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      Doge tried to embed staffers in criminal justice non-profit, says group

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      Staff at Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) demanded to meet with an independent non-profit to discuss embedding a team within their organization, according to the non-profit, stating that refusal to take the meeting would mean a violation of Donald Trump’s executive order empowering Doge.Doge staff member Nate Cavanaugh emailed the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice reform non-profit that is independent from the government, on 11 April to demand the meeting, according to a copy of the email. Vera’s staff was confused by the request, as its government funding had been canceled a week prior, but agreed to a call which they said took place on Tuesday.The demand to meet with an independent non-profit organization and potentially embed its staffers there represents an expansion of Doge’s already sprawling reach and coincides with Musk issuing public attacks against non-governmental organizations. Doge has previously gutted government institutions such as USAID and congressionally funded non-profit USIP, but its meeting with Vera marks a new targeting of a wholly independent organization.“We have watched this administration try to kneecap academia, law firms, media, and now they are coming for the non-profit sector,” said Insha Rahman, Vera’s vice-president of advocacy and partnerships.Vera’s programs focus on a variety of criminal justice issues and improving conditions for incarcerated people, as well as supporting mental health and crisis services. Its annual budget of around $45m comes primarily from private donors – although as is common with non-profits, it has also received federal grants. Vera has also been a repeated target for rightwing media outlets that attack its approach to criminal justice reform, which Rahman believes is one of the reasons that Doge staffers may have targeted the organization.When Vera’s legal counsel then held a 20-minute phone call with two members of Doge this week, Rahman says they informed the Doge staffers that the organization had already stopped receiving government funding. The Department of Justice had abruptly canceled $5m in contracts for the non-profit earlier that month. The Doge staffers did not know Vera’s funding had been canceled, according to Rahman, and took back their request for information on Vera’s contracts while refusing to answer questions on what gave them the authority to investigate Vera in the first place.“Doge staffers Nick Cavanaugh and Justin Aimonetti informed us of its plan to assign a Doge team to the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) as part of its larger plan to assign Doge teams to ‘every institute or agency that has congressional monies appropriated to it’,” Vera said in a statement. “When asked about the legal standing for Doge to investigate an independent nonprofit, Aimonetti, who is an attorney, deferred.”Musk has claimed without evidence that there is widespread, pervasive fraud among NGOs receiving government contracts and that leaders of “fake NGOs” should be thrown in prison. Vera stated that it is going public with the incident out of concern that the Trump administration and Doge is planning to target other non-profits that do not conform to their ideology.“The Democrat government-funded NGO scam might be the biggest theft of taxpayer money ever,” Musk posted on X last month.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough Doge walked back its attempt to question and potentially embed staffers in Vera after learning that its funding had been cut, the organization is warning other non-profits that receive funding to prepare for similar incursions into their operations.“We are sharing this information broadly with other nonprofits that receive federal funding – so they can be aware of Doge’s plan to assign teams to investigate their operations,” Vera’s statement said. “We also are exposing this latest intimidation tactic targeting private, independent mission-driven organizations and undermining civil society.”The White House denied that Doge plans to embed within non-profits, according to a statement given to the Washington Post, which first reported Doge’s meeting with Vera. Instead, a White House spokesperson told the Post that Doge plans to “specifically look” at non-profits that receive large amounts of federal funding. More

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      California launches legal challenge against Trump’s ‘illegal’ tariffs

