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      Trump to sign order barring student loan forgiveness for public servants engaged in ‘improper activities’ – as it happened

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      Donald Trump plans to today sign an executive order barring government and non-profit employees from a student loan forgiveness program if they engage in “improper activities”.The order affects the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, under which employees of those organizations can have their federal student debt forgiven if they meet certain criteria. White House staff secretary Will Scharf said that the order will target employees of non-governmental organizations “that engage in illegal, or what we would consider to be improper activities, supporting, for example, illegal immigration or foreign terrorist organizations or otherwise law-breaking activities”.The order will direct the treasury and education departments to ensure that people involved in those activities are not eligible for the forgiveness.We will be wrapping the live blog for the 46th day of Trump’s second term.Here is a look at some of the day’s developments:

      The Trump administration announced that it had canceled $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University in New York because of what it alleges is the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.

      The Trump administration fired the head of the US justice department office that handles presidential pardon requests, the official said in a social media post. Liz Oyer, who was appointed by Biden in 2022, said: “I’m sad to share that I was fired today from the job I have poured my heart and soul into for the last three years.”

      The Department of Homeland Security is ending the collective bargaining agreement covering tens of thousands of airport transportation security officers. The agency, led by secretary Kristi Noem, also said it will stop deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks, a major setback for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA screeners and relies on $15m in annual payments.

      The US Department of Agriculture has eliminated two committees that advise it on food safety. The USDA eliminated the national advisory committee on microbiological criteria for foods and the national advisory committee on meat and poultry inspection, a spokesperson told Reuters.

      About 4,000 defense department personnel received termination notices this week from their employers, a US official told ABC News. Last week, the department said that up to 5,400 employees could be affected in an initial round of job cuts.

      After the New York Times reported that Elon Musk and Marco Rubio had argued in front of Trump on Thursday, the president said “no clash” had happened. “No clash, I was there. You’re just a troublemaker and you’re not supposed to be asking that question, because we’re talking about the World Cup,” Trump said to a reporter.

      The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is removing a previous requirement that banks had to get special approval before engaging in a range of cryptocurrency services. The government agency overseeing banks reaffirmed that US banks can legally offer certain cryptocurrency activities, like crypto-asset custody, certain stablecoin activities, and participation in independent node verification networks.

      Donald Trump held court in the Oval Office, where he again expressed sympathy for Russia, saying he found it “easier” to negotiate with them on achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump also threatened Russia with sanctions and tariffs if it did not sign on to a ceasefire.

