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      Tracking Trump cabinet confirmations – so far

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      Senate confirmation hearings are under way for Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations.All cabinet-level positions require a majority vote of senators to be approved. With a current 53-seat Republican majority, Trump’s more fraught nominees can only afford to lose three Republican senators, assuming Democrats are uniformly opposed.Marco Rubio was the first cabinet appointee to win confirmation in a unanimous vote in his favor. Controversial picks including Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr have also secured confirmation for key roles in the cabinet.ConfirmedKash PatelRole offered: FBI directorConfirmed by the Senate on 20 FebruaryView image in fullscreenAfter being nominated by Trump, the “deep state” critic Kash Patel was confirmed as FBI director, a role that handles oversight of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. He has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue the US president’s political opponents.Patel was confirmed in a 51-49 vote, a reflection of the polarizing nature of his nomination.Kelly LoefflerRole offered: administrator of the Small Business AdministrationConfirmed by the Senate on 19 FebruaryView image in fullscreenTrump named former senator Kelly Loeffler to head the Small Business Administration. He said she will use her business experience to “reduce red tape” and “unleash opportunity” for small businesses.Loeffler was confirmed in a 52-46 vote.Robert F Kennedy JrRole offered: Secretary of health and human servicesConfirmed by the Senate on 13 FebruaryView image in fullscreenRobert F Kennedy Jr was Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services, a choice that sparked outrage and concern over RFK Jr’s vaccine skepticism.RFK Jr was confirmed in a 52-48 vote in the Senate, with all Republicans other than the Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell voting in support. He will now oversee the country’s vast federal health infrastructure, giving him oversight of the very agencies he has spent years battling through lawsuits and public campaigns.Brooke RollinsRole offered: Agriculture secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 13 FebruaryView image in fullscreenAs agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins will lead a 100,000-person agency that would carry out an agenda with implications for American diets and wallets, both urban and rural.Rollins was president of America First Policy Institute, a group helping lay the groundwork for Trump’s second administration.The Senate confirmed Rollins in a 72-2 vote.Tulsi GabbardRole offered: National intelligence directorConfirmed by the Senate on 12 FebruaryView image in fullscreenTulsi Gabbard is a former Democratic member of Congress and was Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence.Gabbard, who has been publicly questioned over her affinity for foreign dictators and promoting conspiracy theories, was confirmed by the Senate in a 52-48 vote.Russell VoughtRole offered: Office of management and budget chiefConfirmed by the Senate on 6 FebruaryView image in fullscreenRussell Vought, the OMB chief during Trump’s first term in office, has been deeply involved in Project 2025.During a 15 January hearing, Vought declined to fully commit to distributing congressionally approved funds, specifically US military aid to Ukraine.Vought was confirmed in a 53-47 vote on 6 February.Scott TurnerRole offered: Department of Housing and Urban Development secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 5 FebruaryView image in fullscreenScott Turner is a former NFL player and White House aide. He ran the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term.Turner was confirmed in a 55-44 vote.Pam BondiRole offered: Attorney generalConfirmed by the Senate on 5 FebruaryView image in fullscreenPam Bondi, the first female attorney general of Florida and a lawyer for Trump during his first impeachment trial, replaced the president’s first pick, Matt Gaetz, to head the justice department.At her 15 January hearing, Bondi, 59, insisted she would ensure the justice department would remain independent. At the same time, she failed to say that Trump lost the 2020 election.Bondi was confirmed by the Senate in a 54-46 vote.Doug CollinsRole offered: Veterans affairs secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 4 FebruaryView image in fullscreenDoug Collins, the former Georgia representative who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, was nominated by Trump to be secretary of veterans affairs.During his 22 January hearing, Collins pledged to “take care of the veterans” should he succeed in the confirmation process.Collins was confirmed on 4 February in a 77-23 vote.Doug BurgumRole offered: Interior secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 30 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, as his pick for secretary of the interior. His directive from Trump is to make it even easier for energy companies to tap fossil fuel resources, including from public lands, which has alarmed environmentalists.Burgum was confirmed in a 79-18 vote with more than half of Senate Democrats joining Republicans.Lee ZeldinRole offered: Environmental Protection Agency administratorConfirmed by the Senate on 29 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump named the former New York congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin said he would work to “restore American energy dominance”.Zeldin was confirmed on 29 January in a 56-42 vote.Sean DuffyRole offered: Secretary of