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      California is preparing to ask a court to block Donald Trump’s “illegal” tariffs, accusing the president of overstepping his authority and causing “immediate and irreparable harm” to the world’s fifth-largest economy.The lawsuit, to be filed in federal court on Wednesday by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and attorney general, Rob Bonta, is the most significant challenge yet to Trump’s flurry of on-again-off-again tariffs.In the complaint, California officials argue that the US constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to impose tariffs and that the president’s invocation of emergency powers to unilaterally escalate a global trade war, which has rattled stock markets and raised fears of recession, is unlawful.“No state is poised to lose more than the state of California,” Newsom said, formally unveiling the lawsuit during a press conference at an almond farm in the Central valley on Wednesday. “It’s a serious and sober moment, and I’d be … lying to you if I said it can be quickly undone.”Invoking a statute known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), Trump has issued a series of declarations imposing, reversing, delaying, restarting and modifying tariffs on US trading partners.The complaint argues that the law does not give the US president the authority to impose tariffs without the consent of Congress. It asks the court to declare Trump’s tariff orders “unlawful and void” and to order the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection to stop enforcing them.“The president is yet again acting as if he’s above the law. He isn’t,” Bonta said at the press conference on Wednesday, noting that it was the state’s 14th lawsuit against the Trump administration in less than 14 weeks. “Bottom line: Trump doesn’t have the singular power to radically upend the country’s economic landscape. That’s not how our democracy works.”Trump has said tariffs are necessary to ensure “fair trade”, protect American workers and turn the US into an “industrial powerhouse”.In a statement responding to the lawsuit, White House spokesman Kush Desai said the administration was “committed” to the president’s trade strategy. “Instead of focusing on California’s rampant crime, homelessness and unaffordability, Gavin Newsom is spending his time trying to block President Trump’s historic efforts to finally address the national emergency of our country’s persistent goods trade deficits,” he said.Newsom said his office had informed the White House in advance that it was bringing this lawsuit, but that the governor has not spoken to the president directly about it.Earlier this month, on what he called “liberation day”, the president imposed a sweeping 10% tariff on nearly all imported goods and higher tariffs for a host of countries, most of which he later paused for 90 days.A 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, the US’s largest trading partners, remains in effect, while Trump’s actions have provoked a trade war with China, its third-largest trading partner, subject to US tariffs of 145%.California, the US’s largest importer and second-largest exporter with an economy larger than most countries, relies heavily on trade with Mexico, Canada and China, the state’s top trading partners. The complaint says the economic consequences of Trump’s tariffs on the state will be “significant”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCalifornia is the first US state to bring a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s tariff policies. Earlier this week, a legal advocacy group filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of US businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the levies, asking the US court of international trade to block Trump’s tariffs.Newsom said said the economic consequences of the tariffs would be reflected in a revised budget proposal he will submit next month. “Across the spectrum, the impacts are off the charts.”“Regardless of all the scientific and engineering advances, farming is still hard work, and the weather makes every year a gamble,” said Christine Gemperle, who hosted the governor and attorney at her almond farm. “The last thing we need is more uncertainty and not knowing whether we can ride this one out.”California is the nation’s top agricultural exporter, shipping nuts, tomatoes, wine and rice around the world. California’s agricultural exports totalled nearly $24bn in 2022.After Trump’s announcement of across-the-board levies, Newsom said his administration would pursue new trade deals with international partners to exempt California from retaliatory tariffs. It also launched a campaign to encourage Canadian tourism to California, which has fallen dramatically in response to the Trump administration’s policies. Newsom called the effort a “sign of the times”.“We talk about own goals. We talk about stupidity,” he said of Trump’s pursuit of a global trade war. “This needs to be updated in the next Wikipedia or the next encyclopedia as a poster child for that.” More

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      US judge finds probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt over alien act deportations

