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      Immigrants set for Libya deportation sat on tarmac for hours, attorney says

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      Immigrants in Texas who were told they would be deported to Libya sat on a military airfield tarmac for hours on Wednesday, unsure of what would happen next, an attorney for one of the men has said.The attorney, Tin Thanh Nguyen, told the news agency Reuters that his client, a Vietnamese construction worker from Los Angeles, was among the immigrants woken in the early morning hours and bussed from an immigration detention center in Pearsall, Texas, to an airfield where a military aircraft awaited them.After several hours, they were bussed back to the detention center around noon, the attorney said on Thursday.The Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the state department did not respond to requests for comment.Reuters was first to report that the Trump administration was poised to deport immigrants held in the US to Libya, despite a court order against such a move, in a development that would escalate Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.Officials earlier this week told Reuters the US military could fly the immigrants to the north African country as soon as Wednesday, but stressed that plans could change.A US official said the flight never departed. As of Friday, it was unclear if the administration was still planning to proceed with the deportations.A federal judge in Boston ruled on Wednesday that any effort by the Trump administration to deport non-Libyan immigrants to Libya without adequate screenings for possible persecution or torture would clearly violate a prior court order.Lawyers for a group of immigrants pursuing a class action lawsuit had made an emergency request to the court hours after the news broke of the potential flight to Libya.Nguyen, who declined to name his client, said the man was told on Monday to sign a document agreeing to be deported to Libya. The man, who can not read English well, declined to sign it and was placed in solitary confinement and shackled along with others, the attorney said.The man was never provided an opportunity to express a fear of being deported to Libya as required under federal immigration law and the recent judicial order, Nguyen said.“They said: ‘We’re deporting you to Libya,’ even though he hadn’t signed the form, he didn’t know what the form was,” Nguyen said.Nguyen said his client, originally from Vietnam, has lived in the US since the 1990s but was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) earlier this year during a regular check-in, which is becoming more common.Vietnam declines to accept some deportees and processes deportation paperwork slowly, Nguyen said, making it harder for the US to send deportees there.There have been talks between the US and the east African nation of Rwanda about also deporting people there. More

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      ‘It’s all very sad’: Trump’s attack on arts funding has a devastating effect