      Trump cheered the latest employment numbers as proving the wisdom of his economic policies, and said he may soon target Canada with more tariffs to settle long-running disputes over their dairy and lumber industries.
      The so-called “department of government efficiency” is reviewing $1.6tn in social security payments, which includes data on individuals’ names, birthdates, and earnings, in an anti-fraud initiative that has raised concerns among advocates, ABC News reports. They fear that the Trump administration may begin denying benefits to vulnerable older Americans.Details of this initiative were confirmed in a recent letter to Congress by the acting social security administrator, Lee Dudek, and others officials.Along with reviewing sensitive data, Doge staff have been looking into the Social Security Administration’s telephone service, which many beneficiaries use to file initial claims.Trump administration to drop case against plant polluting Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’Donald Trump’s administration has formally agreed to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region, marking a blow to clean-air advocates in the region and a win for the Japanese petrochemical giant at the centre of the litigation.Legal filings made public on Friday morning reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, which is allegedly largely responsible for some of the highest cancer risk rates in the US for the surrounding, majority-Black neighborhoods.The litigation was filed under the Biden administration in February 2023 in a bid to substantially curb the plant’s emissions of a pollutant named chloroprene, a likely human carcinogen. It had targeted both the current operator, the Japanese firm Denka, and its previous owner, the American chemical giant DuPont, and formed a central piece of the former administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts to address environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. A trial had been due to start in April 2025 following lengthy delays.Community leaders in Reserve had expressed grave concerns about the case’s future following Trump’s return to the White House after the president moved to gut offices within the EPA and justice department responsible for civil rights and environmental justice.Read Oliver Laughland’s full report from New Orleans here:The US state department is conducting a review of all visa programs, a department spokesperson told CNN, following reports of a potential new travel ban. A US official told the news outlet that Afghanistan might be among the countries affected.The ban could take effect as early as next week, though the final decisions regarding the included countries and the timing remain uncertain, according to the official.On 20 January, Donald Trump issued an executive order directing cabinet members, including the secretary of state, to identify countries where vetting and screening processes are inadequate enough to justify a partial or full suspension of admissions.A former campaign fundraiser for the ex-US representative George Santos was sentenced Friday to one year and one day in prison for impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide while raising cash for the disgraced New York Republican.Sam Miele, speaking briefly in federal court on Long Island, apologized to everyone he had “let down”, including family and friends, the Associated Press reports.“What I did was wrong. Plain and simple,” Miele said, vowing he would never be involved with the criminal justice system again.Protesters demanding an in-person town hall from their western Michigan GOP representative chanted loudly Friday as honking drivers signaled support, the Associated Press reports.Hours later, the representative Bill Huizenga held a town hall – by phone. The disruption seen outside his Holland office earlier in the day was absent, as the controlled setting allowed for questions from people who wrote and called in.“I know this may not be satisfactory to some who would like to just create a scene and be, you know, be disruptive,” Huizenga said on the call. “But we know that this is extremely effective for reaching people.”Some Republicans have opted to hold telephone town halls after GOP leaders in recent days advised lawmakers to skip town halls, which have been filled with protesters decrying Donald Trump’s administration’s slashing of the federal government.The US Department of Labor has reinstated about 120 employees who had been facing termination as part of the Trump administration’s mass firings of recently hired workers, a union said on Friday.The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, told Reuters that the probationary employees had been reinstated immediately and that the department was issuing letters telling them to report back to duty on Monday.The New York representative Elise Stefanik praised Donald Trump’s decision to cancel $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University because of what the administration alleges is the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment. In a statement, Stefanik said:
      President Trump is delivering on his promise to hold universities like Columbia accountable by defunding them for failing to protect their Jewish communities,” said Stefanik in a statement sent over email. “I’m proud of my efforts on the Education Committee which led to the FORMER Columbia University President’s resignation and I applaud President Trump for ensuring that hardworking taxpayer dollars do not fund these cesspools of antisemitism.
      Here’s more context on the grant cancellations:The Trump administration fired the head of the US Justice Department office that handles presidential pardon requests, the official said in a social media post.Liz Oyer, who was appointed by Biden in 2022, posted on LinkedIn:
      I’m sad to share that I was fired today from the job I have poured my heart and soul into for the last three years. I am so proud of the team we built in the Office of the Pardon Attorney, who will carry on our important work. I’m very grateful for the many extraordinary people I’ve had the opportunity to connect with on this journey. Thank you for your partnership, your support, and your belief in second chances.
      A pardon attorney runs the process by which people apply for and receive clemency.Oyer’s termination comes two weeks after Donald Trump appointed Alice Marie Johnson as “pardon czar”, a role in which she will recommend people for presidential commutations.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Friday that it is ending the collective bargaining agreement covering tens of thousands of airport transportation security officers.The agency, led by secretary Kristi Noem, also said it will stop deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks, a major setback for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA screeners and relies on $15m in annual payments.“Thanks to Secretary Noem’s action, Transportation Security Officers will no longer lose their hard-earned dollars to a union that does not represent them,” reads a statement by a DHS spokesperson. “The Trump Administration is committed [to] returning to merit-based hiring and firing policies.”The US Department of Agriculture has eliminated two committees that advise it on food safety, the agency said on Friday.The USDA eliminated the national advisory committee on microbiological criteria for foods and the national advisory committee on meat and poultry inspection, a spokesperson told Reuters.These cuts raise concerns about government oversight of the food supply as the Trump administration seeks to downsize the federal bureaucracy and slash costs.The committees provided scientific advice to the USDA and other federal agencies on public health issues related to food safety, said the non-profit consumer advocacy group Consumer Reports.The Department of Veterans Affairs will allow crisis hotline responders to work remotely instead of in offices because of the lack of privacy, CNN reports.The VA granted a full exemption for the Veterans Crisis Line from Donald Trump’s executive order requiring federal employees to return to the office.The hotline staff no longer have their own office space because the buildings that housed the call center’s three national hubs – in Georgia, Kansas and New York – were all closed during the Covid pandemic. More

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      EPA issues guidance that spending of $50,000 or more must gain approval of Doge