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      A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that there was probable cause to hold Trump officials in criminal contempt for violating his temporary injunction that barred the use of the Alien Enemies Act wartime power to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.In a scathing 46-page opinion, James Boasberg, the chief US district judge for Washington, wrote that senior Trump officials could either return the people who were supposed to have been protected by his injunction, or face contempt proceedings.The judge also warned that if the administration tried to stonewall his contempt proceedings or instructed the justice department to decline to file contempt charges against the most responsible officials, he would appoint an independent prosecutor himself.“The court does not reach such conclusions lightly or hastily,” Boasberg wrote. “Indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to explain their actions. None of their responses have been satisfactory.”The threat of contempt proceedings marked a major escalation in the showdown over Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members, without normal due process, in his expansive interpretation of his executive power.It came one day after another federal judge, in a separate case involving the wrongful deportation of a man to El Salvador, said she would force the administration to detail what steps it had taken to comply with a US supreme court order compelling his return.In that case, US district judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to answer questions in depositions and in writing about whether it had actually sought to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Ábrego García, who was protected from being sent to El Salvador.Taken together, the decisions represented a developing effort by the federal judiciary to hold the White House accountable for its apparent willingness to flout adverse court orders and test the limits of the legal system.At issue in the case overseen by Boasberg is the Trump administration’s apparent violation of his temporary restraining order last month blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act – and crucially to recall planes that had already departed.The administration never recalled the planes and argued, after the fact, that they did not follow Boasberg’s order to recall the planes because he gave that instruction verbally and it was not included in his later written order.In subsequent hearings, lawyers for the Trump administration also suggested that even if Boasberg had included the directive in his written order, by the time he had granted the temporary restraining order, the deportation flights were outside US airspace and therefore beyond the judge’s jurisdiction.Boasberg excoriated that excuse and others in his opinion, writing that under the so-called collateral-bar rule, if a party is charged with acting in contempt for disobeying a court order, it cannot raise the possible legal invalidity of the order as a defense.“If Defendants believed – correctly or not – that the Order encroached upon the President’s Article II powers, they had two options: they could seek judicial review of the injunction but not disobey it, or they could disobey it but forfeit any right to raise their legal argument as a defense,” Boasberg wrote.Boasberg also rejected the administration’s claim that his authority over the planes disappeared the moment they left US airspace, finding that federal courts regularly restrain executive branch conduct abroad, even when it touches on national security matters.“That courts can enjoin US officials’ overseas conduct simply reflects the fact that an injunction … binds the enjoined parties wherever they might be; the ‘situs of the [violation], whether within or without the United States, is of no importance,’” Boasberg wrote.Boasberg added he was unpersuaded by the Trump administration’s efforts to stonewall his attempts to date to establish whether it knew it had deliberately flouted his injunction, including by invoking the state secrets doctrine to withhold basic information about when and what times the planes departed.“The Court is skeptical that such information rises to the level of a state secret. As noted, the Government has widely publicized details of the flights through social media and official announcements thereby revealing snippets of the information the Court seeks,” Boasberg wrote. More

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      Trump administration shutters US office countering foreign disinformation

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      The Trump administration is shuttering the state department’s last remaining bastion to monitor foreign disinformation campaigns.Known as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/Fimi) hub, the closure represents a huge victory for rightwing critics who had alleged that the office, despite only looking at foreign state-level disinformation attacks on other countries, was involved in censoring American conservative speech. It comes as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle what it describes as government overreach in monitoring speech.“Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions,” the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, posted on X on Wednesday. “That ends today.”The move follows an executive order on “countering censorship and restoring freedom of speech” which characterizes previous efforts against misinformation as government infringement on constitutionally protected speech rights.Rubio – who said in his own confirmation hearing that countering Chinese disinformation was critical – disparaged the office, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC), saying it “cost taxpayers more than $50m per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving”.The elimination of R/Fimi leaves the state department without any dedicated resources to counter increasingly sophisticated government disinformation campaigns. Russia reportedly spends approximately $1.5bn annually on foreign influence operations, Iran’s primary propaganda arm had a $1.26bn budget in 2022, and China invests “billions of dollars annually” according to GEC estimates.James Rubin, former special envoy and coordinator for the Global Engagement Center, said that the decision leaves the US vulnerable to foreign influence operations.“This is the functional equivalent of unilateral disarmament. If we remove our defenses against Russian and Chinese information warfare, it’s just to their advantage. That’s called unilateral disarmament.”Rubin, during his tenure as the last head of the GEC, spent considerable time on Capitol Hill talking with Republican skeptics about the office’s foreign-only mandate, ultimately to no avail.Acting undersecretary Darren Beattie reportedly informed staff that the office would be eliminated and all positions terminated. The approximately 40 employees will be placed on administrative leave and dismissed within 30 days, state department sources told MIT Technology Review.R/Fimi became the successor to the GEC, an Obama-era office that was defunded in December after Republicans in Congress blocked the reauthorization of its $61m budget.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuring its existence, the GEC had developed AI models to detect deepfakes, exposed Russian propaganda efforts targeting Latin American public opinion on the Ukraine conflict, and published reports on Russian and Chinese disinformation operations. One of its most notable successes was exposing the Kremlin-backed “African initiative”, a plan to undermine US influence across Africa by spreading conspiracy theories about US-funded health programs.In September 2024, the justice department indicted two employees of RT, a Russian state-owned media outlet, after a scheme was unveiled that it had been operating a vast military procurement network supplying Russian forces in Ukraine through online crowdfunding platforms.Beattie, who is overseeing the closure, brings his own controversy to the role: he had been fired as a speechwriter during Trump’s first administration for attending a white nationalist conference and promoted theories suggesting FBI involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. More

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      Who is Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador?