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      On the afternoon of 3 May, arts organizations around the US began receiving cryptic emails from a previously unknown government email account. The missives declared that these organizations’ missions were no longer in line with new governmental arts priorities, which included helping to “foster AI competency”, “empower houses of worship” and “make America healthy again”.Chad Post, a publisher at Open Letter Books, a program of the University of Rochester that specializes in publishing translated literature, got his email just before entering a screening of Thunderbolts*. He put a quick post on Instagram, and when he came out of the movie his phone was full of responses. “I seemed to be the first one to receive this,” he recounted. “But then, all of a sudden, everyone was getting these letters.”Post told me that he had been in touch with 45 publishers who had had their NEA grants terminated, and he suspected that all 51 publishers receiving grants for 2025 supporting the publication of books and magazines had now received the letter. Although Open Letter expects to still receive funding for 2025, Post is convinced that no further money will be forthcoming from the National Endowment for the Arts.“According to rules of the email, we should get the money, although if you come back in two months and they never sent it, I wouldn’t be shocked,” he said. “The chilling part of that email is that they’re eliminating the NEA entirely. It lists all these insane things that are the new priority, and says our venture is not in line with the new priority, so we can’t ever apply again.”The grant termination won’t deal a lethal blow to Open Letter Books, but it will alter the kinds of literature that they are able to publish. Post said that he would have to give preference to books from nations that can offer funding – which tends to favor books from European languages and from wealthier countries.This sentiment was echoed by other arts organizations, who see the loss of NEA money as a significant blow, but not a deadly one. Kristi Maiselman, the executive director and curator of CulturalDC, which platforms artists that often are not programed at larger institutions, shared that NEA grants account for $65,000 of a roughly $1.1m budget. Thanks to proactive work between her team and the NEA, Maiselman received her grant this year, but does not expect any further such money. “It’s a pretty significant chunk of the budget for us,” she told me. “What has been hard for us this year is that we really do provide a platform for artists to respond to what’s going on in the world.” Continuing to promulgate those kinds of artists would be more difficult in future.View image in fullscreenAllegra Madsen, the executive director of the LGBTQ+-focused Frameline film festival, said that her grant funding had been in limbo ever since the inauguration of Donald Trump, and was ultimately terminated last week. “I think we could all kind of sense that it was going to go away,” she told me. “I think these blows that came this week are going to be felt very intensely by a lot of different organizations.”Frameline is housed in the same building as a number of other arts organizations dedicated to film, including the Jewish Film Institute, the Center for Asian American Media and BAVC Media, and it also sits adjacent to SF Film and the Independent Television Service, all of which Madsen says were affected by the termination of NEA grants. “We’ve all been hit, and we’re all just sort of figuring out what our next steps are.”One fear that Madsen raised was that many private funders take cues from the Federal government, and now with NEA grants terminated – and possibly the NEA itself getting axed – she is unsure if other donors will get cold feet. “This year we have a cohort of sponsors that are very much sticking by us, and I am incredibly thankful for those organizations standing up. But it is a bigger ask now, it’s a bigger risk for them.”Despite the often seemingly indiscriminate cuts made to the federal government by the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, the organizations the Guardian spoke with all believed that they had been targeted in some way because of the programming that they offer. “Just because it’s being done in mass, I don’t think that takes away from the idea that this is pointed and intentional,” Madsen told me. “Governments like this try to attack the populations that seem to have the least power, and right now they are mistakenly thinking that’s going to be our trans and gender-nonconforming siblings.”Taking a similar perspective, Maiselman sees these cuts as perpetuating a broader cultural turn away from arts programs, in particular those that significantly represent people of color and the queer community. “Prior to losing the NEA, we had lost about $100,000 in sponsorships this year,” she said. “We’re hearing from our sponsors that there are a lot of eyes on them. They’re not exactly saying no, but they are saying saying, ‘not right now’.”View image in fullscreenPost sees private money as a possible way to make up some of the lost NEA funding but fears that there will be a stampede of indie presses all toward the same few donors. “Everyone is feeling a little more broke and a little more strapped right now,” he said. “Arts orgs writ large are going to be competing for funds from the same few individuals and that just scares me.”He also argued that, while a press like Open Letter will be able to continue functioning without NEA money, organizations that only publish literary magazines may fold without significant infusions of private cash. “Those literary magazines don’t have the opportunity to rely on a book breaking out,” he said. “They’re not suddenly going to have an issue of the magazine take off. This might be a massive blow to literary magazines.”Although some arts organizations appear poised to survive the loss of NEA money, they nonetheless feel existentially frightened by the general turn of the political culture away from diversity and toward authoritarianism. “It’s hard right now to see any light at the end of the tunnel,” said Maiselman. “With the rate at which things are changing, it’s going to take years to course correct – that is, if and when the administration changes.”Maiselman further argued that the cultural shift brought in by the aggressive moves of the Trump administration had the potential to profoundly transform the landscape of the arts world. “There’s going to be a reckoning,” she told me. “A lot of organizations won’t survive this.”For her own part, Madsen struck a defiant tone, placing the current repressive political atmosphere in the context of other such threats to the LGBTQ+ community. “We will survive, we have the privilege of being an almost 50-year-old org,” Madsen said. “The LGBTQ+ community has been down this road before. We got through McCarthyism, we got through the Aids crisis, we’ll survive this.”In hopes of surviving, arts organizations are again turning toward one another, finding a community sentiment that many of the people I spoke to called reminiscent of the Covid years. “There are a lot of conversations right now about how we can help one another,” Maiselman told me. Post echoed that, positioning this as a time of collective grieving. “It feels like the end of something,” he said. “It’s sad, it’s all very sad, but we have to keep going somehow. We are damaged but not defeated.” More

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      Why is Trump so fixated on toys for little girls? | Moira Donegan