transportationConfirmed by the Senate on 28 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman and co-host on Fox Business, to serve as the secretary of transportation. Duffy will oversee billions of dollars in unspent infrastructure funds and has promised safer Boeing planes, less regulation and help for companies developing self-driving cars.Duffy was confirmed in a 77-22 vote.Scott BessentRole offered: Treasury secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 27 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Scott Bessent, a prominent Wall Street investor and Trump fundraiser, to be his nominee for treasury secretary. He has praised Trump for using tariffs as a negotiating tool.The Senate voted 68-29 to confirm Bessent as treasury secretary on 27 January.Kristi Noem Role offered: Homeland security secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 25 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump selected South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem – a staunch ally who has little experience on the national security stage – to serve as the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She will oversee everything from border protection and immigration to disaster response and the US Secret Service.Noem was confirmed on 25 January.Pete HegsethRole offered: Secretary of defenseConfirmed by the Senate on 24 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump nominated the former Fox News host and army veteran Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary, a surprise decision that stunned the Pentagon.During his hearing, Democrats asked Hegseth pointed questions about allegations of sexual misconduct and claims that he was frequently intoxicated in the workplace when he led two different non-profit organizations. Democratic senators and several Republicans expressed concerns that he was not qualified to lead the country’s largest government agency.He was confirmed in a late-night vote on 24 January, with a tie-breaking vote from JD Vance.John RatcliffeRole: CIA directorConfirmed by the Senate on 23 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump loyalist John Ratcliffe previously served as director of national intelligence during the final months of the president’s first term.Ratcliffe was confirmed by the Senate on 23 January in a 74-25 vote, with 20 Democrats and one independent joining Republicans in backing the nomination.Marco RubioRole: Secretary of stateConfirmed by the Senate on 20 JanuaryView image in fullscreenSenator Marco Rubio, 53, was confirmed as the first Latino to serve as secretary of state on 20 January. It was widely expected Rubio would secure confirmation, as senators largely viewed him as one of the least controversial of Trump’s cabinet picks.Rubio received 99 votes, becoming the first member of Trump’s cabinet to win Senate approval.Not yet confirmedElise StefanikRole offered: UN ambassadorView image in fullscreenThe New York representative Elise Stefanik was selected by Trump to be the ambassador to the UN. Floated as a possible Trump running mate, Stefanik is the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives.During her confirmation hearing, Stefanik endorsed Israeli claims of biblical rights to the entire West Bank, aligning herself with positions that could complicate diplomatic efforts in the Middle East.Chris WrightRole offered: Energy secretaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Chris Wright, an oil and gas industry executive with no political experience, to lead the US Department of Energy.During a 15 January confirmation hearing, Wright faced criticism for disputing the ties between climate change and more frequent or severe wildfires, and for calling wildfire concerns “hype” and dismissing their connection to climate policies.Howard LutnickRole offered: Commerce secretaryView image in fullscreenTrump nominated Howard Lutnick, co-chair of his transition team, to be his commerce secretary. Lutnick has uniformly praised the president-elect’s economic policies, including his use of tariffs.Lori Chavez-DeRemerRole offered: Labor secretaryView image in fullscreenTrump tapped the Oregon Republican for labor secretary, a position that would oversee the department’s workforce and its budget, and would put forth priorities that affect workers’ wages, health and safety, the ability to unionize and employers’ rights to fire workers, among other responsibilities.Linda McMahonRole offered: Education secretaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Linda McMahon, co-chair of his transition team, his pick for education secretary. Trump, who previously promised to dismantle the Department of Education, said McMahon would work to “expand ‘choice’” across the US and send education “back to the states”.Jamieson GreerRole offered: US trade representativeView image in fullscreenTrump lauded Jamieson Greer for his role enacting the USMCA, a revamped trade pact between the US, Mexico and Canada, and imposing tariffs on China. If confirmed, Greer will be tasked with reining in the trade deficit and opening up “export markets everywhere”.Mehmet OzRole offered: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administratorView image in fullscreenTrump tapped Dr Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator, adding that he would work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr.Brendan CarrRole offered: Chair of the Federal Communications CommissionView image in fullscreenTrump tapped Brendan Carr to be the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the independent agency that regulates telecommunications.In a statement, Trump said Carr “is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy”. More

