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      So big, so beautiful: Fox News ignores the critics and champions Trump’s bill

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      Donald Trump’s mega-bill has been widely criticized in the press. News outlets and Democrats have warned that millions of people could be stripped of their health coverage through cuts to Medicaid, that cuts to food programs would see children go hungry, and that the legislation would cause the deficit to balloon.Fox News sees it differently.“This legislation is packed with massive, huge, important wins for you, the American people,” Sean Hannity told viewers on Monday, as US senators debated the bill in Washington.“Here’s what the bill doesn’t do. It does not decrease Medicaid, Medicare, Snap or social security benefits,” Hannity continued, a claim that completely contradicted the assessment of the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates the bill will cut Medicaid across the US by 7.6 million to 10.3 million people.Hannity had more.“The big, beautiful bill also does not increase the deficit. Instead, the deficit will go down around a little shy of $2tn – that’s to begin with, according to estimates,” he said.“Because guess what? That’s what happens when you cut taxes. It stimulates the economy, creates jobs, gets people off the welfare rolls. Guess what? People are working, now they’re paying taxes.”It was unclear where Hannity got his $2tn number from, because he didn’t say. But the CBO says the bill would add at least $3.3tn to the national debt over the next nine years, while the tax cuts will benefit high earners more than others.Hannity held up Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 as an example of how the deficit will be reduced – a take that ignored that those tax cuts saw an increase of the deficit, and had to be reversed over the rest of Reagan’s presidency.Still, Hannity was sold.“The American people are on the verge of a level of prosperity they have never experienced before,” he said.Hannity’s interpretation was starkly different from the one many Americans were seeing.Even Republican senators have been dubious about the bill’s benefits, with three voting against it in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and House Republicans wavering on Wednesday.Yet, on Tuesday, Laura Ingraham largely ignored the bill – framing it only as Democrats losing a battle to “derail” the legislation before going on a minutes-long riff about a “slide in patriotism” in the US.She went on to offer complaints that there were “more foreign flags waving” in America’s streets and that leftwing politicians believe that “America can only be redeemed when she’s totally dismantled and then remade, with millions of new people from other countries”.Elsewhere, there were occasional, albeit small, concessions that the “big, beautiful bill” might not quite be the masterly piece of legislation the White House would have people believe.“It’s not perfect, but it does need to pass if we want this tax cut,” Ainsley Earhardt said on Fox & Friends at the start of the week. Her co-host Brian Kilmeade at least presented some of the negative points in an interview with Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, on Tuesday, challenging him to address the claim that “this is a tax break for the rich”. But Bessent didn’t even attempt to address that, and Kilmeade was unwilling or unable to press him further.Later that day, the theme continued. Trace Gallagher pulled up data from the Tax Foundation and the Tax Policy Center during his show, with a series of bullet points claiming that if Trump’s bill failed it would lead to tax increases for families and small business owners.Gallagher left out the part of the Tax Foundation’s analysis where the organization said the bill would reduce incomes by 0.6% and result in a nearly $3.6tn deficit increase, and ignored the Tax Policy Center’s verdict that most of the tax cuts in the bill would go “to the highest-income households”.His guests seemingly overlooked those bits, too, as they kept up the ruse.“No bill is perfect,” Elizabeth Pipko, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, told Gallagher, as she claimed “the Democrats seem to have forgotten that” before accusing the mainstream media, with no irony, of not accurately representing the bill.Pipko added: “I think it will pass, and I think it’ll go down in history as again another false alarm from the legacy media, from the Democrats, and another victory for President Trump.” More

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      ‘I want my vote back’: Trump-voting family stunned after Canadian mother detained over immigration status