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      The ongoing legal saga of Kilmar Ábrego García, a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, has become a flashpoint as Donald Trump tests the limits of his executive power and continues with his plans for mass deportations.On Tuesday, a federal judge sharply rebuked the Trump administration for taking no steps to secure Ábrego García’s release despite a supreme court order last week ordering the administration to facilitate his return to the US.The administration previously conceded Ábrego García’s deportation was an “administrative error”, but it has since refused to bring him back and dug in on its contention that it should not be responsible for his repatriation.Here’s what to know about the case.Who is Kilmar Ábrego García?Ábrego García, 29, is a Salvadorian immigrant who entered the US illegally around 2011 because he and his family were facing threats by local gangs.In 2019, he was detained by police outside a Home Depot in Maryland, with several other men, and asked about a murder. He denied knowledge of a crime and repeatedly denied that he was part of a gang.He was subsequently put in immigration proceedings, where officials argued they believed he was part of the MS-13 gang in New York based on his Chicago Bulls gear and on the word of a confidential informant.A US immigration judge granted him protection from deportation to El Salvador because he was likely to face gang persecution. He was released and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) did not appeal the decision or try to deport him to another country.Ábrego García was living in Maryland with his wife, a US citizen, and has had a work permit since 2019. The couple are parents to their son and her two children from a previous relationship.Why was he deported?Ábrego García was stopped and detained by Ice officers on 12 March and questioned about alleged gang affiliation.He was deported on 15 March on one of three high-profile deportation flights to El Salvador. That flight also included Venezuelans whom the government accuses of being gang members and assumed special powers to expel without a hearing.Ábrego García is currently being detained in the Center for Terrorism Confinement (Cecot), a controversial mega-prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, known for its harsh conditions.The US is currently paying El Salvador $6m to house people who it alleges are members of the Tren de Aragua gang for a year.His wife, Jennifer Vásquez Sura, said she has not spoken to him since he was flown to El Salvador and imprisoned.What have the courts said?The US district judge Paula Xinis directed the Trump administration on 4 April to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Ábrego García, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.The supreme court unanimously upheld the directive on 10 April. In an unsigned decision, the court said the judge’s order “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Ábrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”.However, the supreme court said the additional requirement to “effectuate” his return was unclear and may exceed the judge’s authority. It directed Xinis to clarify the directive “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs”.Xinis admonished the government in a hearing on 11 April, saying it was “extremely troubling” that the administration had failed to comply with a court order to provide details on Ábrego García’s whereabouts and status.On Saturday, the Trump administration confirmed Ábrego García was alive and confined in El Salvador’s mega-prison, Cecot.Xinis once again, on Tuesday, criticized justice department officials for not complying with the supreme court’s order, saying “to date, nothing has been done”. She gave the government two weeks to produce details of their efforts to return Ábrego García to US soil.What has the US government said?The White House has cast Ábrego García as an MS-13 gang member and asserted that US courts lack jurisdiction over the matter because the Salvadoran national is no longer in the US.Earlier this month, the Trump administration acknowledged that Ábrego García was deported as a result of an “administrative error”. An immigration judge had previously prohibited the federal government from deporting him to El Salvador in 2019 regardless of whether he was a member of the MS-13 gang.The justice department has said it interpreted the court’s order to “facilitate” Ábrego García’s return as only requiring them to “remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here”.The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, has characterized the court’s order as only requiring the administration to provide transportation to Ábrego García if released by El Salvador.“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s up to them,” Bondi said. “The supreme court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him, we would ‘facilitate’ it, meaning provide a plane.”Justice department lawyers have argued that asking El Salvador to return Ábrego García should be considered “foreign relations” and therefore outside the scope of the courts.But the administration’s argument that it lacks the power to return Ábrego García into US custody is undercut by the US paying El Salvador to detain deportees it sends to Cecot prison.What have his lawyers said?Ábrego García’s attorneys have said there is no evidence he was in MS-13. The allegation was based on a confidential informant’s claim in 2019 that Ábrego Garcia was a member of a chapter in New York, where he has never lived.Ábrego García had never been charged with or convicted of any crime, according to his lawyers. He had a permit from the Department of Homeland Security to legally work in the US, his attorneys said.The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, traveled to El Salvador on Wednesday where he hopes to visit Ábrego García. He said the government of El Salvador had not responded to his request to visit Cecot.Van Hollen told the Guardian: “This is a Maryland man. His family’s in Maryland, and he’s been caught up in this absolutely outrageous situation where the Trump administration admitted in court that he was erroneously abducted from the United States and placed in this notorious prison in El Salvador in violation of all his due process rights.”What has El Salvador said?Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, has said that he would not order the return of Ábrego García because that would be tantamount to “smuggling” him into the US.During a meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Monday, Bukele was asked whether he would help to return Ábrego García. “The question is preposterous,” he replied.“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I’m not going to do it.” He added that he would not release Ábrego García into El Salvador either. “I’m not very fond of releasing terrorists into the country.” More