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      Vance poses immigration as ‘greatest threat’ to US and Europe in CPAC speech

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      JD Vance marked one month since the Trump administration returned to power on Thursday by again claiming uncontrolled immigration was “the greatest threat” to both Europe and the United States.The vice-president took the stage at the country’s largest conservative voters conference in National Harbor, Maryland, to double down on his criticism that stunned European leaders last week when he accused them of suppressing free speech and “running in fear” from voters’ true beliefs.“The greatest threat in Europe, and I’d say the greatest threat in the US until about 30 days ago, is that you’ve had the leaders of the west decide that they should send millions and millions of unvetted foreign migrants into their countries,” Vance told the crowd.His rhetoric represents the administration’s dramatic U-turn in long-standing American domestic and foreign policy priorities, making clear the aim is to bolster border security with more agents and be more cautious about European military commitments.Vance also made the extraordinary claim, without evidence, that the month-old administration was about to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict in decades.“I really believe we are on the cusp of peace in Europe for the first time in three years,” he said about the war in Ukraine. “How are you going to end the war unless you are talking to Russia? You’ve got to talk to everybody involved in the fighting.”The remarks landed well at a transformed Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where establishment Republicans that once dominated the stage have been replaced by nationalist figures including Steve Bannon, Britain’s Nigel Farage, and the tech billionaire and “department of government efficiency” operator Elon Musk.The conference’s shift over the years mirrors the broader changes in Republican politics since Trump’s first nomination – at the 2016 event, Trump finished third in the conference’s straw poll with just 15%, behind Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.This year, thousands of conservatives near and far have flocked to CPAC, many donning “Make America great again” (Maga) apparel and America-centric costumes, including a Statue of Liberty outfit and flag shirts.The nationalist vibe at CPAC was further reflected by the presence of prominent European rightwing and Trump-friendly figures, including András László, a Hungarian member of the European parliament and president of the Patriots for Europe foundation.Speaking to the Guardian on the sidelines of the conference, László defended the Trump administration’s existential stance on European politics.“We need to have honest discussions, even if they are difficult to have,” László said, echoing Vance’s criticisms of European speech restrictions. “What are we fighting for? Sovereignty and democracy for Ukraine if we don’t practice it at home? We need to stop stifling freedom of speech, have more discussion, even if sometimes that might be painful for some people.”His organization, which launched last year and is now the third-largest group in the European parliament, with 86 members from 13 states, has been gaining influence across the continent, reflecting the same nationalist currents reshaping American conservatism.The conference also drew Liz Truss, Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, who crashed the UK economy with tax cuts for the wealthy before resigning after just 49 days in office. Reinventing herself as a rightwing populist, Truss used her CPAC platform to claim her political failures were actually the fault of shadowy elites.“The British state is now failing, is not working. The decisions are not being made by politicians,” Truss said, claiming her country was controlled by a “deep state” while calling for a British version of Trump’s movement. “We want to have a British CPAC.”Hours before his appearance at CPAC, Vance had posted a lengthy critique of traditional US and European foreign policy writ-large on X, dismissing concerns about the administration’s stance on Ukraine as “moralistic garbage” and defending its push for peace negotiations.“President [Donald] Trump and I have made two simple arguments: first, the war wouldn’t have started if President Trump was in office; second, that neither Europe, nor the Biden administration, nor the Ukrainians had any pathway to victory,” Vance wrote.Vance got more specific on the CPAC stage, suggesting that the US’s military commitment to European allies could be contingent on their domestic policies, particularly targeting Germany.“Germany’s entire defence is subsidised by the American taxpayer. There are thousands upon thousands of American troops in Germany today,” he said. “Do you think the American taxpayer is going to stand for that if you get thrown in jail for posting a mean tweet?” More

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      US Senate narrowly confirms Kash Patel as next FBI director

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      The US Senate has confirmed Kash Patel as the next FBI director, handing oversight of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to an official who has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue Donald Trump’s political opponents.Patel was narrowly confirmed on Thursday in a 51-49 vote, a reflection of the polarizing nature of his nomination and what Democrats see as his unwillingness to keep the bureau independent from partisan politics or resist politically charged requests from the president.Notably, at his confirmation hearing, Patel refused to commit that he would not use his position to investigate officials he portrayed as Trump’s adversaries in his book, and affirmed that he believed the FBI was answerable to the justice department and, ultimately, the White House.Patel’s responses suggest that his arrival at FBI headquarters will usher in a new chapter for the bureau as a result of his adherence to Trump’s vision of a unitary executive, where the president directs every agency, and willingness to prioritize the administration’s policy agenda.That objective to implement the Trump administration’s mandate has already taken hold at the justice department, which oversees the bureau and last week forced through the dismissal of corruption charges against Eric Adams, the New York mayor, in order to get his help to deport undocumented immigrants.The greatest challenge for recent FBI directors has been the delicate balance of retaining Trump’s confidence while resisting pressure to make public pronouncements or open criminal investigations that are politically motivated or that personally benefit the president.Patel is unlikely to have difficulties, such is his ideological alignment with Trump on a range of issues including the need to pursue retribution against any perceived enemies like former special counsel Jack Smith and others who investigated him during his first term.The new leadership at the FBI also comes as questions about the far-reaching nature of his loyalty to Trump remain unresolved. At his confirmation hearing, Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee tried in vain to elicit answers about his role as a witness in the criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.During the investigation, Patel was subpoenaed to testify about whether the documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified under a “standing declassification order”, as he had represented in various public comments at the time.The Guardian reported at the time that Patel initially declined to appear, citing his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. He later testified after the chief US district judge in Washington authorized Patel to have limited immunity from prosecution, which forced his testimony.That loyalty, to resist federal prosecutors, endeared him to Trump and is understood to have played a factor in him ultimately getting tapped for the FBI director position after Trump struggled for weeks to decide who he wanted at the bureau, a person familiar with the matter said.Patel ultimately clarified, in something of a partial admission under close questioning from senator Cory Booker, that although he witnessed Trump issue a declassification order for some documents, he did not actually know whether they applied to the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.Democrats have unanimously considered Patel’s track record in the first Trump administration, his incendiary remarks criticizing the bureau he was nominated to lead and more generally his role in the classified documents case to be disqualifying.When Trump tapped Patel last year, Democrats largely believed it would lead to a backlash that would sink his nomination. No resistance ever materialized, in part because Patel was less controversial than some of Trump’s other nominees, such as Pete Hegseth for defense secretary.Patel was formerly a public defender in Florida before joining the justice department in 2014 as a line prosecutor in the national security division.In 2017, Patel became a top Republican aide on the House intelligence committee, where he authored a politically charged memo accusing the FBI and the justice department of abusing surveillance powers to spy on a Trump adviser. The memo was criticized as misleading, though an inspector general later found errors with aspects of the surveillance.His efforts impressed Trump, who brought him into the administration and quickly elevated him to national security and defense roles. By the end of Trump’s first term, he was the chief of staff to defense secretary Chris Miller and briefly considered for CIA director.While John Durham, the special counsel appointed by Trump, found a catalog of mistakes by prosecutors in the Russia investigation, he found no evidence that officials had been motivated by political animus and brought no charges – contrary to claims by Trump and Patel. More

