast.Late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday, Russia carried out its biggest aerial attack since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It involved a record 728 Shahed-type drones, as well as 13 cruise and ballistic missiles. Most were shot down.The US House of Representatives speaker, Mike Johnson, is among the Republican figures who have criticised Markarova, accusing her of supporting the Democratic party and its candidate Kamala Harris in the run-up to last November’s presidential election.View image in fullscreenIn February she was pictured with her head in her hand during Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.There were calls for her dismissal after Zelenskyy visited a shell factory in Pennsylvania last September. Markarova organised the visit and did not invite a single Republican, Johnson said at the time.Ukrainian officials deny any bias but acknowledge the ambassador previously had good relations with the Biden administration and was close to Victoria Nuland, the then undersecretary of state for political affairs.Zelenskyy and Trump discussed Markarova’s departure during a phone call last Friday which Ukraine’s president hailed as their most constructive to date.On Tuesday, Trump expressed growing frustration with Vladimir Putin and announced US weapons deliveries to Kyiv would be restarted. His announcement followed a week-long pause, apparently ordered by Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense.The shipment includes Patriot interceptor missiles and other precision munitions. It is unclear how many will be transferred. The US news website Axios reported 10 missiles would be delivered – a tiny amount at a time when Moscow has dramatically escalated its bombardment of Ukrainian cities.The overnight raid was directed at the northwestern city of Lutsk. At least six civilians were killed and 39 injured in several other regions of the country, including Kharkiv and Donetsk in the north-east and east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.A one-year-old boy, Dmytro, died in the village of Pravdyne in Kherson oblast when the Russians hit his house with drones, the local administration reported. The boy had been staying with his great-grandmother.One possible successor to Markarova in Washington is said to be Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy head of the office of Ukraine’s president. Zhovka’s immediate boss is Andriy Yermak, who is widely seen as the most influential person in Ukrainian politics after Zelenskyy.Other names include the finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, and Olha Stefanishyna, who is deputy prime minister for Europe and Euro-Atlantic integration, as well as minister of justice.There is growing optimism in Kyiv that Trump’s pivot earlier this year towards Russia has been halted, if not quite reversed. One former Ukrainian official credited Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser and a veteran negotiator, with the transformation.Powell has played an important role in repairing Zelenskyy’s fraught relations with Washington after the Oval Office bust-up.He advised Ukraine’s government to avoid confronting the US president and to take his words as truth. The approach – described as “strategic patience” – was beginning to pay off, the official suggested.Zelenskyy has agreed to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, repeatedly praised Trump’s leadership, and signed a deal giving American investors access to Ukraine’s valuable natural resources.On Wednesday he met Pope Leo in Rome before a two-day international conference, organised to help Ukraine’s postwar recovery. Zelenskyy said they had discussed the return of Ukrainian children and civilians who had been abducted by Russia and the Vatican’s offer to facilitate peace negotiations.Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is due to attend the conference. In a recent call with Trump, Merz reportedly offered to buy Patriot anti-defence batteries from the US and to send them to Ukraine.Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, is also due in Rome and is likely to hold talks on weapons deliveries with Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defence minister. More

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      US supreme court clears way for Trump officials to resume mass government firings

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      The US supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume plans for mass firings of federal workers that critics warn could threaten critical government services.Extending a winning streak for the US president, the justices on Tuesday lifted a lower court order that had frozen sweeping federal layoffs known as “reductions in force” while litigation in the case proceeds.The decision could result in hundreds of thousands of job losses at the departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and other agencies.Democrats condemned the ruling. Antjuan Seawright, a party strategist, said: “I’m disappointed but I’m not shocked or surprised. This rightwing activist court has proven ruling after ruling, time after time, that they are going to sing the songs and dance to the tune of Trumpism. A lot of this is just implementation of what we saw previewed in Project 2025.”Project 2025, a plan drawn up by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank, set out a blueprint for downsizing government. Trump has claimed that voters gave him a mandate for the effort and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through the “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, though Musk has since departed.In February, Trump announced “a critical transformation of the federal bureaucracy” in an executive order directing agencies to prepare for a government overhaul aimed at significantly reducing the workforce and gutting offices.In its brief unsigned order on Tuesday, the supreme court said Trump’s administration was “likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order” and a memorandum implementing his order were lawful. The court said it was not assessing the legality of any specific plans for layoffs at federal agencies.Liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the nine-person court to publicly dissent from the decision, which overturns San Francisco-based district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May ruling.Jackson wrote that Illston’s “temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this president’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture”.She also described her colleagues as making the “wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground”.Illston had argued in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration. “As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” she wrote.The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programmes. Illston also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul pursued by Trump and Doge. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programmes or have been placed on leave.The administration had previously challenged Illston’s order at the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals but lost in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May. That prompted the justice department to make an emergency request to the supreme court, contending that controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority.The plaintiffs had urged the supreme court to deny the justice department’s request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supreme court’s rejection of that argument on Tuesday was welcomed by Trump allies. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, posted on the X social media platform: “Today, the Supreme Court stopped lawless lower courts from restricting President Trump’s authority over federal personnel – another Supreme Court victory thanks to @thejusticedept attorneys. Now, federal agencies can become more efficient than ever before.The state department wrote on X: “Today’s near unanimous decision from the Supreme Court further confirms that the law was on our side throughout this entire process. We will continue to move forward with our historic reorganization plan at the State Department, as announced earlier this year. This is yet another testament to President Trump’s dedication to following through on an America First agenda.”In recent months the supreme court has sided with Trump in some major cases that were acted upon on an emergency basis since he returned to office in January.It cleared the way for Trump’s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. In two cases, it let the administration end temporary legal status previously granted on humanitarian grounds to hundreds of thousands of migrants.It also allowed Trump to implement his ban on transgender people in the US military, blocked a judge’s order for the administration to rehire thousands of fired employees and twice sided with Doge. In addition, the court curbed the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding presidential policies.On Tuesday the Democracy Forward coalition condemned the supreme court for intervening in what it called Trump’s unlawful reorganisation of the federal government. It said in a statement: “Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy.“This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution.” More

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      Maga influencer and de facto national security adviser Laura Loomer holds outsized sway on Trump

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      After years of claiming to be the vanguard of a new “America First” isolationist movement rebelling against the neoconservative policies of the George W Bush administration that led to the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Maga’s online influencers are cheering for another war in the Middle East.And not just any war: they are applauding Donald Trump’s high-risk decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, a move that was considered a war too far even by the Bush administration.Maga’s quick flip-flop has made it clear that Maga was never really anti-war. Maga is about xenophobia, not isolationism, and its support for Trump’s decision to bomb a Muslim country fits in with its support for his draconian campaign against immigrants.But above all, Maga is about fealty to Trump.That formula certainly helps explain why Laura Loomer, who has emerged as the most prominent Maga America First influencer in the early days of Trump’s second term, has given her full support to his Iran strike.In early April, Loomer, a 32-year-old pro-Trump online influencer widely seen as a rightwing conspiracy theorist, met with Trump and gave him a list of names of people on the staff of the national security council that she believed were not loyal enough to Trump or at least had professional backgrounds that she considered suspect. Trump fired six staffers. Later, national security adviser Mike Waltz, whom Loomer had criticized for his role in the Signalgate chat leak scandal, was ousted as well.Loomer doesn’t have a job in the government, but she has still emerged as one of Trump’s most important and most polarizing foreign policy advisers in the early days of his second administration. She has had direct access to Trump and has used it to push for ideological purges inside the administration, instilling fear and anger among national security professionals.In fact, when it comes to the national security side of the Trump administration, Loomer has been something akin to a one-woman Doge. Now the big question is how long her influence with Trump will last, or whether she will soon go out the same way as Elon Musk.Loomer’s power in the Trump administration is ill-defined. Her many critics say she has just been taking credit for moves that Trump was already planning. But Trump himself has said he takes her seriously, so it may be more accurate to describe her as Trump’s de facto national security adviser.Press reports recently suggested that Loomer’s status in the White House was waning because she had overreached, much like Musk. She has left a trail of bitter Trump aides, while there have also been reports that Trump himself has grown weary of her. But, as if to disprove the reports that she was getting frozen out, Loomer had a private meeting with JD Vance in early June.In a revealing interview on journalist Tara Palmeri’s podcast in late April, Loomer said that her White House access came directly from Trump himself, and that she maintained her relationship with the president even as his aides tried to keep her out. “Donald Trump is my biggest ally in the White House,” she said.