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      The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued new guidance directing that spending items greater than $50,000 now require approval from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), even as Donald Trump began putting some distance between Musk’s reach and the power of government department heads – at least over job cuts.“Any assistance agreement, contract or interagency agreement transaction [valued at] $50,000 or greater must receive approval from an EPA DOGE team member,” the EPA guidance says, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press. The EPA did not respond to a request from the news agency on Friday for comment.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate environment and public works committee, called the new directive “troubling”, adding that it means agency actions, including routine contracts and grant awards, “now face unnecessary bureaucratic delays”.Whitehouse added that the involvement of Musk’s “unvetted, inexperienced team raises serious concerns about improper external influence on specialized agency decision-making”.The latest development came after Donald Trump on Thursday gave a clear sign of admitting that drastic government cuts spearheaded by his ally Musk have gone too far. The US president’s views after an explosive, closed-door cabinet confrontation involving Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, exposed simmering anger over the billionaire entrepreneur’s key role, which Musk attended even though he is not a cabinet member.After weeks of turmoil in the federal bureaucracy wreaked by the Doge team, Trump issued a call for a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” to be applied to the task of reducing the federal bureaucracy.The president’s comment in a social media post followed a volatile encounter that saw Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla owner who has assumed a central role in Trump’s fledgling administration, face off against Rubio, whom he accused of “firing nobody”, according to the New York Times. Rubio, who had been furious over Musk’s role in shutting down the main US foreign assistance body, USAid – over which the secretary of state supposedly has control – hit back vigorously, according to the report.Thursday’s cabinet meeting was scheduled abruptly after howls of protest about the effects of Doge’s slashing of government agencies by the constituents of Republican members of Congress, including former military veterans, many of whom have been fired in a wave of indiscriminate cuts.“As the secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.“We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’ The combination of them, Elon, Doge, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.”Trump’s public call for discretion came after he told cabinet secretaries that they rather than Musk had the final say over whom to hire and fire.Musk conveyed a similar message in a meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday, claiming he was not to blame for the mass layoffs and giving them his phone number if they wanted to relay concerns.It contrasted starkly with the image he projected at last month’s CPAC conference, when he paraded on stage with a chainsaw to symbolise his ruthless approach to downsizing government agencies. He has openly boasted of feeding the now-gutted USAid “into the wood chipper”, while laying off its estimated 10,000-employee workforce.“Elon doesn’t fire people,” Richard Hudson, a Republican member of Congress from North Carolina, told reporters after a pizza dinner with Musk in the basement of the US Capitol on Thursday.“He doesn’t have hiring and firing authority. The president’s empowered him to go uncover this information, that’s it.”The attempt to downplay a role Musk in which has consistently sought the limelight follows questions from judges in the multiple court cases filed against Doge’s activities about who is leading the staff-culling crusade – and whether Musk himself has a direct role.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration has argued in legal filings that Musk, who has not been confirmed by Congress, is not the official head of Doge. But Trump undercut that in a prime-time address at the US Capitol on Tuesday by flatly suggesting that he is, a declaration that commentators said could directly affect pending court rulings.Numerous recently hired federal employees have been summarily fired before their probation period ended – when their posts would become harder to terminate because of legal protections.Carlos Gimenez, a Republican representative from Florida, said that the agencies rather than Musk had fired the probationers.“Some of the folks that were the probationary people, he didn’t fire them, they were actually supposedly fired by the agencies – and they messed up,” Gimenez said.The portrait of an impartial, hands-off Musk jarred with anecdotal on-the-ground evidence from agencies infiltrated by Doge operatives.On Thursday, federal marshals escorted members of Doge, along with Peter Marocco, director of the state department’s office of foreign assistance, into the Washington office of the US African Development Foundation (USADF), a day after staff had denied them access in what was seen as a David-versus-Goliath act of defiance by one of the smallest federal agencies.The entry resulted in a “traumatising scene”, employees told the Washington Post, and prompted a federal lawsuit by USADF’s president, Ward Brehm, challenging the authority of Trump, Marocco and Doge to close an agency that the president has deemed unnecessary.Further evidence of a de facto Doge takeover of government came in reports of its workers installing themselves in four separate rooms on the sixth floor of the General Service Administration’s building, “complete with beds from Ikea, lamps and dressers.”Politico said the agency was considering spending about $25,000 to install a washer and dryer on the premises, apparently to serve the resident Doge staff. Ethics experts warned that the arrangement could breach agency rules, the website reported.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump administration cancels $400m in funds to Columbia University

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      The Donald Trump administration announced on Friday that it had canceled $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University in New York because of what it alleges is the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.The announcement comes after Columbia set up a new disciplinary committee and initiated its own investigations into students critical of Israel and its war on Gaza after Hamas’s own attack on Israel. That move by the university has alarmed advocates of free speech.It also comes at a time of widespread backlash to American universities by the Trump administration and conservatives more broadly who see the higher education sector in the US as dominated by liberals and ripe for a rightwing attack on its influence.Linda McMahon, the Trump-appointed secretary of education, had warned on Monday that Columbia would lose federal funding if it did not take additional action to combat antisemitism on its campus.A statement issued on Friday by the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, and the US General Services Administration, states: “These cancellations represent the first round of action and additional cancellations are expected to follow.”“For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” McMahon said in the statement.The statement also refers to ongoing “illegal protests” on college and university campuses, a phrase Trump has used to refer to some student protests, though what makes these illegal remains unclear.Columbia was central to campus protests that broke out across the US over Gaza last spring. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment there in April and inspired a wave of similar protests in many other colleges.The first amendment to the US constitution protects the rights of people to “peacefully assemble” and to petition the government for a “redress of grievances”.The extent that pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses can be considered antisemitic is still debated across political and academic spheres. Republican lawmakers viewed the protests as antisemitic, despite the fact many protesters denied the accusations or were Jewish themselves.Trump has threatened college students with imprisonment and deportation on Tuesday on his Truth Social platform, writing: “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”A Columbia University spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Columbia Spectator, that it was “reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and [pledged] to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding”.“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” the spokesperson wrote.It is not immediately clear what contracts or grants would be cut under the directive. Columbia University currently holds more than $5bn in federal grant commitments, the GSA statement said.Katherine Franke, a retired legal scholar and former professor at Columbia Law School told the Guardian how she was “pushed out” of her role in January because of her pro-Palestinian activism. She had been with Columbia for 25 years.Franke says that the university was told “unless we as faculty and students take a pro-Israeli position, it [the university] will be sanctioned. And at the same time, the university is now committing itself to something it’s calling institutional neutrality.”She says that though not all the grants were cut, the Trump administration did “cut a significant part of them, and the important research that’s being done with those grants will stop”.Franke is highly critical of the way Columbia is responding to the threats from Trump, believing the institution could have done more to protect students, faculty and the pivotal role the university plays in a democracy.“If you grovel before a bully, it just emboldens the bully, and the bully has now become an authoritarian government with the capacity to act on a level that was unthinkable for us a couple of years ago,” she said.Columbia is one of five colleges currently under the new federal investigation, and it is one of 10 being visited by a taskforce in response to allegations of antisemitism. Others under investigation include the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; Northwestern University; and Portland State University. More