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      The family of a Canadian national who supported Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations of immigrants say they are feeling betrayed after federal agents recently detained the woman in California while she interviewed for permanent US residency – and began working to expel her from the country.“We feel totally blindsided,” Cynthia Olivera’s husband – US citizen and self-identified Trump voter Francisco Olivera – told the California news station KGTV. “I want my vote back.”Cynthia Olivera, a 45-year-old mother of three US-born children, thus joined a growing list of examples contradicting the Trump administration’s claims that the immigration crackdown it has spearheaded since the president’s return to the Oval Office in January has prioritized targeting dangerous criminals.Being in the US without legal status is generally a civil infraction rather than a criminal violation. Nonetheless, despite its claim that the immigration crackdown is mainly meant to rid the US of violent criminals, the White House has maintained that anyone in the US who lacks legal status is a criminal subject to deportationOlivera was unwittingly thrust under the weight of those policies after Trump spent his successful 2024 presidential campaign promising to pursue them, earning her husband’s vote along the way, according to what he told KGTV. She was just 10 when her parents brought her to the US from Toronto without permission, she said to the station.By 1999, US immigration officials at the Buffalo border crossing had determined Olivera was living in the country without legal status and obtained an expedited order to deport her. But she was able to return to the US by driving to San Diego from Mexico within a few months.“They didn’t ask me for my citizenship – they didn’t do nothing,” Olivera would later say to KGTV. “They just waved me in.”She recounted spending the next 25 years working in Los Angeles, paying taxes and providing for her family. KGVT reported that its investigative team scoured California and federal court databases, but the unit found no criminal charges under Cynthia Oliver’s name.In 2024, toward the end of his presidency, Joe Biden’s administration granted her a permit allowing her to work legally in the US. She had also been navigating the process to obtain legal permanent US residency – colloquially referred to as a green card – for years.Nonetheless, instead of supporting the candidate Biden endorsed to succeed him, then vice-president Kamala Harris, Olivera’s husband supported Trump in November’s White House election. He told KGTV that Trump’s promises to deport criminals en masse appealed to both him and Cynthia. And, echoing other mixed immigration status families who have had members affected by Trump’s policies, the Oliveras did not believe she would be hurt by her lack of legal US residency.They learned she would in fact be affected by her immigration status when she went for a green card interview in Chatsworth, California, on 13 June. She was detained there by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, according to a change.org petition pleading for compassion on behalf of Cynthia.Olivera has since been transferred to an Ice detention center in El Paso, Texas, to await being deported.Speaking to KGTV over a video call from the El Paso facility, Olivera suggested her treatment was undeserved.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The US is my country,” Olivera remarked to the station in an interview published on 3 July. “That’s where I met my husband. That’s where I went to high school, junior high, elementary [school]. That’s where I had my kids.”But the Trump administration had little sympathy for Olivera, despite her husband’s support of the president, with a spokesperson saying in a statement that Cynthia was “an illegal alien from Canada”.Olivera had been “previously deported and chose to ignore our law and again illegally entered the country”, said the spokesperson’s statement, as reported by Newsweek. The statement noted that re-entering the US without permission after being deported is a felony, and it said Olivera would remain in Ice’s custody “pending removal to Canada”.Canada’s government commented to KGTV that it was aware of Olivera’s detention but could not intervene on her behalf because “every country or territory decides who can enter or exit through its borders”.Francisco Olivera, for his part, summed up his and his wife’s disillusion by saying: “My wife … up until [a couple of weeks] ago, was a strong believer in what was going to happen the next four years.”Cynthia Olivera, meanwhile, said she has told officials she and her husband are willing to pay for her to fly to Canada, where she plans to stay in Mississauga with a cousin. Yet there had been no immediate indication when she may be able to travel to Canada.As she fought back tears, Olivera said to KGTV: “The only crime I committed is to love this country and to work hard and to provide for my kids.” More

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      The UN is our best defence against a third world war. As Trump wields the axe, who will fight to save it? | Simon Tisdall