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      Donald Trump has found a new target for his trademark mockery and dismissal: little girls.In comments at a 30 April cabinet meeting, the president seemed to dismiss the economic impact of his chaotic tariff regime on American consumers by citing girls as the primary complainants. “Somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open,” Trump said. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.”Trump is prone to odd non-sequiturs, but the dolls have become something of a sticking point. Onboard Air Force One on 4 May, he doubled down on his insistence that American girls should have fewer toys. “All I’m saying is that a young lady, a 10-year-old girl, nine-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls,” he told reporters. “She could be very happy with two or three or four or five.”In an interview with Kristen Welker of Meet the Press that same day, Trump again mentioned the dolls. “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl needs – that’s 11 years old – needs 30 dolls,” Trump said. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable.” He went on to assert that American children also have too many pencils. “They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”In some respects, the comments seem like a rare bit of honesty from the president: an acknowledgment of the reality that his tariffs will hurt consumers and lower the American their standard of living. With steep tariffs on many consumer goods, particularly those made in China, and supply chain issues caused by retailers and producers frantic attempts to offset the costs of the new tariffs, many common products – yes, including children’s toys – will become shorter in supply and steeper in cost. Because of Trump’s policies, it is indeed true that there will be fewer presents for children underneath American Christmas trees this year – a trend that is likely to continue for years to come if Trump’s trade war triggers an economic recession, as is widely expected. Americans themselves don’t have much say in this, but Donald Trump wants us all to know that he’s comfortable with us, and our children, having less.But the selection of dolls, in particular, as Trump’s stand-in for consumer prices reflects the gendered ideas about work, money and purchasing that animate Trump’s chaotic economic policy. After all, Trump did not talk about the impact of his trade regime on toy trucks or GI Joe action figures – and he certainly didn’t mention its likely impact on things like video games, basketballs, squat racks or protein powders. The tariffs will increase prices across economic sectors and hurt consumers of all kinds of goods. But Trump did not speak in general terms about those who might like to buy a house one day, or about who will be hurt by his tariffs on Canadian lumber, or about those who would like to be treated for their illnesses but who have to pay steeper prices for the medicines they need when tariffs hit pharmaceuticals. He didn’t talk about any of the consumption that Americans are uniformly agreed to think of as reasonable, dignified or aspirational. He chose, instead, something seen as trivial, childlike, and only for girls.The comments aim to cast the pain that consumers will face as ultimately feminine and frivolous, their complaints petulant and childlike. In this respect, Trump is drawing on a long tradition of economic rhetoric that aims to cast consumption as feminine, decadent and morally suspect – and to contrast it with the supposedly more manly and virtuous productive side of the economy. It’s a laughably stupid symbolism, one that only works for those deeply committed to their ignorance about how the economy actually works: in truth, everyone consumes, and people of all genders participate in the productive economy. But Trump does not argue based on the facts: he asserts dominance. And here, he casts those Americans who would complain about the economic pain that he is inflicting on them as feminine and hence as contemptible, deserving no more respect than spoiled children.The project of masculinizing the economy – perhaps especially at children’s expense – is one that the Trump administration seems to be pushing more broadly. Trump claims, despite the near-universal assertions of economists to the contrary, that his tariffs will shift the US away from the primarily female service sector industries that have dominated the American economy since the 1970s back to a more masculine manufacturing base.To this end, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, a billionaire former CEO, went on MSNBC late last month to describe his vision for the future of the American worker. “It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past but to do the great jobs of the future,” Lutnick said, arguing that fewer people should be aspiring to bachelor’s degrees and should expect to occupy themselves in lower-skill factory work instead. “This is the new model, where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”This is the vision for your children’s future that the Trump administration wants to put forward: deprived of material comforts and joy in childhood, then deprived of the hope for upward mobility in adulthood. They want you, and your kids, to be poor, desperate and ignorant. They want you to work in repetitive, dangerous, back-breakingly physical jobs, and they want you to have no aspiration to anything better. They want you to imagine your future, and your children’s futures, not as an open horizon of freedom and potential, but as a dark and desperate struggle, devoid of the notion that we might be anything more than useful instruments for the needs of capital. What do they offer Americans as compensation for this loss? Virtually nothing, aside from misogynist contempt, and the assurance that as our living standards sink and our prospects disappear, in our suffering, at least, we are masculine.On Fox News this past Tuesday, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, tried to put this spin on things. Describing what he would say to a little girl who would be denied dolls because of Trump’s tariff policy, Bessent insisted that it was for her own good. “I would tell that young girl that you would have a better life than your parents,” Bessent said. But the Trump administration is doing everything in its power to ensure that America’s children – and in particular, its little girls – have it worse.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Protecting democracy is not enough: five things Americans must fight for | Huck Gutman