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      Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order

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      Transgender women incarcerated in the US prison system have been transferred to men’s facilities under Donald Trump’s executive order, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president’s policy, according to civil rights lawyers and accounts from behind bars.Trump’s day-one “gender ideology” order, one of several sweeping attacks on trans rights, said the attorney general “shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” and that no federal funds go to gender-affirming treatment or procedures for people in custody.The executive order was quickly challenged in court. In three lawsuits filed on behalf of trans women housed in women’s prisons, federal judges have ruled that the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) cannot withhold their medical treatment and was barred from moving them to men’s facilities. One judge said the plaintiffs had “straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow”.Lawyers fighting Trump’s directive say the court rulings prevented the transfers of 17 trans women who are plaintiffs in the cases, but others not included in the litigation are now facing placements in men’s facilities.“I’m just continuing to be punished for existing,” said Whitney, a 31-year-old trans woman who was transferred from a women’s facility to a men’s prison this week. The BOP changed her records from “female” to “male”, records show. In messages before her transfer, she said she felt like a “pawn in others’ political games”. The Guardian is not using her full name due to concerns about retaliation.Kara Janssen, an attorney representing trans women in litigation, said she learned of another trans woman not included in the lawsuits who was recently transferred to a facility that houses men, and also had the gender marker in her records changed. Janssen also learned of a trans woman newly entering the BOP system who had gender-affirming surgeries before her incarceration, but was placed in a men’s facility.Prisons are required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea), a longstanding federal law, to screen incarcerated people for sexual assault risk and consider LGBTQ+ status when making housing decisions. Legal experts say Trump’s blanket policy of housing trans women in men’s facilities clearly violates Prea.“This is incredibly unnecessary and cruel,” said Janssen. “Our clients are desperate and scared.”The BOP did not respond to requests for comment.Trans people have long faced high levels of sexual violence and discrimination behind bars, and the implementation of Trump’s order has unleashed chaos, panic and significant violations of their rights beyond the threats of housing transfers, attorneys said.Internal BOP memos seen by the Guardian show that officials are now requiring staff to refer to trans residents by their legal names and incorrect pronouns, as well as deny requests for gender-appropriate clothing accommodations. The BOP has also rescinded policies that allowed trans women to have their pat-down searches conducted by female guards.Susan Beaty, a senior attorney for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, who represents roughly 20 trans people in federal prisons, said they have received reports that some trans people were forced under threat of discipline to hand over their underwear, including bras and boxers, as if they were contraband. They said they’ve also heard accounts of male guards searching trans women in encounters several of the women described as “groping”. Some staff have been emboldened to harass and taunt trans people, Beaty said.“It is already so difficult to be a trans person in prison in this country, and now this administration’s measures are intentionally terrorizing and traumatizing incarcerated trans people even further,” Beaty said.“It is essentially sanctioning sexual assault in some instances,” added Janssen, of the male pat-downs of trans women. Some trans people had told her they were suffering suicidal thoughts and daily nightmares.Whitney, who was recently transferred, said in interviews prior to her move that staff for weeks gave her conflicting information. In mid-February, she and another trans woman were placed into a form of isolation called a “special housing unit” and told they could be there for months, she said. The other woman attempted suicide out of fear of being transferred, she said.Days later, the women were moved back to the general population. Whitney’s doctor, however, then told her that her hormone therapy medications would start to be tapered down. Whitney said going off those medications would wreak havoc on her body and mind, describing it “like a slow death”. The doctor also said staff would start using male pronouns for her, though she said that had not happened yet. She said she was also told she would be allowed to keep women’s underwear she already owns, but would not be issued new garments.Last week, medical staff told Whitney her medications would not be changed after all, she said, but then days later, she was told to pack because she was being transferred to a men’s facility.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m nervous. Worried. Apprehensive. Anxious. Scared. You name it,” Whitney said before her transfer. “One moment I am feeling relief, and the next I am growing gray hairs. That’s probably one of the most stressful things about all this. Are you safe or are you not?”The litigation is ongoing and is most immediately focused on maintaining trans people’s housing and medical care, attorneys said. But Janssen said lawyers would also be fighting for trans women who have long been housed in male facilities and were in the pipeline to be transferred, and advocating against the rollback of basic accommodations across the system. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment because you’re punishing this group for no reason other than you don’t think they should exist.”One judge criticized the US government for failing to address plaintiffs’ concerns that their gender dysphoria would be exacerbated in men’s prisons “whether because they will be subject to searches by male correctional officers, made to shower in the company of men, referred to as men, forced to dress as men, or simply because the mere homogenous presence of men will cause uncomfortable dissonance”.Alix McLearen, who was the acting director of the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) in 2022 before she retired in 2024, said Trump’s order endangers trans people and staff. The NIC is part of the BOP and does training and policy development for corrections officials. McLearen led the drafting and implementation of the “transgender offender manual” when she oversaw women and special populations at BOP. That manual has recently been rescinded.“If you yank this away, no one knows what to do,” McLearen said. “If you are going to change a policy, you [should] do it slowly and thoughtfully.”Confusion in a prison setting increases stress levels and the potential for conflict among staff and incarcerated people, McLearen said.Trump’s order also increases the already high risk of sexual and physical assault of trans people in prison, said Julie Abbate, the national advocacy director of Just Detention International, a human rights group focused on sexual abuse in prisons and jails.Putting a target on trans people in prison only increases their risk of assault, which in turn also puts staff in the dangerous position of intervening in violent situations, said Abbate, who spent 15 years at the civil rights division of the US justice department and helped draft national Prea standards.Trump’s policy has no benefit, McLearen said. The order purports to “defend women” in prisons, but McLearen said it addresses a problem that does not exist.“This is fake – this whole executive order is false on its face,” McLearen said. “It’s scapegoating. Trans people are easy to scapegoat.” More