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      The United Nations and its agencies have long struggled with funding shortfalls. Now an entrenched problem is becoming an acute crisis in the shadow of Donald Trump’s executioner’s axe. The US is the biggest contributor, at 22%, to the UN’s core budget. In February, the White House announced a six-month review of US membership of all international organisations, conventions and treaties, including the UN, with a view to reducing or ending funding – and possible withdrawal. The deadline for decapitation falls next month.Trump’s abolition of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and scrapping of most aid programmes, has already badly damaged UN-led and UN-backed humanitarian operations, which rely on discretionary funding. Yet Trump’s axe symbolises a more fundamental threat – to multilateralism and the much-battered international rules-based order. The basic concept of collective responsibility for maintaining global peace and security, and collaboration in tackling shared problems – embodied by the UN since its creation 80 years ago last week – is on the chopping block.The stakes are high – and Washington is not the only villain. Like the US, about 40 countries are behind in paying obligatory yearly dues. Discretionary donations are declining. The UN charter, a statement of founding principles, has been critically undermined by failure to halt Russia’s illegal war of aggression in Ukraine (and by last month’s US-Israeli attack on Iran). China and others, including the UK, ignore international law when it suits. The number and longevity of conflicts worldwide is rising; UN envoys are sidelined; UN peacekeeping missions are disparaged. The security council is often paralysed by vetoes; the general assembly is largely powerless. By many measures, the UN isn’t working.A crunch looms. If the UN is allowed to fail or is so diminished that its agencies cannot fully function, there is nothing to take its place. Nothing, that is, except the law of the jungle, as seen in Gaza and other conflict zones where UN agencies are excluded, aid workers murdered and legal norms flouted. The UN system has many failings, some self-inflicted. But a world without the UN would, for most people in most places, be more dangerous, hungrier, poorer, unhealthier and less sustainable.The US is not expected to withdraw from the UN altogether (although nothing is impossible with this isolationist, ultra-nationalist president). But Trump’s hostile intent is evident. His 2026 budget proposal seeks a 83.7% cut – from $58.7bn to $9.6bn – in all US international spending. That includes an 87% reduction in UN funding, both obligatory and discretionary. “In 2023, total US spending on the UN amounted to about $13bn. This is equivalent to only 1.6% of the Pentagon’s budget that year ($816bn) – or about two-thirds of what Americans spend on ice-cream annually,” Stewart Patrick of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted. Economic development aid, disaster relief and family planning programmes would be gutted.The impact is potentially world-changing. Key UN agencies in the firing line include the children’s fund, Unicef – at a time when the risks facing infants and children are daunting; the World Food Programme (WFP), which could lose 30% of its staff; agencies handling refugees and migration, which are also shrinking; the International court of justice (the “world court”), which has shone a light on Israel’s illegal actions in Gaza; and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran’s and others’ nuclear activities.Trump is already boycotting the World Health Organization, the Palestinian relief agency (Unrwa) and the UN Human Rights Council, and has rescinded $4bn allocated to the UN climate fund, claiming that all act contrary to US interests. If his budget is adopted this autumn, the UN’s 2030 sustainable development goals may prove unattainable. US financial backing for international peacekeeping and observer missions in trouble spots such as Lebanon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kosovo, currently 26% of total spending, will plunge to zero.The withdrawal of USAID support is already proving lethal, everywhere from Somalia and Sudan to Bangladesh and Haiti. UN officials describe the situation in post-earthquake, conflict-riven, aid-deprived Myanamar as a “humanitarian catastrophe”. Research published in the Lancet found that Trump’s cuts could cause more than 14m additional deaths by 2030, a third of them children.The WFP, the world’s largest food aid supplier, says its projected $8.1bn funding deficit this year comes as acute hunger affects a record 343 million people in 74 countries. And other donor states are failing to fill the gap left by the US. So far in 2025, only 11% of the $46.2bn required for 44 UN-prioritised crises has been raised. The UK recently slashed its aid budget by £6bn, to pay for nuclear bombs.UN chiefs acknowledge that many problems pre-date Trump. António Guterres, the secretary general, has initiated thousands of job cuts as part of the “UN80” reform plan to consolidate operations and reduce the core budget by up to 20%. But, marking the anniversary, Guterres said the gravest challenge is the destructive attitude of member states that sabotage multilateral cooperation, break the rules, fail to pay their share and forget why the UN was founded in the first place. “The charter of the United Nations is not optional. It is not an à la carte menu. It is the bedrock of international relations,” he said.Guterres says the UN’s greatest achievement since 1945 is preventing a third world war. Yet respected analysts such as Fiona Hill believe it’s already begun. The UK and other democracies face some pressing questions. Will they meekly give in to Trump once again? Or will they fight to stop this renegade president and rogue states such as Russia and Israel dismantling the world’s best defence against global anarchy, forever wars and needless suffering?Will they fight to save the UN?