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      American women and children are in crisis. Republicans are about to make it worse | Karen Dolan

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      Women and children are under threat in America.Jocelyn Smith of Roswell, New Mexico, knows this too well. “I’m disabled, taking care of my disabled daughter. I work, and I volunteer to help feed and house my community,” she told me. “Yet I need assistance affording meals for my family. Something is broken.”Smith knows, but did you know, that in the United States, nearly 43% of women – and almost half of all children – are poor or low-income? And that last year, families with children experienced the largest single-year increase in homelessness, with nearly 40% more people in families with children experiencing homelessness?And what if I told you that Donald Trump’s agenda – expressed through his more than 100 harmful executive actions, Elon Musk’s Doge cuts, and his budget making its way through his Republican-majority Congress – will make things even worse for women and children?I bet you’ll be pretty angry. Smith is.“Is Congress working on any of this?” she asks about the struggles of working families. “Unfortunately, no.” As she wrote in a recent op-ed: “they’re doing the opposite right now.In fact, the GOP budget proposal could slash $880bn from Medicaid and $230bn from food assistance. They’re also cutting government agencies that assist with affordable housing, transportation, safety, veterans, and children with disabilities.”The final amounts of those cuts will vary, but the numbers stand to be huge and devastating. Why? Because the GOP is looking for at least $4.5tn in more tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. “They are reaching into my very shallow pockets, into my daughter’s life-saving medical care to pay for it,” Smith says.A new paper I co-authored for Repairers of the Breach and the Institute for Policy Studies tries to reckon with what these costs would mean for working Americans. For women and children, we found that some of the harshest blows will come in healthcare access and in help putting food on the table.Nearly one in five women and almost half of all children rely on Medicaid or its Children’s Health Insurance Program for healthcare. The House Republican budget resolution calls for potential cuts of hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid – as much as $880bn by 2034, as Smith points out.And a shocking 9 million people, disproportionately women and children, could lose all food assistance under the proposed supplemental nutrition assistance (Snap) cuts. Children could also miss out on food at school, since the Republican House budget proposal also calls for a $12bn cut to public schools’ free and reduced meals programs. This would eliminate 24,000 schools – serving 12 million students – from the program.Beyond food and healthcare, these cuts and proposals would also harm women and children in countless other ways.Nationally, women are already paid 18% less than men, which contributes to their higher likelihood of poverty. But now, nearly 3 million pregnant workers are at risk of losing their jobs amid doubts that Trump will properly enforce the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which provides worker protections for pregnant women.That’s especially egregious when you consider that 22 million women and girls of reproductive age live in states where their reproductive rights have been either eliminated or significantly eroded since justices appointed by Trump helped overturn Roe v Wade.Trump’s budget cuts could also lead to 40,000 children losing their childcare – and affect 2.4 million children’s access to childcare and early childhood education. That could have negative effects that follow those kids around the rest of their lives, in addition to imposing greater hardships on their parents.Other cuts target funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) research on health disparities, including Black maternal and fetal health, as well as $11.4bn in state and community health department grants. And of course all this comes alongside Trump’s anti-DEI executive actions, which target anti-discrimination protections for transgender children and transgender women.One of the few winners in this budget is the mass deportation system, which is poised to see significant increases. Yet the immigration raids and deportations this will fund will separate families – including up to 4.4 million US citizen children with an undocumented parent and another 850,000 undocumented minors.None of this is popular. By large majorities, Americans across the political spectrum oppose cuts to Medicaid, Snap and other safety net programs, as well as deportations that separate families and target Dreamers who came here as young children. It’s no wonder that countless women and children were among the millions who turned out for 5 April’s “Hands Off” rallies.I agree with Jocelyn Smith, who asks: “I don’t think this is fair. Do you?”