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      ‘I feel betrayed’: federal health workers fired by Trump tell of ‘nightmare’

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      As protesters gathered outside the headquarters of US health agencies to call attention to mass layoffs devastating the federal service in recent days, more employees at health agencies were terminated on Wednesday, including employees with years of experience and stellar performance reviews who were not probationary.Thousands of terminated employees across the federal government are appealing the decision. Some former employees are struggling to apply for unemployment or understand when their benefits expire in the chaotic termination process.At the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the layoffs included all public health fellows stationed at state, local and regional health departments, as well as staff working on global health and outbreak response – even as the bird flu outbreak ramps up and the CDC suspends its seasonal flu vaccine campaign.The Guardian spoke to four employees at the CDC who were terminated in recent days. Three requested anonymity to avoid retribution from the Trump administration. All of them recently received satisfactory or outstanding performance reviews, and none of them had been placed on performance review plans.Mack Guthrie was part of the Public Health Associate Program at the CDC – until everyone in the program was let go over the weekend. He worked in Minneapolis public schools to help prevent STIs and unintended pregnancies by educating students, testing and counseling patients in clinics, and tracking STI rates and trends.All of these layoffs are “a major hit to America’s health infrastructure”, said Guthrie, who had an outstanding performance review so was stunned to see his performance listed as the reason for termination.While all of the public health fellows were told they were being laid off, some never received letters, Guthrie said, adding: “The whole process has been dominated by chaos and confusion.”The state, tribal, local and territorial departments where they were deployed “are already starting to feel the effect of our absence”, Guthrie said.“For some of my colleagues, they are filling gaps at host sites that would simply not get filled otherwise,” he said. “These organizations simply don’t have the funds to hire people.”When one CDC employee attempted to log into their laptop on Wednesday morning, they received an error message and realized they were locked out of the system, unable to communicate with their team or even say goodbye. They’d been laid off overnight and because they have not yet received a letter, they don’t know the reason for their termination. This employee had years of experience and excellent performance reviews, and was not probationary.Employees in probationary periods were especially hard-hit in this round of layoffs. That status has nothing to do with their performance, unlike employees who may be put on probation in the private sector. Rather, it usually means they have been in their current position for less than two years, and thus they don’t have the same legal protections as other federal workers.One terminated employee who has been in the same position for four and a half years was surprised to receive notice that their job was considered probationary and they were being let go, despite high praise on performance reviews. They are appealing the decision to human resources, but have not received responses yet.Form letters sent to terminated employees say that they “are not fit for continued employment” because their “ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs”, and their performances have “not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency”.Former CDC employees told the Guardian they are now part of a class-action wrongful termination appeal to the US Merit Systems Protection Board – joining other federal employees represented by the Washington law firm James & Hoffman.The leader of the merit board was herself reinstated by a judge on Wednesday after the Trump administration tried to fire her.“If you’re going to terminate my position, don’t tell me it’s because of my performance,” said another employee who worked as a CDC contractor for four years before entering a probationary period after being hired permanently.View image in fullscreenEmployees who were locked out of their systems with little or no notice are now scrambling to collect their final paychecks, apply for unemployment, return equipment, and understand their benefits.The longtime employee who was locked out on Wednesday told the Guardian they were not given the proper documentation in order to apply for unemployment.“When I called HR, the team simply did not know what to do and I was left with, ‘Please call back tomorrow, we will have better guidance,’” the employee said. “Folks don’t even have essential documents to properly separate from the agency.”The employees said they haven’t been offered details on whether their annual leave will pay out, or even how long their health insurance will last.“I still need to communicate with my center in terms of what is happening with my final paycheck, how do I return my equipment, and I have no idea how they intend to do that,” said the employee who worked at the CDC for five years.The so-called “department of government efficiency,” known as Doge, has targeted certain agencies for layoffs in a purported bid to cut back on government spending, despite representing a very small portion of the federal budget.“They feel fake,” the employee said. “It seems like a giant scam that they were trying to see if it would work, and it did … I can’t believe that I lost my job as a result of this group of people.”The layoffs cap a stressful month for CDC staffers rushing to implement Trump’s flurry of executive orders.“We were working around the clock. If not working, I couldn’t sleep – for weeks, since the administration came in – thinking of all the things we had to do to meet those orders,” said the employee who was at the CDC for four and a half years.All the while, they were waiting to learn if they would keep their job – a “dream job” that has become “a nightmare”.“It was really part of my identity – I lived and ate it around the clock,” the employee said. “That was such a big part of my life … I feel betrayed.”The employee urged former supervisors and teammates to check in on the wellbeing of terminated staffers, some of whom report experiencing depression and anxiety.“All of us have always looked at CDC as being the final goalpost for a public career,” said the longtime employee.“It feels like I worked so hard to be where I’m at, only to look back and see an empty space. I know I did the work, but it’s rapidly being taken away.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More