      Simon Tisdall is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump news at a glance: Elon Musk announces new political party targeting sway in Congress

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      The fallout between the US president, Donald Trump, and tech billionaire Elon Musk has reached a new low, with Musk declaring this weekend that he will bankroll a new political party to rival the president.Musk, the world’s richest man, only departed from the White House this May but has been critical of Trump’s signature policy bill, which he has described as “utterly insane and destructive”.“Today, the America party is formed to give you back your freedom,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday, adding that: “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party, and you shall have it! When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.”Here are the key stories:Elon Musk’s ‘America’ party could focus on a few pivotal congressional seatsThe new US political party that Elon Musk has boasted about bankrolling could initially focus on a handful of attainable House and Senate seats while striving to be the decisive vote on major issues amid the thin margins in Congress.The Tesla and SpaceX’s multibillionaire CEO mused about that approach on Friday in a post on X, the social media platform he owns, as he continued feuding with Donald Trump over the spending bill that the president has signed into law. On Saturday, without immediately elaborating, the former Trump adviser announced on X that he had created the so-called America party.Read the full storyHegseth falsely cited weapon shortages in halting shipments to Ukraine, Democrats sayPete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, unilaterally halted an agreed shipment of military aid to Ukraine due to baseless concerns that US stockpiles of weapons have run too low, it has been reported.A batch of air defense missiles and other precision munitions were due to be sent to Ukraine to aid it in its ongoing war with Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022. The aid was promised by the US during Joe Biden’s administration last year.Read the full storySocial Security Administration email praising Trump’s tax bill blasted as a ‘lie’An email sent by the US Social Security Administration (SSA) that claims Donald Trump’s major new spending bill has eliminated taxes on benefits for most recipients is misleading, critics have said.The reconciliation bill – which the president called the “one big, beautiful bill” before signing it on Friday after Republicans in Congress passed it – includes provisions that will strip people of their health insurance, cut food assistance for the poor, kill off clean energy development and raise the national debt by trillions of dollars.Read the full storyTrump is waging war against the media – and winningBernie Sanders, the venerable democratic socialist senator from Vermont, was not in a mood to pull punches.“Trump is undermining our democracy and rapidly moving us towards authoritarianism, and the billionaires who care more about their stock portfolios than our democracy are helping him do it,” he fumed in a statement last week.Such outbursts have been common in recent months as Sanders has taken up a leading position opposing Donald Trump’s second term, and flagging his concern that the president is waging a war against the media – and winning.Read the full storyRevealed: the far-right, antisemitic men’s club network spreading across USA nationwide US network of dozens of far-right, men-only fraternal clubs has what members describe as “literally hundreds” of participants who include past and currently serving military personnel, lawyers, civil servants and prominent antisemitic influencers, a Guardian investigation can reveal.The Old Glory Club (OGC) – which has at least 26 chapters in 20 US states and until now has drawn little attention – exemplifies the alarming rise of organized racist political groups in the past few years but especially during the rise of Donald Trump and his return to the White House.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

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      US hit with mass shootings and fatal accidents on Fourth of July holiday
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 4 July 2025. More

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      Hegseth falsely cited weapon shortages in halting shipments to Ukraine, Democrats say

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      Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, unilaterally halted an agreed shipment of military aid to Ukraine due to baseless concerns that US stockpiles of weapons have run too low, it has been reported.A batch of air defense missiles and other precision munitions were due to be sent to Ukraine to aid it in its ongoing war with Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022. The aid was promised by the US during Joe Biden’s administration last year.But the Pentagon halted the shipment, with NBC reporting that a decision to do so was made solely by Hegseth, Donald Trump’s top defense official and a former Fox News weekend host who has previously come under pressure for sharing plans of a military strike in two group chats on the messaging app Signal, one of which accidentally included a journalist.Hegseth has now halted US military supplies to Ukraine on three occasions, NBC said, with the latest intervention purportedly coming due to concerns that the US’s own weapons stockpile is running too low.When the president was asked about the pause in shipments to Ukraine by a reporter on Thursday, he claimed that it was necessary because “Biden emptied out our whole country, giving them weapons, and we have to make sure we have enough for ourselves”.A White House spokesperson said last week that the decision “was made to put America’s interests first following a [defense department] review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe. The strength of the United States armed forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran.”“This capability review,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told reporters on Wednesday, “is being conducted to ensure US military aid aligns with our defense priorities.”“We see this as a commonsense, pragmatic step towards having a framework to evaluate what munitions are sent and where,” Parnell added. He also seemed to confirm that there is no current shortage of arms for US forces. “Let it be known that our military has everything that it needs to conduct any mission, anywhere, anytime, all around the world,” he said.The decision surprised members of Congress, as well as Ukraine and the US’s European allies. Democrats said there is no evidence that American weapon stocks are in decline.“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the three-and-a-half years of the Ukraine conflict,” Adam Smith, a Democrat and ranking member of the House armed services committee, told NBC. Smith said that his staff had “seen the numbers” on weapon supplies and that there is no justification to suspend aid to Ukraine.The weapons being delayed include dozens of Patriot interceptor missiles that can defend against Russian missile attacks, as well as howitzers and other missile systems.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia has recently stepped up its bombardment of Ukrainian cities, using missiles and drones to wreak havoc and terror among Ukrainian civilians. The delay in getting help to fend off these attacks is “painful”, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker said last week.“This decision is certainly very unpleasant for us,” said Fedir Venislavskyi, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee, according to Reuters.“It’s painful, and against the background of the terrorist attacks which Russia commits against Ukraine.”The Department of Defense did not reply to a request for comment on the aid pause. More