      Karen Dolan is a federal safety net expert and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. More

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      A crack in the manosphere: Joe Rogan’s guests are revolting | Sam Wolfson

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      Sam Harris is the kind of guest Joe Rogan loves to have on his podcast: he dresses awkwardly in a sport coat with jeans; he undertook a PhD in neuroscience after a transformative experience with MDMA; his tone is accessible yet patronising; he has a sense of academic authority which belies a set of controversial views that include calling Islam “uniquely uncivil” and almost unfettered support for Israeli attacks on Gaza; he made an app called Waking Up, which promises to be “a new operating system for your mind”. Rogan has hosted Harris on his podcast many times and the pair call each other good friends.But even Harris seems perturbed by Rogan’s more wholehearted embrace of Musk and Maga. “He’s in over his head on so many topics of great consequence,” Harris told his listeners of his own podcast last week. “He’ll bring someone in to shoot the shit on ‘how the Holocaust is not what you think it was’ or ‘maybe Churchill was the bad guy in world war two’ … or he’ll talk to someone like Trump or Tucker Carlson, who lie as freely as they breathe, and doesn’t push back against any of their lies … It is irresponsible, and it’s directly harmful.”Joe Rogan’s podcast success has in large part been about building a community of regular guests from the worlds of comedy, wrestling, psychedelics and non-fiction publishing, a kind of Rogansphere that has begun to feel like a subculture. He hosts his favourite guests time after time, with many of them building entire careers off their appearances on the show.But recently, various members of the Rogansphere have started to turn against their leader. They can’t understand how the host of the most popular podcast in the world seems to have gone from examining both sides to defending Elon Musk at every turn and providing a platform for second world war revisionists.View image in fullscreenIn the past few months, Rogan has called people who thought Elon Musk’s hand gesture was a Nazi salute “dumb”, “crazy”, “illogical and weird” and defended it by saying it’s how Americans used to give the pledge of allegiance in the 1940s. Weeks later, he gave a very sympathetic interview to the podcaster Darryl Cooper, who has previously called Winston Churchill the main villain of the second world war and tweeted an image of Nazis in Paris, saying it was “infinitely preferable” to the drag “Last Supper” scene at the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony.Rogan wasn’t always like this. Over the past decade he has built his podcast into by far the most successful in the world, weathering numerous controversies. He spent much of his career being mislabelled as ideologically rightwing or misogynistic when in fact he’s more of a simpleton who agrees with almost everyone who comes on his show, even when the things they’re saying are contradictory. He has been a staunch believer “in just asking questions” but not so much in listening to or processing the answers. He has supported both Bernie Sanders and RFK Jr, and has taken conflicting views on everything from trans rights to Ye, sometimes hilariously so.The best thing you could say about Rogan is that he is distrustful of all mainstream narratives, in an indiscriminate way. That’s led to him promoting a number of conspiracy theories that fly in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence about vaccines and the climate crisis, but also vocally criticising the war in Gaza and the influence of lobbyists in Washington DC.But his outlook has shifted since Trump was elected for the second time, a victory many credit to a good performance on Rogan’s podcast and Rogan’s subsequent endorsement. On Saturday night at a UFC fight, Rogan ran into Trump, warmly embraced him and said: “I’m so happy for you sir.” Many of his biggest fans, those that discuss episodes in detail on Reddit and Discord, are complaining that he has become a shill for the elites he used to claim to distrust.Rogan has tended to brush off these critiques in the past, saying he’s just an