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      US exits fund that compensates poorer countries for global heating

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      The Trump administration has withdrawn the US from a global agreement under which the developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.The loss and damage fund was agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in late 2023 – a hard-won victory after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy by developing nations that bear the brunt of the climate crisis despite having contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The fund signalled a commitment by developed, polluting countries to provide financial support for some of the irreversible economic and noneconomic losses from sea level rise, desertification, drought and floods already happening.The US has a long record of delay tactics and obstructionism, and had so far pledged only $17.5m (£13.5m) to the loss and damage fund, which became operational on 1 January this year. Now the US, the biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, will no longer participate in the initiative.“On behalf of the United States Department of the Treasury, I write to inform you that the United States is withdrawing from the board for the fund for responding to loss and damage, effective immediately,” said Rebecca Lawlor, the deputy director at the US Office of Climate and Environment, in a letter to the fund.The decision to abandon the loss and damage fund was condemned by climate advocates from the global north and south.“The US decision to step away from this commitment at such a crucial moment sends the wrong message to the global community and to those in dire need of assistance,” said Mohamed Adow, a climate policy analyst and director of the thinktank Power Shift Africa. “We urge the United States to reconsider its position in the interest of the planet and future generations … this regrettable decision risks undermining collective progress and erodes the trust necessary for effective international cooperation.”Rachel Rose Jackson, a research director at Corporate Accountability, said: “Let’s be clear – the US has never been a climate champion. Yet the Trump administration’s anti-climate action agenda – including its withdrawal from the loss and damage fund board – is a wrecking ball made of dynamite. It’s dangerous, it’s malicious and it will destroy lives.“We cannot allow the Trump administration, and the greedy corporations pulling the strings, to get away with destroying the planet. It’s time for the United States to pay up its climate debt and do its fair share of climate action.”Ali Mohamed, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators, a coalition of African nations participating in UN climate negotiations, said: “This decision, made by the nation with the largest historical responsibility for climate change, jeopardises vital support for vulnerable countries facing irreversible climate impacts.”Trump has already pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate accords – for the second time after the US was reinstated under Joe Biden – claiming the international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions and preventing climate catastrophe ripped off the US.“I’m immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off,” he said, signing the executive order on his first day in office. “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.”China currently ranks as the top greenhouse gas emitter but is also the global leader in the manufacture and deployment of renewable energy. The US is the largest historical emitter and, while emissions have fallen alongside reductions in coal, it has become the world’s largest oil and gas producer by a huge margin in recent years.Record-breaking ocean and atmospheric temperatures have caused chaos around the world and across the US, including devastating wildfires in Los Angeles and deadly flooding across Florida and southern Appalachia. Meanwhile, several of Trump’s policies, including his pledge to “drill, baby drill”, dismantle federal agencies, and impose tariffs that threaten a trade war, risk derailing the burgeoning US renewables sector.The loss and damage fund is a work in progress. As of late January, 27 countries had pledged a combined total of $741m – the equivalent of about 0.2% of the irreversible losses developing countries are facing from global heating every year.The US withdrawal appears to be another rejection of global diplomacy and the reality of the climate crisis.Harjeet Singh, a climate activist and founding director of the Delhi-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said: “The decision by the Trump administration exemplifies a longstanding pattern of obstruction by the US government in securing necessary finance for addressing climate impacts, [and] undermines global efforts to deliver climate justice.“As the largest historical emitter, the United States bears a significant share of the blame for the climate adversities affecting vulnerable populations worldwide. We must hold them accountable and ensure they contribute their fair share towards global climate reparations.” More