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      ‘Blatant misinformation’: Social Security Administration email praising Trump’s tax bill blasted as a ‘lie’

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      An email sent by the US Social Security Administration (SSA) that claims Donald Trump’s major new spending bill has eliminated taxes on benefits for most recipients is misleading, critics have said.The reconciliation bill – which the president called the “one big, beautiful bill” before signing it on Friday after Republicans in Congress passed it – includes provisions that will strip people of their health insurance, cut food assistance for the poor, kill off clean energy development and raise the national debt by trillions of dollars.But the bill also “eliminates federal income taxes on social security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples”, the previously apolitical SSA stated in an email circulated on Thursday.Frank Bisignano, the commissioner of the agency, said in a statement that nearly 90% of social security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits.“This is a historic step forward for America’s seniors,” Bisignano said. “By significantly reducing the tax burden on benefits, this legislation reaffirms President Trump’s promise to protect social security and helps ensure that seniors can better enjoy the retirement they’ve earned.”However, the spending bill does not actually eliminate federal taxes on social security due to the rule constraints of passing a bill this way – through the reconciliation process, to avoid a Democratic filibuster.Instead, the legislation provides a temporary tax deduction of up to $6,000 for people aged 65 and older, and $12,000 for married seniors. These benefits will start to phase out for those with incomes of more than $75,000 and married couples of more than $150,000 a year.Previous SSA officials said that the Trump administration’s framing of the bill was misleading. “People are like, ‘Is this real? Is this a scam?’ Because it’s not what they signed up for,” Kathleen Romig, a former senior adviser at the SSA during the Biden administration, told CNN.“It doesn’t sound like normal government communications, official communications. It sounds like – you know – partisan.”Jeff Nesbit, who served as a top SSA official under Republican and Democratic presidents, posted on X: “The agency has never issued such a blatant political statement. The fact that Trump and his minion running SSA has done this is unconscionable.”New Jersey congressman Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House’s energy and commerce committee, wrote on X that “every word” of the SSA’s email on Thursday “is a lie”.“This big, ugly bill doesn’t change that,” Pallone wrote. “It’s disturbing to see Trump hijack a public institution to push blatant misinformation.” More

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      If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free?