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      A recent dinner was peaceable until it was just about over, when a friend’s son spoke up in praise of a middle-of-the-road columnist and how his opposition to Donald Trump’s attack on democracy revealed that we were all on the progressive left now.“Not true,” I responded with more vehemence than I expected. “Wanting democratic norms is not sufficient; it is merely a precondition for meaningful change.” Making sure the US’s plumbing was secure did not mean that anything of importance would pass through the pipes.There has been a great outcry about the erosion of democratic practices during these first hundred days of the second Trump presidency. Many Americans, probably a solid majority, are appalled at the attack on our courts and judges, at the willful ignoring of habeas corpus, at the intrusion of unelected figures – not just Elon Musk, but his whole “department of government efficiency” (Doge) team – into the privacy of American lives, at the undoing of the independence of agencies intended to protect the public.But protecting democracy is not enough. It is a rearguard action, one that fights against incursions that would transform the United States into an oligarchic state serving special interests. It does not address the needs of the larger public. Fighting for procedures and not substance is insufficient.Those who fight for the future of our nation need to fight not just against threats, but for a just and equitable future. Too often the well-deserved plaudits for those who fight against do not extend to articulating a program of what the American nation needs, in addition to democratic institutions.Here are five specific suggestions for what we should be fighting for. Without these reforms, defenses of democracy ring hollow, elevating a defense of form while denying any attention to substance.First, the nation needs a new minimum wage, a living wage, not the residue of 1938 legislation called the Fair Labor Standards Act. No one can live on $7.25 an hour, which translates to about $15,000 a year.Second, Americans deserve healthcare as a right. A Medicare for All system would extend healthcare to every person. Its cost would be more than offset by eliminating the 25% of healthcare spending that goes for overhead in our private-insurance-dominated system. Cutting $1tn of needless bureaucratic expenses and bill-keeping would ensure that we have the money to provide healthcare to everyone.Third, Americans should find it easy to join unions if they wish. The decline in unionization is a major reason why, as the wealthy get ever wealthier, wages have been flat or declining for almost 50 years. As it stands, the table is tilted toward management. Corporations regulate all employee concerns, from wages to healthcare to retirement benefits, leaving workers little to no chance to say what they actually want. We must level that playing field so that workers together can fight for their needs.Fourth, we need to increase taxes on the wealthy. There is no reason that Warren Buffett, as he has said, should pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. Increasing the marginal tax rate for the highest earners, limiting the exorbitant pass-throughs of the inheritance tax, and ending the unhealthy practice of taxing paper gains in wealth, or capital gains, less than the money earned by workers would diminish the federal deficit and at the same time fund many needed services to Americans. Removing the cap on income subject to social security taxes would ensure the solvency of the nation’s pension program for generations.Fifth, we should reverse the deeply damaging Citizens United decision, which enabled the wealthy and their special interests to buy elections. Currently, money and not votes determines the priorities of the United States. If the supreme court does not reverse this decision, a constitutional amendment limiting contributions – one person, one vote, with a low limit on individual contributions and no contributions by corporations – would fix this loophole, which has corrupted all of American politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere is, rightly, much concern about the undemocratic moves made by the Trump administration. But unless we demand changes in what the United States does, unless we do more than just defending the practices of democracy, our society will remain dysfunctional. Those who focus only on the process of maintaining the pipes required for quenching our thirst, without giving us actual water to drink, are fighting only a small part of the battle.What’s giving me hope nowWe need to fight for democracy, but we also need to fight for the achievable goals democracy can bring us, particularly economic justice for all Americans. Raising wages, providing healthcare to all, fostering unions, taxing the wealthy and corporations, preventing big money from buying elections: these are the things the renewal of democracy can and should bring us.

      Huck Gutman is a former chief of staff to Senator Bernie Sanders and an emeritus professor at the University of Vermont More

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      Trade deals, global wars and AI Jedi posts: where is Trump’s focus? – podcast

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      On Thursday, the White House announced a framework for a US-UK trade deal. Earlier in the week, when asked for his take on India’s missile attack on Pakistan, Donald Trump replied: “I get along with both.” But before all of that, on an otherwise quiet Sunday, the US president announced tariffs on foreign films and the reopening of Alcatraz. Throw in the White House posting another AI-generated image of Trump – this time featuring a lightsabre, muscly arms and two bald eagles – and you have one chaotic week.Archive: BBC News, CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, Sky News, Sky News Australia
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com

      Help support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politcspodus More

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      Trump news at a glance: military to immediately remove trans troops and use medical records to oust more