“I don’t have delusions of grandeur, but I certainly do believe that a lot of the information I have given him has protected him and has prevented disasters from happening,” she added. “I believe that the information that I provide is valuable. And I believe that it has proven itself to be an asset to President Trump and his apparatus. I don’t know why some of the people that work for him don’t want that information around him. But I’m not going to let that stop me. I’m going to keep on uncovering information and finding ways to get it to President Trump – and informing President Trump about individuals within his inner circle that are working against his agenda.”Loomer added that “it all comes down to vetting at the end of the day”.Loomer’s close ties to Trump first became big news during the 2024 presidential campaign, when she traveled with the Republican candidate on his campaign plane despite repeated efforts by Trump aides to keep her away. The aides were particularly upset that Loomer traveled with Trump on September 11, since she had earlier gained online infamy after posting a video claiming that the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center was an “inside job”. To be sure, fears by his aides that Trump was associating with a conspiracy theorist ignored the fact that he relishes in spreading conspiracy theories far and wide. During the 2024 campaign, Trump promoted a conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio; that xenophobic lie became the hallmark of Trump’s fall campaign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOnce Trump returned to office, Loomer began to flex her newfound power, and even professional ties to top Trump administration officials weren’t enough to protect staffers from being fired after Loomer gave her list of names to Trump. Among those fired at the NSC was Brian Walsh, who had worked on the staff of the Senate intelligence committee for Marco Rubio, now serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser, when Rubio was in the Senate.The most stunning purge attributed to Loomer came in April when Trump fired Gen Timothy Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency, along with his top deputy, after they had found their way on to Loomer’s list as well. The fact that Loomer could trigger the firing of a senior military officer in charge of the nation’s largest intelligence agency finally led to a bipartisan outcry in Washington. A group of Senate Democrats wrote to Trump saying that the firings were “inexplicable”, while Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican senator who is now a leading Trump critic, lamented that experienced military leaders were being ousted while “amateur isolationists” are in senior policy positions. The moves even troubled Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican senator and Trump loyalist who is the chair of the cybersecurity subcommittee of the Senate armed services committee. Rounds made a point of praising Haugh during a subcommittee hearing soon after his firing and noted that “men and women capable of leading the National Security Agency … are in short supply. We do not have enough of these types of leaders, and a loss of any one of them without strong justification is disappointing.”But like Musk, Loomer has been so red-hot in the early days of Trump’s second term that her fall seems almost inevitable, especially after she began to call out White House actions she didn’t like.In May, for example, she publicly criticized Trump’s decision to accept a luxury jet from Qatar.When news of the gift was first reported, Loomer posted a statement saying: “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true.” She added: “I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.” She later backtracked and became more supportive. But later she was critical of Trump’s decision to withdraw the nomination of billionaire Jared Isaacman to be the head of Nasa, whose nomination she had supported. “There is reason to believe that Isaacman may be facing retaliation because of his friendship with @elonmusk,” Loomer posted as the news first broke. Days later, Isaacman suggested that he also believes that his nomination was withdrawn because of his ties to Musk.Loomer has been careful to try to limit her criticism to Trump’s aides, and not to Trump himself. But it is an open question how long that distinction will make a difference for Loomer. During the Palmeri podcast, Loomer said that she is “not going to be a sycophant and sit there and pretend that every little thing is great”. She added that “there’s a lot of incompetence in the White House. There’s a lot of people in positions they shouldn’t be in and they embarrass the president on a daily basis.”That is the backdrop for Loomer’s strong support for Trump’s decision to attack Iran. Perhaps concerned that her earlier criticism was damaging her ties to Trump world, Loomer has been profuse with her praise of Trump’s Iran attack, while also defending her America First credentials. In one post, she asked “How is it not AMERICA FIRST to congratulate those who just made sure Islamists who chant ‘DEATH TO AMERICA’ … never have an opportunity to have a nuke?” She has even gone on the offensive against other rightwing influencers, including Tucker Carlson, who have dared criticize the Iran strike. “I am screenshotting everyone’s posts and I’m going to deliver them in a package to President Trump so he sees who is truly with him and who isn’t,” Loomer posted. “And I think by now everyone knows I mean it when I say I’m going to deliver something to Trump.”For Maga influencers, staying on Trump’s good side seems to matter more than issues of war and peace. More