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      Threats of retribution from Donald Trump are hardly a novelty, but even by his standards, the US president’s warnings of wrathful vengeance in recent days have represented a dramatic escalation.In the past week, Trump has threatened deportation, loss of US citizenship or arrest against, respectively, the world’s richest person, the prospective future mayor of New York and Joe Biden’s former homeland security secretary.The head-spinning catalogue of warnings may have been aimed at distracting from the increasing unpopularity, according to opinion surveys, of Trump’s agenda, some analysts say. But they also served as further alarm bells for the state of US democracy five-and-a-half months into a presidency that has seen a relentless assault on constitutional norms, institutions and freedom of speech.On Tuesday, Trump turned his sights on none other than Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who, before a recent spectacular fallout, had been his closest ally in ramming through a radical agenda of upending and remaking the US government.But when the Tesla and SpaceX founder vowed to form a new party if Congress passed Trump’s signature “one big beautiful bill” into law, Trump swung into the retribution mode that is now familiar to his Democratic opponents.“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, menacing both the billions of dollars in federal subsidies received by Musk’s companies, and – it seemed – his US citizenship, which the entrepreneur received in 2002 but which supporters like Steve Bannon have questioned.“No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”Trump twisted the knife further the following morning talking to reporters before boarding a flight to Florida.View image in fullscreen“We might have to put Doge on Elon,” he said, referring to the unofficial “department of government efficiency” that has gutted several government agencies and which Musk spearheaded before stepping back from his ad hoc role in late May. “Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible.”Musk’s many critics may have found sympathy hard to come by given his earlier job-slashing endeavors on Trump’s behalf and the $275m he spent last year in helping to elect him.But the wider political implications are worrying, say US democracy campaigners.“Trump is making clear that if he can do that to the world’s richest man, he could certainly do it to you,” said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. “It’s important, if we believe in the rule of law, that we believe in it whether it is being weaponized against someone that we have sympathy for or someone that we have lost sympathy for.”Musk was not the only target of Trump’s capricious vengeance.He also threatened to investigate the US citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats’ prospective candidate for mayor of New York who triumphed in a multicandidate primary election, and publicly called on officials to explore the possibility of arresting Alejandro Mayorkas, the former head of homeland security in the Biden administration.Both scenarios were raised during a highly stage-managed visit to “Alligator Alcatraz”, a forbidding new facility built to house undocumented people rounded up as part of Trump’s flagship mass-deportation policy.After gleefully conjuring images of imprisoned immigrants being forced to flee from alligators and snakes presumed to reside in the neighbouring marshlands, Trump seized on obliging questions from friendly journalists working for rightwing fringe outlets that have been accredited by the administration for White House news events, often at the expense of established media.“Why hasn’t he been arrested yet?” asked Julio Rosas from Blaze Media, referring to Mayorkas, who was widely vilified – and subsequently impeached – by Republicans who blamed him for a record number of immigrant crossings at the southern US border.“Was he given a pardon, Mayorkas?” Trump replied. On being told no, he continued: “I’ll take a look at that one because what he did is beyond incompetence … Somebody told Mayorkas to do that and he followed orders, but that doesn’t necessarily hold him harmless.”Asked by Benny Johnson, a rightwing social media influencer, for his message to “communist” Mamdani – a self-proclaimed democratic socialist – over his pledge not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) roundups of undocumented people if he is elected mayor, Trump said: “Then we will have to arrest him. We don’t need a communist in this country. I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.”He also falsely suggested that Mamdani, 33 – who became a naturalized US citizen in 2018 after emigrating from Uganda with his ethnic Indian parents when he was a child – was in the country “illegally”, an assertion stemming from a demand by a Republican representative for a justice department investigation into his citizenship application. The representative, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, alleged that Mamdani, who has vocally campaigned for Palestinian rights, gained it through “willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism”.View image in fullscreenThe threat to Mamdani echoed a threat Trump’s border “czar” Tom Homan made to arrest Gavin Newsom, the California governor, last month amid a row over Trump’s deployment of national guard forces in Los Angeles to confront demonstrators protesting against Ice’s arrests of immigrants.Omar Noureldin, senior vice-president with Common Cause, a pro-democracy watchdog, said the animus against Mamdani, who is Muslim, was partly fueled by Islamophobia and racism.