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      “No More Trans @ DoD,” Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, posted after the supreme court allowed the Trump administration’s ousting of transgender troops to go forward. As of Thursday, the orders have been issued to identify and involuntarily force trans people out of service.Department officials have said it is difficult to determine exactly how many transgender service members there are, but medical records will show those who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, show symptoms or are being treated. Those troops would then be forced out.Separately, Britain has become the first country to strike a trade agreement with Donald Trump since his announcement of global tariffs on what he called “liberation day”.Here are the key stories at a glance:Up to 1,000 trans troops to be removed The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 service members who identify as transgender out of the military and give others 30 days to self-identify, under a new directive issued on Thursday.Buoyed up by Tuesday’s supreme court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military, the defense department will then begin going through medical records to identify others who have not come forward.Read the full storyUS and UK agree ‘breakthrough’ trade dealThe UK and US have agreed a “breakthrough” trade agreement slashing some of Donald Trump’s tariffs on cars, aluminium and steel. The UK prime minister said the deal would save thousands of British jobs.Keir Starmer said it was a “fantastic, historic day” as he announced the agreement, the first by the White House since Trump announced sweeping global tariffs last month.Read the full storyVance says Kashmir crisis ‘none of our business’JD Vance has said that the US will not intervene in the conflict between Pakistan and India, calling fighting between the two nuclear powers “fundamentally none of our business”.The remarks came during an interview with Fox News, where the US vice-president said that the US would seek to de-escalate the conflict but could force neither side to “lay down their arms”.“Our hope and our expectation is that this is not going to spiral into a broader regional war or, God forbid, a nuclear conflict,” Vance said. “Right now, we don’t think that’s going to happen.”Read the full storyTrump names Fox host to replace pick for DC’s top prosecutorDonald Trump on Thursday said he would look for a new candidate for the role of top federal prosecutor in Washington DC, after a key Republican senator said he would not support the loyalist initially selected for the job.He then named Fox News host and former judge Jeanine Pirro for the job.Read the full storyUS House approves Trump’s renaming of Gulf of MexicoRepublicans in the House of Representatives on Thursday approved legislation to codify Donald Trump’s policy of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”. The measure was sponsored by rightwing Georgia lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene and passed nearly along party lines, with all Democrats opposed and almost every Republican, with the exception of Nebraska representative Don Bacon, voting in favour.Read the full storyTrump invokes state secrets in case of wrongly deported manThe Trump administration is invoking the “state secrets privilege” in an apparent attempt to avoid answering a judge’s questions about its erroneous deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García to El Salvador.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters that British consumers will like chicken and beef imported from the US despite the use of chlorine and hormones. “Let’s see what the market decides,” Navarro said, adding: “We don’t believe that once they taste American beef and chicken that they would prefer not to have it.”

      The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) will no longer track the cost of climate crisis-fuelled weather disasters, including floods, heatwaves, wildfires and more. It is the latest example of changes to the agency and the Trump administration limiting federal government resources on climate change.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 7 May. More

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      US to begin immediate removal of up to 1,000 trans military members

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      The Pentagon is removing the 1,000 members of the military who openly identify as trans, and giving those who have yet to openly-identify as transgender 30 days to remove themselves, according to a new directive issued Thursday.The memo is fueled by Tuesday’s supreme court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on trans military members. The defense department has said it will follow up by going through medical records to identify others who haven’t come forward.Officials have said that as of 9 December 2024, there were 4,240 troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria in active duty, national guard and reserve service, representing a tiny fraction – of the 2 million people in service, although they acknowledge the number may be higher.The memo released on Thursday mirrors one sent out in February, but any action was stalled at that point by several lawsuits. When the initial Pentagon directive came out earlier this year, it gave service members 30 days to self-identify. Since then, about 1,000 have done so.In a statement, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the 1,000 troops who already self-identified “will begin the voluntary separation process” from the military.Rae Timberlake, a spokesperson for Sparta Pride, is one of the 1,000 who chose to self-identify. Timberlake has served in the Navy for 17 years and said that trans service members who don’t take the current buyout offer could lose out on benefits that took years of service to build.“There’s no guarantee to access to your pension or severance or an honorable discharge,” Timberlake said.Despite Timberlake’s decision to leave, they said many trans troops would continue serving if allowed to.“This is not voluntary. This is a decision that folks are coming to under duress,” Timberlake said. “These are 1,000 transgender troops that would be serving if the conditions were not created to force them into making a decision for their own wellbeing, or the wellbeing of their family long-term.”The move is the latest by the Trump administration taking aim at trans members of the military and trans veterans. After Trump took office and issued a flurry of gender-focused executive orders, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) started cracking down on healthcare for LGBTQ+ veterans, starting with the rescinding of VA directive 1341, thereby phasing out treatments for gender dysphoria.The expulsion of trans service members comes in tandem with the secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s past views that women are not suited for combat roles, at a time when military recruitment is profoundly struggling and veterans have voiced concerns that potential VA cuts could further hinder young Americans from enlisting.Announcing the removals on Thursday, Hegseth doubled down on his hardline approach. “We are leaving WOKENESS AND WEAKNESS behind. No more pronouns,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X on Thursday. “We are done with that sh*t.” More