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      Trump administration to drop case against plant polluting Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

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      The Donald Trump administration has formally agreed to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region, marking a blow to clean air advocates in the region and a win for the Japanese petrochemical giant at the centre of the litigation.Legal filings made public on Friday morning reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, which is allegedly largely responsible for some of the highest cancer risk rates in the US for the surrounding majority-Black neighborhoods.The litigation was filed under the Biden administration in February 2023 in a bid to substantially curb the plant’s emissions of a pollutant named chloroprene, a likely human carcinogen. It had targeted both the current operator, the Japanese firm Denka, and its previous owner, the American chemical giant DuPont, and formed a central piece of the former administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts to address environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. A trial had been due to start in April 2025 following lengthy delays.Community leaders in Reserve had expressed grave concerns about the case’s future following Trump’s return to the White House after the president moved to gut offices within the EPA and justice department responsible for civil rights and environmental justice.On Friday, 84-year-old Robert Taylor, a resident in Reserve who has lost a number of family members to cancer, described the move as “terrible” for his community.“It’s obvious that the Trump administration doesn’t care anything for the poor Black folk in Cancer Alley,” Taylor said. “[Trump’s] administration has taken away what protections we had, what little hope we had.”Filings show that parties involved in the litigation, including lawyers for Denka and DuPont, met on Wednesday and agreed jointly with the US justice department to dismiss the case.The EPA referred all questions about the lawsuit to the US justice department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.DuPont did not immediately respond to a request for comment.A spokesperson for Denka did not respond to questions from the Guardian but issued a statement thanking the Trump administration and lauding Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, for his “unwavering support”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe chemical firm pointed to a $35m investment in emissions offsets and said “the facility’s emissions are at an historical low”. The company “remains committed to implementing the emissions reductions achieved as we turn the page from this relentless and draining attack on our business”, the statement added.According to the complaint filed in 2023, emissions from the plant pose “an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare”. The lawsuit had specifically singled out the risk to children living near the plant and those attending an elementary school situated close to the plant’s fence line. It noted that average readings at an air monitor near the school between April 2018 to January 2023 showed that those under 16 could surpass the EPA’s excess cancer risk rate within two years of their life.On Friday, Taylor vowed to continue pushing back against pollution.“We are going to fight them and prepare ourselves to keep going. We were preparing for the worst, and I don’t know how it could get any worse now that the government has totally abandoned us, it seems.” More

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      Trump’s attacks on South Africa are a punishment for independence | Achille Mbembe and Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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      On 7 February, less than three weeks after taking office, Donald Trump issued an executive order: “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The order directed US agencies to halt aid to South Africa, condemned South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) as an “aggressive position”, and declared that white Afrikaners be prioritized for resettlement in the US based on the duplicitous claim that they are “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.The humanitarian consequences of this executive order are devastatingly clear. On 26 February, notices were sent out terminating support for HIV organizations funded by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), initiated in 2003 by then president George W Bush. The termination of funding to Pepfar is catastrophic for South Africa. Studies predict this could result in more than half a million unnecessary deaths and up to half a million new infections.But Trump’s order is an escalation of an existing strategy to condemn, isolate and punish South Africa for charting an independent course for its people and their relationship to the international community at large.On 11 January 2024, the South African government presented its case at the ICJ, arguing that Israel’s military actions in Gaza – endorsed, funded and armed by the United States – constituted genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The ICJ case was not the first time that South Africa had broken with Washington on the global stage; in 2003, South Africa strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, warning that the war amounted to “a blow to multilateralism”, in the words of its then president Thabo Mbeki.South Africa’s renewed appeal to multilateralism did not keep the Biden administration from responding to the ICJ case against Israel with immediate hostility. On 3 January, before arguments were even made, the state department spokesperson Matthew Miller declared: “We find this submission to be meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”While South Africa’s ICJ case was widely welcomed at home, some white actors with significant power in the country’s public sphere were hostile. Strident demands for South Africa to align with the west were issued by organisations such as the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, among others. They found easy allies in Washington. In early 2024, several members of Congress argued that South Africa’s stance on Israel should disqualify it from receiving preferential trade benefits, including removal from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which aims to improve economic ties between the US and sub-Saharan Africa.Last month’s executive order marks a dangerous new phase in the efforts to strangle South Africa’s international solidarities – but this time with an explicitly white supremacist twist, focused on the country’s efforts to redress the compounded, multi-generational inequalities of apartheid. Trump has long supported the far-right conspiracy theory that falsely claims white farmers in South Africa are subject to a government-backed campaign of violence. In August 2018, he tweeted that he had asked then secretary of state Mike Pompeo “to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers”.These views have been nurtured by organisations such as AfriForum, a rightwing Afrikaner group that has actively cultivated relationships with American conservative institutions since around 2017. In 2018, AfriForum representatives met with then National Security adviser John Bolton and conducted interviews on Fox News, promoting conspiracy theories about a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa. A network of far-right white South Africans in the US, including Elon Musk, has similarly gained access and influence. Joel Pollak, an editor at Breitbart, is widely tipped to be Trump’s new ambassador to South Africa.These conspiracy theories aim to present white farmers as victims as South Africa moves toward remedy for dispossession. A 2017 government land audit found that white people, 9% of the population, owned approximately 72% of all privately owned farmland – a direct result of colonial dispossession that must be addressed as an urgent moral priority, as indicated in South Africa’s 1996 constitution.But if the target of Trump’s executive order is South African land reform, its principal casualty will be the beneficiaries of Aids treatment. One of the great successes of South Africa’s democracy has been its HIV treatment program. With approximately 5.9 million people receiving antiretroviral therapy through the public healthcare system, it is the largest HIV public health program on the planet. Pepfar has been funding a fifth of these costs, part of a program estimated to have saved 25 million lives worldwide.The Trump administration makes an intentional target of South Africa’s health policy. The deadly cruelty is the point.From Mexico to Greenland, Panama to Ukraine, the Trump administration is bullying allies to align with its vision of national primacy and ethnic supremacy. The rapid implementation of this new Trump doctrine requires Americans to join together with people across the world not only to oppose reactionary measures – but also to remain steadfast in their joint commitment to internationalism that enhances wellbeing. That commitment will require richer countries to spend in solidarity, not charity.The immediate task is of course the most urgent: rapid multilateral action is needed to secure the safety of the huge numbers of HIV patients whose lives are now in danger. The many pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities dotted through the global south should be turned to producing what people need, even as land and housing reform also necessarily shape regional agendas.But the risks posed by this executive order transcend its particular measures. There is enough; the problem is allocation, and the symbolic and conceptual as well as material means to realize human well-being.

      Achille Mbembe is a research professor in history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa.

      Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a professor of earth and environmental Sciences, and American studies, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. More

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      Crypto giant Tether CEO on cooperating with Trump administration: ‘We’ve never been shady’

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      Paolo Ardoino, CEO of the cryptocurrency company Tether, was flying over Switzerland last week as he contemplated the changing regulatory landscape.Tether used to be at war with the establishment. Now it is the establishment.The crypto giant – tether is the most traded cryptocurrency in the world – has had a strange trip. Four years ago, banks were dropping Tether as a client, and regulators in New York had the company against the wall over questions about commingled client and corporate funds. Treasury officials were complaining that dollar-backed cryptocurrencies enjoyed the international privileges of the dollar without the responsibilities of preventing its misuse. Federal investigators were looking into Tether for possible violations of anti-money-laundering and sanctions rules.The cryptocurrency industry anecdotally – and conspiratorially – describes the Biden administration’s posture toward crypto as a systematic effort to debank crypto in the form of tactics such as “Operation Choke Point 2.0”. Ardoino says Tether’s leadership needed to become globetrotters in search of someone to take their business.And it’s a lot of business. Tether currently is the 17th largest holder of US government debt, with nearly as much in treasury bonds in its digital vaults as Saudi Arabia. Tether’s value remains stable because it is pegged one-to-one to the dollar, meaning the value of each individual tether coin is $1. The company backs the total value of the cryptocurrency with dollar assets like treasury bonds in an American bank – in this case, $140bn deposited with Cantor Fitzgerald.Tether comes just behind bitcoin and ethereum as the most valuable cryptocurrency, and by most measures it is the most widely traded. Investors in countries with unstable currencies, like Turkey or Argentina with their 40%-plus inflation rates, use it to hold on to the value of their savings against the dollar. Crypto traders use tether to park their digital assets in a safe place.The degree of cooperation between Tether and law enforcement reflects an evolving shift in the government’s posture toward the company, even as federal agencies had been cracking down on cryptocurrency more broadly under Joe Biden.“We’ve never been shady,” Ardoino said. “The company has been great. It has been attacked. Debanked. You know, when you’re trying to be a disruptor – in a good sense – you are going to always be attacked by the establishment.”Previous administrations’ hostility to crypto – and perhaps to tether in particular – was the product of strategic mistakes the company had made, Ardoino said.“We were very naive. We thought: ‘Oh, we are going to keep our head down.’ We were not communicating. We were not telling what’s going on, and that was used against us,” he said. “And that’s fair, right? So, if someone is not communicating, or you feel is not transparent enough, then that is how people get to fear.”After settling its case with New York regulators in 2021, Tether began to come out of its shell, publishing quarterly statements and expanding its cooperation with the government. Today, things are different for Tether. Its banker – the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick – has been confirmed as secretary of commerce in the Trump administration. The company says it is proud of its cooperation with US law enforcement. Though Tether’s holding company is headquartered in crypto-friendly El Salvador, the cryptocurrency is expanding in a way that Ardoino says will help the United States secure its position as the world’s reserve currency.“We have 400 million users in emerging markets,” Ardoino said. “We are basically selling the US debt outside the US … We are decentralizing the US debt as well, basically pushing for dollar hegemony. That’s how the US can maintain its dominance when it comes to its currency.”It’s a line Lutnick might have written into his confirmation hearing speech himself. The Senate confirmed Lutnick on a party-line vote 51-45 in February. Ardoino said their relationship is at arm’s-length now, though.“Cantor [Fitzgerald], they are our custodian. So, we will continue to have this relationship with Cantor,” he said. “They have been a great custodian for us. They are primary dealers, so we can have basically direct access to the Fed[eral Reserve] to purchase [government] debt. With Howard, when he goes into government, we cannot talk to him.”Lutnick has been a vocal backer of cryptocurrency and tether’s position in the industry in particular. Senators had some sharp questions for him about tether at his 29 January hearing, with Senator Maria Cantwell pressing him about audited holdings.“Do you think the market needs to comply with audits about whether one-to-one ratios really exist on stablecoins?” Cantwell asked Lutnick.“I believe stablecoins, US dollar stablecoins, should be audited, should be completely backed by US treasuries 100%,” Lutnick replied.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“How do we prove that?” Cantwell then asked.“A US audit and one-to-one backed by US treasuries,” Lutnick continued. “And lastly, you can’t change the rules; meaning if someone has bought the stablecoin, you can’t change the price. If someone’s made a deposit with you, you can’t say: ‘I’m going to withdraw, you’re going to change the price.’”She also asked about reports that “as much as $19bn of Tether could be illicit activity by the North Koreans, the Russians, the Chinese. And so, what do we do about that? What is your solution?”“It’s like blaming Apple because criminals use Apple phones,” Lutnick replied. “It’s just a product. We don’t pick on the US treasury because criminals use dollars. So, I think it’s just a product … They are signed up with all US federal law enforcement. They follow all federal law enforcement instantly.”Ardoino rejects the suggestion of tether’s usefulness to criminals. “There is no financial institution – even the big banks, they don’t have this breadth of collaboration,” he said, citing more than 200 agencies in 50 countries that work with Tether.A Swiss bank might rebuff an American law enforcement agency coming for money in its accounts. Tether, however, touts its ability to return money stolen from others. For example, a notable “pig butchering” scam last year sent Shan Hanes, CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kansas, to a 293-month federal prison term for embezzling $47.1m and sending it overseas as cryptocurrency. Tether was able to recover $8.3m for the victims.The traditional banking system is more porous than a cryptocurrency wallet right now, Ardoino argued.“When [criminals are] finally trying to use blockchain and move money on the blockchain in USDT [tether’s trading symbol], we see them and we freeze them,” he said. “And it takes 15 minutes to freeze an address from our stock. We are much more granular and faster than any bank or any other financial institution. So, I’ve been saying very loudly and publicly that any criminal using USDT is a very stupid criminal, because we can see everything and we can catch it.”Ardoino does see a threat in an adversarial regulatory relationship toward crypto, both in the United States and Europe. Both Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, and EU-based exchanges removed USDT because it does not comply with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, which went into effect at the end of 2024. Traders can hold Tether in non-custodial wallets but can’t trade it on an exchange that complies with European regulations.“I think that the US understands very well that they should very, very much avoid a DeepSeek moment for finance and crypto,” Ardoino said, suggesting that it is possible that some invention in a stealth-mode lab somewhere beyond the industry’s attention could radically change the competitive environment. Ardoino was referring to the Hangzhou-based startup DeepSeek, a large language model AI that emerged seemingly from nowhere in January that could compete with Meta and OpenAI’s offerings at a fraction of the cost. Its emergence is disrupting AI business plans by changing the competitive environment.Ardoino hopes the new administration will have settled on its approach to regulations – likely to be much friendlier than its predecessor’s – by September, he said. “I think that they want to get regulations done by June. June would be very aggressive as a timeline, but September is realistic.” More