“Part of the rhetoric we’ve heard around Mamdani, whether from the president or other political leaders, goes toward his religion, his national origin, race, ethnicity,” he said.“Mamdani has called himself a democratic socialist. There are others, including Bernie Sanders, who call themselves that, but folks aren’t questioning whether or not Bernie Sanders should be a citizen.”Retribution promised to be a theme of Trump’s second presidency even before he returned to the Oval Office in January. On the campaign trail last year, he branded some political opponents – including Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives – as “the enemy within”.Since his inauguration in January, he has made petty acts of revenge against both Democrats and Republicans who have crossed him. Biden; Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and last year’s defeated Democratic presidential nominee; and Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent, have all had their security clearances revoked.Secret Service protection details have been removed from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who served in Trump’s first administration, despite both being the subject of death threats from Iran because of the 2020 assassination of Qassem Suleimani, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander.Similar fates have befallen Anthony Fauci, the infectious diseases specialist who angered Trump over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as Biden’s adult children, Hunter and Ashley.Trump has also targeted law firms whose lawyers previously acted against him, prompting some to strike deals that will see them perform pro bono services for the administration.View image in fullscreenFor now, widely anticipated acts of retribution against figures like Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff of the armed forces – whom Trump previously suggested deserved to be executed for “treason” and who expressed fears of being recalled to active duty and then court-martialed – have not materialised.“I [and] people in my world expected that Trump would come up with investigations of any number of people, whether they were involved in the Russia investigation way back when, or the election investigation, or the January 6 insurrection, but by and large he hasn’t done that,” said one veteran Washington insider, who requested anonymity, citing his proximity to people previously identified as potential Trump targets.“There are all kinds of lists floating around … with names of people that might be under investigation, but you’ll never know you’re under investigation until police turn up on your doorstep – and these people are just getting on with their lives.”Yet pro-democracy campaigners say Trump’s latest threats should be taken seriously – especially after several recent detentions of several elected Democratic officials at protests near immigration jails or courts. In the most notorious episode, Alex Padilla, a senator from California, was forced to the floor and handcuffed after trying to question Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at a press conference.“When the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, threatens to arrest you, that’s as serious as it gets,” said Bassin, a former White House counsel in Barack Obama’s administration.“Whether the DoJ [Department of Justice] opens an investigation or seeks an indictment, either tomorrow, next year or never is beside the point. The threat itself is the attack on our freedoms, because it’s designed to make us all fear that if any one of us opposes or even just criticises the president, we risk being prosecuted.”While some doubt the legal basis of Trump’s threats to Musk, Mayorkas and Mamdani, Noureldin cautioned that they should be taken literally.“Trump is verbose and grandiose, but I think he also backs up his promises with action,” he said. “When the president of the United States says something, we have to take it as serious and literal. I wouldn’t be surprised if at the justice department, there is a group of folks who are trying to figure out a way to [open prosecutions].”But the bigger danger was to the time-honored American notion of freedom, Bassin warned.“One definition of freedom is that you are able to speak your mind, associate with who you want, lead the life that you choose to lead, and that so long as you conduct yourself in accordance with the law, the government will not retaliate against you or punish you for doing those things,” he said. “When the president of the United States makes clear that actually that is not the case, that if you say things he doesn’t like, you will be singled out, and the full force of the state could be brought down on your head, then you’re no longer free.“And if he’s making clear that that’s true for people who have the resources of Elon Musk or the political capital of a Mayorkas or a Mamdani, imagine what it means for people who lack those positions or resources.” More