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      Trump’s chief trade adviser says Britons will like chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef – US politics live

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      Peter Navarro, Trump’s chief trade adviser, just told reporters outside the White House that British consumers will like chicken and beef imported from the US despite the use of chlorine and hormones.“Let’s see what the market decides,” Navarro said when asked about longstanding concerns in the UK about the safety of chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef produced in the US.“Our position is and always has been”, he added, that sanitary standards are “simply a phony tool used to suppress what is very fine American agricultural product”.“So if more of that comes into the market and the British people don’t want to buy it, that’s one set of facts,” Navarro said. “We don’t believe that once they taste American beef and chicken that they would prefer not to have it.”One point of apparent disagreement between American and British officials seems to be whether the UK will have to drop its digital services tax, imposed on US tech companies like Amazon, Google and Meta.The tax, which is imposed by several European countries and is set at 2% by the UK on the revenues of search engines, social media services and online marketplaces, was described recently by the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent as an “unfair tax on one of America’s great industries”.While the 10 Downing Street statement on the new trade deal agreed on Thursday says, “The Digital Services Tax remains unchanged as part of today’s deal”, Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters a short time ago, “we’re still in negotiations with that”.“That’s a very big deal to President Trump”, Navarro added. “The digital tax has spread like a bad virus around the world, but it started in Europe, and it basically targets American companies”.According to the UK prime minister’s office, instead of dropping that tax, “the two nations have agreed to work on a digital trade deal that will strip back paperwork for British firms trying to export to the US – opening the UK up to a huge market that will put rocket boosters on the UK economy.”In the House of Commons on Wednesday, the UK’s trade minister, Douglas Alexander, was asked if the digital services tax, and legal regulations to prevent “online harms”, are on the negotiating table. The tax, and those measures on online harms, he said, “remain undisturbed and unchanged by this agreement”.Peter Navarro, Trump’s chief trade adviser, just told reporters outside the White House that British consumers will like chicken and beef imported from the US despite the use of chlorine and hormones.“Let’s see what the market decides,” Navarro said when asked about longstanding concerns in the UK about the safety of chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef produced in the US.“Our position is and always has been”, he added, that sanitary standards are “simply a phony tool used to suppress what is very fine American agricultural product”.“So if more of that comes into the market and the British people don’t want to buy it, that’s one set of facts,” Navarro said. “We don’t believe that once they taste American beef and chicken that they would prefer not to have it.”Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and Donald Trump agreed on the need to quickly resolve trade disputes in a phone call on Thursday evening, Reuters reports that a German government spokesperson said.The two leaders also agreed on the need to closely cooperate with the aim of ending the war in Ukraine, the spokesperson said.“President Trump congratulated the Chancellor on taking office” earlier this week, the spokesperson said. “Chancellor Merz assured the American President that, 80 years after the end of the second world war, the United States remains an indispensable friend and partner of Germany.”On the day of his election earlier this week, Merz warned the US to “stay out” of his country’s politics after the far-right AfD received strong backing from allies of the US president, including Vice-President JD Vance and controversial tech billionaire Elon Musk.Merz condemned recent “absurd observations” from the US, without specifying particular statements, and said he “would like to encourage the American government … to largely stay out of” German domestic politics.

      The state department said a solution to be able to deliver food aid to Gaza was “steps away” and an announcement was coming shortly, although it fell short of detailing what the plan would entail, per Reuters. Gaza is on the brink of catastrophe after two months of a total blockade by Israel.

      Trump and British PM Keir Starmer announced some details of the framework for a future US-UK trade deal, most of which pertained to cars, steel and aluminum, and agriculture. The details have not been finalized, but what was announced today was that tariffs for UK cars imported into the US would be cut from 27.5% to 10% up to a maximum of 100,000 cars a year, while US tariffs of 25% on steel and aluminum would be dropped to zero. On agriculture, Starmer said there had been no compromise on food standards, while the deal would open exclusive access for UK beef farmers to the US. But it also includes £5bn worth of agricultural exports from the US to the UK, with ethanol and beef – of great concern to British farmers – the only products mentioned specifically. US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said the deal would “exponentially increase our beef exports” to the UK. While the White House fact sheet and later press release from the US commerce department alluded to “unprecedented access” to the UK market for other American agricultural products being on the table in the talks – which neither side talked about in their press conferences today – they appeared to actually be referring to areas where the US already exports to the UK, albeit in small amounts.

      Trump congratulated Pope Leo XIV on his election to head the Catholic Church on Thursday, writing on Truth Social that it “is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope”. Trump said he was looking forward to meeting Robert Francis Prevost, who is originally from Chicago. A quick glance at Prevost’s X account gives some indication to his possible views on the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. Whether this might put him on a similar path to the late Pope Francis, who had a difficult relationship with the US president as a vocal critic of his most aggressive policies, remains to be seen.

      Bill Gates announced plans to shutter the Gates Foundation in 2045 and also strongly criticized Elon Musk for slashing funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the Tesla CEO of “killing the world’s poorest children” in new interviews.

      Trump said he will nominate a new candidate to serve as Washington DC’s top federal prosecutor, after his first pick Ed Martin, who holds the job on an interim basis, failed to garner enough support to advance in the Senate. Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sits on the Senate judiciary committee, appeared to deal Martin’s nomination a fatal blow when he told reporters he could not support him because of Martin’s past comments which downplayed the January 6, 2021 US Capitol attack.

      The Trump administration asked the supreme court to intervene in its bid to revoke the temporary legal status granted by Joe Biden to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the US.

      An Irish woman who was detained by US immigration authorities because of a criminal record dating back almost 20 years was released after 17 days in custody.
      Reuters reports that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was speaking to Donald Trump on Thursday evening (Ukrainian time), according to Zelenskyy’s spokesperson Serhiy Nikiforov.We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.The state department said a solution to be able to deliver food aid to Gaza was “steps away” and an announcement was coming shortly, although it fell short of detailing what the plan would entail, Reuters reports.Gaza is on the brink of catastrophe after two months of a total blockade by Israel, aid workers say, with many families down to one meal a day. Medical officials report rising cases of acute malnutrition, and community kitchens that served 1m meals a day are shutting down for lack of basic essentials. Aid agencies say they have distributed all remaining stocks of food. Dozens of bakeries that supplied vital free bread closed last month.I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.My colleague Peter Walker has this very helpful explainer from a UK perspective of the key points of the US-UK trade deal that was announced to be under discussion today.

      Tariffs for UK cars imported into the US will be cut from 27.5% to 10%, up to a maximum of 100,000 cars a year, close to total exports last year (after that the tariff will be 25%). This was, Starmer said, a “huge and important reduction” – even if it is capped, and still a tariff.

      Agriculture is the most potentially tricky area of the deal, not least due to concerns among UK voters – and farmers – about chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef. The result was hailed by Downing Street as “a win for both nations”. As ever, the devil could be in the detail. Government officials said there had been no compromise on food standards, while the deal would open exclusive access for UK beef farmers to the US. But, it also includes £5bn worth of agricultural exports from the US to the UK, with the US agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, saying the deal would “exponentially increase our beef exports” to the UK.
      Read Peter’s full piece here:Americans are celebrating after US cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who will be known as Pope Leo XIV, was announced as the next pope.“Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just named Pope. It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after the pope, who was born in Chicago, appeared on the Vatican balcony in Rome, Italy on Thursday.Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson quipped on X about Prevost’s appointment:
      Everything dope, including the Pope, comes from Chicago! Congratulations to the first American Pope Leo XIV! We hope to welcome you back home soon.
      The US Embassy to the Holy See also lauded the new pope on X:
      With joy we extend our heartfelt congratulations to the first Pope from the United States of America, His Holiness Robert Francis Prevost, as Pope Leo XIV, elected as the 267th Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church.
      As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council astutely notes on X, the new pope didn’t post on his X account at all in 2024, but in 2025 he has posted twice and reposted three times.Of his own posts, Robert Prevost – now Pope Leo XIV – posted an article criticizing vice-president JD Vance’s take on Jesus, and posted another article critiquing Vance’s statements on the administration’s deportation policies. Two of his reposts were to do with the health of the late Pope Francis, and his most recent repost was criticism of Donald Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele’s laughter at Kilmar Ábrego García (who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration and whose reeturn to the US the supreme court has ordered the administration to facilitate).Earlier, Trump said he looked forward to meeting with the new pope, who he had “realised” was the first American to hold the position. How Pope Leo’s personal views will influence their relationship going forward will be interesting to see. Indeed, Trump had a difficult relationship with the late Pope Francis, a vocal critic of many of his policies – particularly his crackdown on immigration which, as recently as February this year, Francis called a “major crisis”.Donald Trump said he will nominate a new candidate to serve as Washington DC’s top federal prosecutor, after his first pick Ed Martin, who holds the job on an interim basis, failed to garner enough support to advance in the Senate.“I was disappointed. A lot of people were disappointed, but that’s the way it works sometimes,” Trump said in the Oval Office earlier. “We have somebody else that we’ll be announcing over the next two days who’s going to be great.” A spokesperson for Martin’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.A source close to the Senate judiciary committee earlier this week said the committee would not move forward with a vote before Martin’s interim term expires on 20 May.Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sits on the committee, appeared to deal Martin’s nomination a fatal blow when he told reporters he could not support him because of Martin’s past comments which downplayed the January 6, 2021 US Capitol attack.Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the panel, said he was “relieved” that the nomination was withdrawn and that “Martin’s record made it clear that he does not have the temperament or judgment” for the top US law enforcement job for the nation’s capital.Per Politico: “Martin has spent the last few years advocating for January 6 defendants and helping organize their legal defense. He has embraced conspiracy theories about the attack and the results of the 2020 election and he has spoken favorably about some of the most egregious perpetrators of the riot.“He also has also drawn scrutiny for his evasive answers to the judiciary committee about his relationship with January 6 defendant Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who had been accused of openly anti-Semitic behavior, and omission of dozens of appearances on Russian state media in recent years.”It was unclear what is next for Martin. Trump said he would consider giving him another role in the administration, potentially in the department of justice.Donald Trump congratulated Pope Leo on his election to head the Catholic Church on Thursday, writing on Truth Social that it “is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope”.US cardinal Robert Prevost, who took the name Leo XIV, is originally from Chicago. Trump went on:
      What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!
      For more from the Vatican, my colleague Jakub Krupa has been live-blogging the moment:Tom Bradshaw, president of the UK’s National Farmers’ Union, told the Guardian he is concerned the beef imported from the US will be produced to a lower standard than the UK product. He said:
      80% of our beef diet comes from grass so it’ll be interesting to see exactly what the standards for the imported beef is. We are unclear on that as the details are still being worked on.
      Many beef cattle are fed with soy, which can be bad for the environment as it comes from sensitive areas including the Amazon rainforest.Bradshaw said the “main focus” in their recent lobbying was on hormone-treated beef, but said “the large US beef lots were also a big concern for our members – we will be watching that very closely.”The US has vast factory farms for its beef, which outcompete those in the UK, farmers fear. Bradshaw added:
      What we need to look at is how the US beef is produced, what are the health and welfare standards and what is the diet. [British] beef is one of the most sustainable in the world.
      However, he said he was pleased the UK secured reciprocal access to the beef market, adding:
      We’ve had a very clear ask that we wanted reciprocal access back, and the red lines on animal health and welfare standards have thankfully been maintained. We cannot see agriculture used as a pawn to shoulder the burden of tariffs.
      US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said she hopes to expand today’s agreement to include “all meats” and that she will be visiting the UK next week to make this point, adding: “There is no industry that has been treated more unfairly than our agriculture industry.”Bradshaw replied “good luck with that,” adding:
      The [UK] government is trying to negotiate with the EU [which also has high food standards] at the same time so that sounds unfeasible.
      The US-UK trade deal includes £5bn worth of agricultural exports. The farming sector in the UK has been very concerned about farmers being undercut with cheap products from the US, which has lower environmental standards for its food than the UK. They say the large beef feedlots in the US outcompete the smaller farms in the UK.US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters:
      This [trade deal] is going to exponentially increase our beef exports. American beef is the crown jewel of American agriculture for the world.
      UK ministers have been clear that chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef will not be included in any deal, but Rollins said she hopes to expand today’s agreement to include “all meats” and that she will be visiting the UK next week to make this point, adding:
      There is no industry that has been treated more unfairly than our agriculture industry.
      Donald Trump, however, mentioned that US agriculture could end up being produced to higher health and environmental standards under the leadership of his health chief Robert F Kennedy Jr, adding:
      Bobby Kennedy is probably heading towards your system.
      The UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs sources said imports of hormone-treated beef or chlorinated chicken will remain illegal, and that the deal will open up exclusive access for UK beef farmers to the US market. They said only a few countries such as Australia have this access. More