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      It’s time for Americans to withhold their taxes | Judith Levine

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      Political power boils down to two things: votes and money. But when money buys presidents, senators and judges, votes are merely the sales receipts. What’s left is money, and the purpose of power is to get more of it.Trump’s non-billionaire followers appear thrilled that Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” are burning down the government. “Imagine if Trump hadn’t met and talked with Elon Musk that all this progress on efficiency may not be taking place or at such a fast pace needed before the midterms,” comments holy666 on a Fox News story about the mass layoffs of federal employees.Firings at the IRS elicit particular glee. Writes EnemyCitizen: “A beautiful thing about Mr Trump’s approach is that internal revenue will slow down and Congress will have to sober up and stop passing appropriations bills that apply our hard-earned money to frivolous political agendas. No more blank checks, Congress!”In fact, what the megalomaniacal multibillionaire is destroying is everything – minus the policing functions, of course – that we pay taxes for, including such frivolous agendas as food inspection, flood mitigation and Medicare. This is how kleptocracies work. Taxes are collected from the hoi polloi. The more benign government functions – housing the poor, postponing climate apocalypse – are abolished. But the rest of these functions do not entirely disappear. Rather, it is farmed out to private enterprise, which undertakes what it’s paid to do with minimum expense and maximum profit (and we all know corporations never commit waste, fraud or abuse).Watchdogs are eliminated, bribery is legalized. The most corrupt carry off the greatest rewards. And bereft of revenue, social services wither, the infrastructure crumbles, and the prisons fill with the destitute and the resistant.Maga wants to starve the bureaucracy. But it still wants money. And with the wealthiest awaiting gigantic tax breaks, they need it from the rest of us. With the Internal Revenue Service in effect transformed into a shell corporation laundering the money of the ultra-rich, why should we pay taxes?The IRS is being speedily organized for this rerouting. Doge is axing as many as 15,000 law-abiding and knowledgeable civil servants. It is trying to coerce the agency to give Elon’s AI-wielding AV squad unfettered access to the system containing the personal and financial data of every American taxpayer, small business and non-profit.Not only would this arrangement provide an armory of intelligence to be deployed against the president’s enemies – according to a lawsuit filed by taxpayer advocates, unions and small business alliances, it would give Musk access to his rivals’ profit and loss statements, payrolls, tax records and information about IRS investigations into their (or his own) suspected tax fraud. “No other business owner on the planet has access to this kind of information on his competitors,” assert the plaintiffs, “and for good reason.”These are all good reasons to withhold your taxes.Can the tactic work? Is it right? Morally and politically motivated tax nonpayment has an honorable, if not always successful, history. After the Roman empire’s destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD Jewish people refused to pay Rome’s “temple tax”. Rome responded by destroying more temples. Gandhi’s salt tax protest, on the other hand, was the first step toward India’s independence from the British empire. The American Revolution was a tax revolt, and that worked – although some colonists resisted taxes levied by the revolutionaries and, after independence, the states as well.More recently, American opponents of wars, nukes and abortion have refused to pay all or portions of their taxes in protest. Many went to prison for it. In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau wrote of weighing the benefits and costs of any given action. He believed all taxation was illegitimate as long as the US condoned slavery. “If [the injustice] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law,” he concluded.One of the diabolical features of an anti-state state like our current regime is its ability to turns acts of resistance against the state against themselves. Principled prosecutors and agency heads resign rather than carry out the president’s illegal orders – leaving only Maga flunkies in their places. Civil servants quit rather than pervert the services or science they’ve devoted their careers to – leaving the work unguarded and the workforce decimated, precisely as the wrecking crew intends.So it is with tax resistance. Every dollar that does not come into Washington’s coffers is justification to cut another dollar. You may remember that the vanguard of 21st century far right populism was the Tea party, an anti-tax movement.In the New Republic, Liza Featherstone points out that the destruction of popular government programs is not “a goofy misstep on this administration’s part. Rather, it’s exactly the point.” Whether firing park rangers, defunding daycare centers, or deep-sixing job-creating clean-energy projects in red states, the programs’ “popularity is precisely what the Trump-Musk administration dislikes about them. For anti-government ideologues, it’s important that people not have good experiences with the government.”And if people have bad experiences with the government – if they contract bird flu because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer have the wherewithal to control and prevent disease; if bridges collapse because the funds to repair them are cut off – well, there’s proof that the government can’t do anything right, and deserves to be destroyed.In fact, after it outsources the government, the regime would be smart to keep calling it the government. When IRS.com loses a taxpayer’s refund and assigns a bot to sort out the problem, the taxpayer will blame IRS.gov.Thanks to intentional staff shortages at the IRS, your missing tax payment might go unnoticed, just as the Trump family’s multibillion-dollar fraud escaped the agency’s auditors for decades. But if tax evasion is a secretive act, tax resistance is civil disobedience, a public, political act. The reason to withhold your taxes is not to cheat the government of much-needed funds. It is not even to cheat the crooks now running the country, satisfying as that may be. It is to expose the criminality of what is being done – and not done – with the money the state has a legal and moral obligation to collect and then to distribute, to serve all the people.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books More