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      ‘Harvey would say, we’re on the brink’: why conservatives are coming for a gay rights hero

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      As San Francisco’s pride festivities came to a close last week, a cloud hung over the otherwise joyful celebrations as the city’s LGBTQ+ community learned that the US government had stripped a naval ship of its name honoring the gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk.Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, claimed the action showed the administration’s commitment to “taking the politics” out of military naming conventions. San Francisco’s queer community saw things differently.For many, the move was yet another example of Trump taking a swipe at progressive values. To others, the decision to remove Milk’s name from the frigate represented something more sinister: an intention, on the part of an emboldened administration, to take the LGBTQ+ community out of public view and to strike their accomplishments from the historical record.“On its own, it is not the most significant offense that we’ve witnessed in the past six months,” said Marc Stein, a professor of history at San Francisco State University who researches sexuality and politics. “But when combined with so many other things, it sends a powerful message.”Hegseth’s announcement is the latest attack on Milk’s legacy from conservatives in California and on the national stage. In 2023, the southern California city of Temecula made news when its school board attempted to remove references to Milk from elementary school textbooks. Before that, it was revealed that Tucker Carlson, while a college student, had apparently been connected to a society celebrating Milk’s murderer.Since Trump took office, the rollback of LGBTQ+ rights and visibility has only accelerated, from a directive to purge the military of transgender service members, to a supreme court decision allowing K-12 students to opt out of reading materials with LGBTQ+ themes.Taken together, LGBTQ+ advocates and community members fear that much of the progress made to secure their rights since Milk’s assassination in 1978 is in peril.“The renaming of the ship is part of a broader pattern wherein the Trump administration and its allies are trying to roll back the advances of the last several decades,” said Stein.At the Cinch Saloon, a historic gay bar in San Francisco’s Castro district, June’s Pride month celebrations were held against a backdrop of conversations about the fate of the community. Bartender Eric Berchtold expressed fear that the administration is working up to rescind the right to same-sex marriage. “It’s blatant malice,” Berchtold said. “They want to erase us and eradicate our history like we don’t exist.”Suzanne Ford, executive director of San Francisco Pride, said that fears of rolling back progress have been felt most acutely by older members of the community who were part of the gay liberation movement in the 1960s and 70s.View image in fullscreenAmong those affected people are Cleve Jones, an activist and friend of Milk’s who worked in Milk’s office when he was city supervisor. “I can remember when we were criminalized, when we were routinely beaten and fired, when you could not have a job if you were known to be gay,” said Jones.When Milk was elected as city supervisor in 1977, he was the country’s first openly gay politician. Two decades prior, he had been forced to resign from the navy due to his sexuality.That’s why publicly displaying Milk’s name on a military vessel represents much more than a public gesture, explained Craig Loftin, professor of American studies at California State University, Fullerton and a scholar of LGBTQ+ history. “In the big-picture history of LGBTQ people, the quest for public visibility and recognition is at the core and center of that narrative,” he said.“[Milk] was a leader in this idea of not hiding in the shadows.”A swinging pendulumThat isn’t to say that the quest for gay liberation has been linear.While the gay liberation movement made enormous strides on the fronts of decriminalization and visibility in the 1960s and 70s, the rise of the religious right as a powerful political bloc in the 80s paused progress. That coincided with the onset of the Aids pandemic, which devastated gay communities across the country – nowhere more acutely than in San Francisco. In response to silence on the part of the federal government and the Reagan administration, a new wave of activism was spurred that demanded research into treatment and condemned homophobic discrimination.“It’s waxed and waned,” said Loftin. “It took several years before we had activist groups like Aact Up channeling their rage in a strategic, focused way that yielded significant results and moved gay culture further than where it had been,” Loftin said. In the decades that followed, the community saw same-sex marriage legalized, the military’s “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy repealed, and, most recently, a surge of visibility for trans Americans. “There is a pendulum quality to a lot of history, but especially LGBT history.”Knowing this, Loftin is hopeful that the community will come together and fight back with vigor. “My optimistic thought is that because they’re hitting us so hard and so fast, the pendulum will swing back the other direction, hopefully harder and faster,” he said. “[Trump] is awakening a dragon.”View image in fullscreenBerchtold, the Cinch Saloon bartender, said he saw a lot more activism among patrons today than he did when he started working at the bar 22 years ago.Jones is more fearful. To him, there is a gulf between an older generation that remembers the traumas of past decades, and a younger cohort that takes the advances for granted.“Younger ones never watched everyone they knew die,” said Jones. “I carry those memories with me as I interact daily with young people who are completely oblivious to that reality.”‘Everything feels very fragile’To Stein and others, what is most jarring about the renaming of USNS Harvey Milk is that it lifts the veil on which groups the administration plans to target. Until now, policy decisions have primarily focused on restricting the rights of trans Americans – which advocates say has had the effect of making cisgender members of the LGBTQ+ community complacent.“It is a lie that the administration is only going after trans people,” said Stein. “They are especially targeting trans people … but [cis] gay and lesbian people should not feel like they are going to be safe from what’s happening.”Jones echoed: “There is a significant number of gay and lesbian men and women who may think this is going to stop with trans people. That’s just foolishness.”View image in fullscreenAdvocates and scholars also see attacks on the LGBTQ+ community as connected to the administration’s larger ambitions to curb civil liberties, including those of women and immigrants.“There is going to be great variation depending on … where you live,” said Stein, drawing a thread between disparities in access to gender-affirming care, abortion rights and immigrant protections. “Those of us who are in San Francisco and California are protected in some respects from the worst of what’s going on, but we also live in a nation with a powerful federal government.“Everything is very fragile at this moment,” added Ford. “You can’t take for granted that they’re not going to try to take your rights.”Jones says that if he were alive today, Harvey Milk would agree. A Jewish American who came of age during the second world war, he would have seen the government’s actions as indicative of an unhealthy democracy and sounded the alarm.“He would say, ‘Watch out. We are on the brink. It is happening again. It is unfolding all around us.’” More