interested comedian asking questions. But even Rogan’s comedy friends have started to bristle at his unwavering support for Musk. Rogan values comedy above all else, investing much of the riches from his podcast in the Austin comedy scene, buying up clubs and appearing regularly as a panellist on Kill Tony, the open-mic standup podcast that takes shots at perceived wokeism. Rogan has a regular cast of comedians on his podcast including Shane Gillis, Kyle Dunnigan and Tim Dillon. These comedians give Rogan his street credibility, and he in turn has given them a huge platform.While they haven’t turned on Rogan yet, they are incredibly disparaging about Musk. Dillon called Musk’s White House press conference “the grossest and cringiest shit anyone has seen for a long time … I disagree with close friends of mine who think Elon Musk is the new Jesus.” Gillis laughed about Musk’s salute on his podcast, and said he thought Musk was “psychotic” and “fucking weird” for lying about how good he is at video games.Rogan meanwhile has recently called Musk “a super genius that’s been fucked with” and “one of the smartest people alive”.This emerging divide between Rogan and his comedic milieu came to a head last month at the recording of Kill Tony’s first special for Netflix (filmed at Rogan’s Comedy Mothership club in Austin). Both Dunnigan and Rogan were on the panel together but Dunnigan was in character, hilariously, as Musk. It was a brilliant and vicious send-up of Musk’s bizarre humour and minimal intelligence that had everyone laughing except Rogan, who avoided making eye contact or saying almost anything for the entire episode. It seemed as though he didn’t want to give any impression to Musk that he was was mocking him.There are no simple ideological lines being drawn between Rogan and the guests that are turning on him. Douglas Murray, for example, is an incredibly conservative pro-Israel historian who supports the withdrawal of visas from students who demonstrated on college campuses last year and has said he wants to ban “all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries”. In many ways he is to the right of Rogan, and used much of his appearance losing a debate on the podcast with his fellow guest Dave Smith over Gaza. Yet he also used his time to admonish Rogan for having too many amateur and conspiracy theory-minded historians on the podcast. “I feel you’ve opened the door to quite a lot of people. You’ve now got a big platform and have been throwing out counter-historical stuff but a very dangerous kind.”Rogan had very little in the way of a meaningful defence. Defending why he had the conspiracy theorist and Pizzagate proponent Ian Carroll on his program, Rogan replied: “I just think I’d like to talk to this person … I brought him on because I want to find out, like, how does one get involved in the whole conspiracy theory business? Because his whole thing is just conspiracies.”There are no smart guys here; both Murray and Rogan have tendency to use circuitous straw man arguments that suit their specific brand of politics. But it does show cracks in the cultural wing of Trumpism.Rogan himself seems to be backing down from a full-throated endorsement of the president’s policies, calling the Venezuelan deportations “horrific” and “bad for the cause”, and calling Trump’s feud with Canada over tariffs “stupid”. Last month he said healthcare should “100% should be socially funded” and was celebrated by Bernie Sanders for doing so.Yet these acknowledgements of bad policies haven’t translated into a lack of enthusiasm for either Trump or Musk, yet. But with Rogan it only takes one convincing guest to change his mind.What’s more, Rogan’s main constituency of listeners, young men, appear to be feeling buyer’s remorse about Trump, with new polling suggesting the group is swinging away from the president. Where his audience go, Rogan tends to follow.On his podcast, Harris told his listeners: “Our society is as politically shattered as it is in part because of how Joe [Rogan] has interacted with information.” Rogan might revel in criticism from progressives, but barbs from his friends are likely to sting. How long Trump can count on Rogan’s cuddles and warm wishes might depend on whether his favourite guests begin to ostracize him. More