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      From weather apps to taxes: the trickle-down effects of Trump’s federal worker firings

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      You wake up to dark clouds outside, so you check the weather on your phone: a storm is coming.That weather app uses data from the National Weather Service, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a small organization which could see as much as 10% of its workforce cut this week.You grab food to make breakfast: eggs, meat, formula for your baby. The safety of your food is regulated and inspected by a host of federal employees, who flag and investigate when items shouldn’t be eaten.The former head of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division resigned this week because he thought firings and layoffs at the agency would hinder its work. “I didn’t want to spend the next six months of my career on activities that are fundamentally about dismantling an organization, as opposed to working on the stated agenda,” he told Stat News.You check your flight reservations for an upcoming trip to a national park. The safety of that flight is overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration, which experienced layoffs this month despite recent high-profile aviation accidents. The national park will probably see its staff gutted, leaving it more vulnerable to wildfires and without search and rescue capabilities. “I honestly can’t imagine how the parks will operate without my position,” a park ranger who was cut wrote on Instagram. “I mean, they just can’t. I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency. This is flat-out reckless.”You keep an eye on the bird flu levels and a measles outbreak – the winter has been punishing for illnesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were hit with a first round of layoffs this week, which could affect outbreak response and reporting. The Epidemic Intelligence Service, a disease-detective training program, could be on the chopping block.Oh, and you’re working on your taxes – while thousands of Internal Revenue Service probationary employees are expected to be laid off during tax season.The government certainly has room for improvement – backlogs that should be cleared, investigations that should be more thorough, communication that should be sharper, actions that should be more transparent. But all of this work is done by the federal government and its millions of workers and contractors, whose daily jobs touch the lives of all Americans and many around the globe.In the first weeks of the Trump administration, the president and the billionaire Elon Musk, tasked with cutting government through the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), have waged war against federal workers. Musk and his team have moved from agency to agency, indiscriminately firing probationary employees and those whose work they say doesn’t align with the administration’s priorities, including many who work on diversity initiatives or in international development.The result is a hobbled and terrified federal workforce that is just at the beginning of the expected cuts – and an American public that is starting to experience the repercussions.“We’re playing Russian roulette, and basically you’re putting a whole bunch of more bullets in the chambers,” said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit that advocates for a strong civil service. “You can’t prevent all bad things from happening, but our federal government is, in a lot of ways, a manager of risk, and it does a pretty darn good job of managing that risk, even though it can be improved.”An email went out in January to millions of federal employees offering a deferred resignation, which the White House says about 75,000 people have accepted, although it’s unclear how many of the people who accepted are actually eligible.Joel Smith works at the Social Security Administration and is the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3184, which covers more than 90 agency offices in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana. He said the office of management and budget, which has coordinated the buyout program it’s calling a “fork in the road”, hasn’t communicated with the agencies about which employees accepted the buyout. Some employees didn’t show up the first day the program’s leave was supposed to begin, and the agency had to call them to figure out where they were, he said.“It’s just chaos on top of chaos, on top of terror, on top of employees that want to leave are being told they can’t leave. I’m trying to think of a good word for it. I don’t know if there is one, other than clusterfuck,” Smith said.Those that remain in their jobs worry about whether they’re next as they add to their workloads to cover for those who lost their jobs or quit. People eyeing next career moves will avoid civil service, previously seen as a stable career, to stay out of the current chaos.Many people take core functions of the federal government for granted, as it protects them from disasters or national security concerns, but might not otherwise affect them. But that could change after widespread firings. For example, layoffs in the Environmental Protection Agency mean that those remaining in their positions have less capacity to do their jobs.“That could come in the guise of someone not being able to respond to an environmental disaster,” said Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704. “Or what about if there’s a facility illegally flaring air pollutants? We might not be as able to respond to something like that which could have health effects. There could be devastating effects to the American people.”If you or your loved ones use any direct services such as benefits programs, you could see the effects of a beleaguered federal workforce up close.Let’s say you’re helping your parents sign up for social security. The Social Security Administration is already understaffed, so losing any positions will make wait times longer for people who need to access benefits, Smith said.Smith’s father filed for retirement benefits in November to begin in February, but by February, his case hadn’t been processed – it was stuck in somebody’s backlog. A member of Congress had to intervene to bring attention to the delay, a frequent tactic to overcome stalled claims.“What people think they’re witnessing now and they’re complaining about now, in terms of delays, is going to be considered the good old days here in a year or two if this continues,” he said. “We already don’t have the people to do the work.”For federal workers and their families, the impact is heavy and immediate if they lose their livelihoods.“The way it’s working now is that the career civil servants are viewed as the villains,” said Rob Shriver, former acting director of the US office of personnel management who now works at Democracy Forward. “They’re viewed as people who are to be worked around and not worked with. They’re being deprived of the thing that’s most important to them, which is to contribute to the agency’s mission and bring their skills and expertise to the table to help inform decision makers.”Though many have focused on the disruption caused in Washington, federal workers live throughout the US and, in some cases, other parts of the world.“There’s a human aspect of it, which is these people are not just being fired, but they’re being fired in the worst way. No notice, no nothing. This is true across the board. There is zero humanity being demonstrated,” said Stier, of the Partnership for Public Service. “It is unbelievably costly to the individuals involved, and it’s costly to the system and to the American taxpayers. It’s going to cost the American taxpayer a ton of money. It is not going to save any money.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More

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      The little-known Gullah Geechee politician who pushed for the 14th amendment

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      After Donald Trump issued an executive order to limit birthright citizenship last month, Marilyn Hemingway, the CEO and president of the Gullah Geechee Chamber of Commerce, knew she had to do something. Based in Georgetown, South Carolina, the GGCC helps preserve the history of Gullah Geechee people, the Africans who were enslaved on the Sea Islands along the Atlantic coast, and their descendants. One such person was Joseph Hayne Rainey, a man born in Georgetown and enslaved until his father purchased his freedom when he was 10. Rainey is who Hemingway immediately thought of following Trump’s order.Rainey was the first Black person elected to the United States congress, where he was known for his support of the 14th amendment, which was ratified in 1868 and stated: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The amendment was necessary to give the roughly 4.5 million Black people in the country citizenship after emancipation, as a previous supreme court case, Dred Scott v Sandford, had denied citizenship to all people of African descent.Rainey’s support for the laws passed during Reconstruction was deeply informed by his life in enslavement. He spent much of his time in Congress fighting to protect Black Americans and to ensure the 14th and 15th amendments – the latter of which prohibited the federal government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude – were enforced.“The 14th amendment was passed and ratified because once those who were enslaved were emancipated, it was like they didn’t have standing,” Hemingway said. “Where were they in this world now? They were no longer enslaved, so they needed to be made citizens … [Rainey] went from an enslaved person to an emancipated person to a citizen. His personal story reflects the American story.”Now, the amendment that has long granted birthright citizenship is being used by the US president to deny citizenship to the children of recent immigrants. “The Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” his EO reads. It “has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’”.Trump’s executive order almost immediately faced several lawsuits from civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys generals, as well as a temporary restraining order from a federal judge. A federal appeals court has denied the administration’s request to reinstate a ban, but the threat still looms, especially as the president has said he expects the supreme court to side with him on the decision.“The first line of the 14th amendment is designed to say that anyone who was born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is a citizen,” said Jamal Greene, a professor at Columbia Law School. “That doesn’t depend on their race or their ethnicity or anything else about them. The only question is whether they’re subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”Trump’s administration has harped on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States”, which was understood to refer to people who were not subject to US law, Greene said. That would have meant diplomats from other countries, Indigenous people, who are sovereign, and, potentially, an invading army. But now Trump is trying to use that language to apply to a wide group of people, including children whose parents were not lawfully in the US at the time of their birth.Greene said that those who support such an understanding of the law are suggesting that those people would not have an allegiance to the US. “But that interpretation is not consistent with how it would have been originally understood,” he said. “And it’s also not consistent with the language itself, since jurisdiction is not a reference to allegiance. It’s a reference to whether US laws apply to those people.”Some are also concerned about the order’s potential reach to citizens, such as Black Americans. The GGCC, for its part, argues that Trump’s order is an attempt to undo some of Rainey’s work. For Rainey, the 14th amendment was not just for Black Americans – it was for everyone. “To all people born unnaturalized into the United States, [the 14th amendment] is the first time in the history of the United States that it actually covered citizenship, including of formerly enslaved people,” Hemingway said. “They were the impetus for this, but it covered everyone. So we have to be very careful when we come and we start attacking it, because it’s not just going to remove citizenship of immigrants, it’s going to remove citizenship of everyone.”Though the restraining order blocks Trump’s plan, the future of birthright citizenship will be undecided until the supreme court hears the case. In the meantime, Hemingway is continuing to promote Rainey’s life and continue his fight.“This is why we speak out to make sure correct history is told … We still have to have the same fight for civil rights. [Rainey’s] actions inform our actions to this day. His story needs to be told more so that we could hold all of our elected officials accountable to the United States constitution. We are in a constitutional crisis. His life explains why we continue the fight.” More

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      Trump singled me out for ruining women’s sport. This is my response to him | Austin Killips

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      Earlier this month, Donald Trump singled me out. In fact, I was the first example he gave of someone ruining women’s sport.“Last year”, he said while announcing his Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports executive order, “a male cyclist posing as a woman competed in the 800-mile Arizona Trail Race – a very big deal in cycling – and obliterated the women’s course record by nearly five and a half hours.”He’s right: I did snag the record from Alex Schultz (a man) who had previously bested the record held by Lael Wilcox (a woman). A few months after my effort, all of our paces were shattered by a Lithuanian ultra-distance phenom.You see, my interest in this event was spurred by its co-ed leaderboard. Events like the Arizona Trail Race are not bound by governing bodies in any traditional sense. The rules boil down to little more than “pedal alone and in good faith under your own power”. An event that involves riding across the length of Arizona and traversing the Grand Canyon with a bicycle on your back is as much a competition as an actualizing exercise for the masochists who choose to sublimate through sport.View image in fullscreenNot that it got me anywhere, financially. My fleeting record run was the talk of two niche cycling publications, a few subreddits, and generated enough clout for an REI cashier to grant me a full refund on a pair of absolutely destroyed shoe gaiters. It failed to secure me anything meaningful like industry sponsorships – tangible support that would have made my pursuits in sport tenable.Instead, my wins only served to generate more artifacts for the right’s culture wars, while I remained unable to garner even a sliver of the institutional recognition that friends and fellow competitors with similar palmares have found.Transgender people lost the inclusion battle in sport ages ago. International governing bodies for competitions in running, cycling, chess, swimming, darts and more have repeatedly caved to pressure and helped shift the Overton window to exclude trans people from public life more broadly. The world’s least gracious winners insist on kicking sand in our eyes.Trump’s executive order is a perfect scam: he and his acolytes get to talk endlessly about the fake specter of trans athletes “invading” women’s sports, while never putting any of their attention, immense political cache and funding access towards things that would meaningfully elevate the state of women’s sports. Instead, they get to fixate their hate and attention on every transsexual woman who dares show up to a rec T-ball league with her friends.Meanwhile, the women who simply want to compete and labor as athletes are left in the cold.In my field of cycling, conditions haven’t been this dire in ages if you’re a woman in the US trying to progress to the vaunted European peloton. Last year saw the shuttering of two institutions: the Joe Martin Stage Race went from postponed to falling off the calendar after 46 years, and the longest-running women’s professional team, DNA Pro Cycling, closed up shop after 12 years of being the premier pipeline for American women hoping to advance to the international peloton. For women looking for a team or a race that could potentially catapult their career forward, things are the worst they have been in the last decade.View image in fullscreenConsider this: when you watch a professional race, it’s common for an announcer to regale spectators with the resumes of the women on the start line. Many of them are record-shattering athletes and also hold full-time jobs as doctors, researchers or investment bankers. These remarks always come in good faith, but as a means of contrasting us against the men – who usually have enough money and support thrown behind them to make a living as athletes – they speak to the sad state of affairs in women’s sport. And soon, things for women’s sports will get even worse. Because it bears repeating, as clearly as possible: their project contains no measures that help female athletes at the professional level as laborers, and certainly nothing that even gestures towards new investment opportunities for girls pursuing their dream. It’s a free market that devalues women’s labor at every turn.In fact, the only action items referencing funding simply establishes a precedent for rescinding money from organizations investing in women and girls who have given their lives and bodies to sport. In this new reality, all women lose. In fact, everyone loses – except for the people cashing checks and amassing political power.They found a scapegoat, and all they have done is enrich themselves with five-figure speaking fee tours, while taking the oxygen out of the room. The only lane they’ve made is one that encourages women to quit competing for a life of news appearances and college campus speaking tours.They are, for lack of a better word, cowards who don’t want to do the actual work of empowering and supporting athletes.So my argument is quite simple. Maybe you take umbrage with trans people in sports, and in turn me (whatever, you won that battle). But if you purport to care about women’s sports, about girls getting a fair chance at competing, you need to ask yourself why, at the height of a historic moment of sweeping and unchecked austerity measures, the loudest and wealthiest people in the room have built a movement that culminated in this: an executive order that establishes a precedent to strip funding away from women in sport. More