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      in US Politics

      In Trumpland, ‘defending free speech’ means one thing: submission to the president | Rafael Behr

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      Compared with many countries around the world, the US is still a great democracy, but a much lesser one than it was four months ago. The constitution has not been rewritten. Checks and balances have not been dissolved. The difference is a president who ignores those constraints, and the impotence of the institutions that should enforce them.Which is the true US, the one enshrined in law or the one that smirks in contempt of law? If the latter, should Britain welcome its embrace as a kindred nation? That is an existential question lurking in the technical folds of a potential transatlantic trade agreement.If JD Vance is to be believed, the prospects of such a deal are looking up. The US vice-president reports that Donald Trump “really loves the United Kingdom”. The two countries are connected by a “real cultural affinity” that transcends business interests.This is a more emollient Vance than the one who earlier this year denounced Britain, alongside other European democracies, as a hotbed of anti-Christian prejudice and endemic censorship. In a speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance told his audience that Europe’s greatest threat comes not from Russia or China, but “from within”. He saw a continent in retreat from the “values shared with the United States of America”. Vance returned to the theme when Keir Starmer visited the White House, rebuking the prime minister for “infringements on free speech that … affect American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens”.That was a swipe at the Online Safety Act, which makes social media companies, websites and search engines responsible for “harmful content” published on their platforms. The law had a tortuous genesis between 2022 and 2023. Its scope expanded and contracted depending on what was deemed enforceable and desirable under three different Conservative prime ministers.The version now on the statute book focuses on unambiguously nasty stuff – incitement to violence, terrorism, race hate, encouraging suicide, child abuse images. Technology companies are required to have systems for removing such content. Those mechanisms are assessed by the regulator, Ofcom. Inadequate enforcement is punishable with fines. Refusal to comply can result in criminal prosecutions.That was the theory. The question of how the law should be implemented in practice was deferred. The answer seems to be not much if Britain wants a trade deal with the US.Last month, Ofcom received a delegation from the US state department, which raised the Online Safety Act in line with the Trump administration’s mission “to affirm the US commitment to defending freedom of expression in Europe and around the world”. Last week, answering questions from the parliamentary liaison committee, Starmer confirmed that diluting digital regulation was on the table in trade talks when he acknowledged that “there are questions about how technology impacts free speech”. The prime minister also conceded that the UK’s digital services tax, which aims to clamp down on international tech companies avoiding tax by hiding their profits offshore, could be up for negotiation.These demands from the White House have been flagged well in advance. In February, Trump signed a “memorandum to defend US companies and innovators from extortion overseas”. The administration promised to take a dim view of any attempt to raise taxes from US tech companies and any use of “products and technology in ways that undermine free speech or foster censorship”.Regulation that impedes the operation of US digital behemoths – anything short of blanket permission to do as they please – will apparently be treated as a hostile act and an affront to human liberty.This is an imperial demand for market access cynically camouflaged in the language of universal rights. The equivalent trick is not available in other sectors of the economy. US farmers hate trade barriers that stop their products flooding European markets, but they don’t argue that their chlorine-washed chickens are being censored. (Not yet.)That isn’t to say digital communications can be subject to toxicity tests just like agricultural exports. There is wide scope for reasonable disagreement on what counts as intolerable content, and how it should be controlled. The boundaries are not easily defined. But it is also beyond doubt that thresholds exist. There is no free-speech case for child sexual abuse images. The most liberal jurisdictions recognise that the state has a duty to proscribe some material even if there is a market for it.The question of how online space should be policed is complex in principle and fiendishly difficult in practice, not least because the infrastructure we treat as a public arena is run by private commercial interests. Britain cannot let the terms of debate be dictated by a US administration that is locked in corrupting political intimacy with those interests.It is impossible to separate the commercial and ideological strands of Trump’s relationship with Silicon Valley oligarchs. They used their power and wealth to boost his candidacy and they want payback from his incumbency. There is not much coherence to the doctrine. “Free” speech is the kind that amplifies the president’s personal prejudices. Correcting his lies with verifiable facts is censorship.That warped frame extends beyond the shores of the US. It is shared by Kemi Badenoch, who considers Vance a friend. Asked about the vice-president’s Munich speech, the Conservative leader said she thought he was “dropping some truth bombs, quite frankly”. Badenoch’s own speeches consistently fret about the capture of Britain’s elite institutions, especially the Whitehall bureaucracy, by repressive woke dogma.There is a school of militant leftism that is tediously censorious, stretching liberal piety to illiberal extremes, and there always has been. But it is very far from power. Maybe Badenoch ramps up the menace to appeal to a fanatical audience on social media. Perhaps she radicalised herself by reading about it there. Either way, to fixate on campus protest politics as the main threat to western democracy when a tyrant sits in the Oval Office requires an act of mental contortion that, if not actually stupid, does a strong imitation of stupidity.Britain doesn’t have to take instruction on political freedom from a regime that suffocates media independence with bullying and vexatious litigation; that demands universities teach the ruling party’s orthodoxies; that courts dictatorships while sabotaging democratic alliances; that kidnaps and jails innocent people with no regard for due process, then ignores the court rulings that say they should be free.These are the “values” that Vance is talking about when he laments that Europe and the US are drifting apart. This is the model of “free speech” that a Trump trading partner is expected to endorse; to protect. Is that the stuff of “real cultural affinity” that earns Britain a deal? Let’s hope not.

      Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist More