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      I grew up on American food. Trust me, it’s the last thing Europe needs | Alexander Hurst

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      All over European media, the take seems to be similar – that the EU is “under pressure” to conclude some sort of deal with the US in order to avoid Donald Trump’s 9 July deadline for the unilateral imposition of broad tariffs. What might be on the table in the attempt to secure that? In early May, the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, was already suggesting that a deal to increase purchases from the US could include agricultural products – a possibility that seems to remain even though Šefčovič later clarified that the EU was not contemplating changing its health or safety standards.Since I have failed to Abba (“Always be boldly acronyming”) and don’t have anything as good as Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) – coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong – at the ready, I’ll simply reach for the easy line: opening the door even slightly to more US food imports into the EU would leave a bad taste in all our mouths. Trump’s hostage-taking approach to trade should not be rewarded, certainly not with something that hits as close to home as food does.“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” declared the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in April. Laughter aside, every time I go back to the US I become a vegetarian for the duration of my trip – even though US grocery store vegetables are themselves generally big, blemish-free and bland. Why? Call me paranoid, but I simply don’t want to ingest the same growth hormones that Lutnick’s “beautiful” meat probably contains traces of and that are banned in the EU.Growing up in Ohio, I experienced the full force of US food culture. It was the 90s, which meant that margarine was most definitely in and butter was out; an example that highlights how processed everything took root, including – in my vegetarian family – highly processed meat alternatives. The people around me meant well, but how do you fight a system that, from top to bottom, was designed to push high fructose corn syrup into practically everything (and most worryingly into school lunches)?To be fair, all of this has since generated a domestic backlash, but there’s an intense amount of momentum behind it still: almost without fail, I find that the standard sugar level in the US soars far beyond what I now find appealing. Even in places I wouldn’t expect to find added sugar at all, like pizza.And why would the Trump administration’s full-scale savaging of the US government’s administrative and regulatory capacity, including the Food and Drug Administration, increase anyone’s trust that what US regulation does exist is actually being followed?Some of you are perhaps rolling your eyes, thinking: Alexander Hurst, a naturalised French citizen, has gone full “chauvin”; converts are the worst. Except it’s not just me. There is an entire internet subgenre of content extolling the virtues of French butter, or involving Americans who come to France and realise that this is what peaches, or strawberries, really taste like.Beyond the question of whether or not Europeans want to eat US agricultural output, a hypothetical trade deal would involve hugely negative climate impacts. The distance that food travels already accounts for 20% of global agriculture-related emissions pollution, and Europe’s share in imported agriculture emissions is already high. We need to be reducing it, not adding to it through foodstuffs carted unnecessarily across the Atlantic.How can we ask European farmers to accelerate their transition to regenerative agriculture (which offers the potential to drastically reduce agriculture emissions) if, at the same time, they are being undercut by US producers who face far lower regulatory standards?“Europe already produces and grows everything it could possibly need. The last thing we want to see circulating is hormone-pumped beef or chlorinated poultry,” says Lindsey Tramuta, the author of The Eater Guide to Paris. “Even beyond the goods themselves, there’s the issue of distance: why bring food over from the US if Europeans can get their needs met from much closer to home?”Yannick Huang, who manages the Vietnamese restaurant Loan in Paris’s Belleville neighbourhood, agrees. “At a time when we’re trying to do organic, local, it’s pointless to want to import anything from the US,” he told me. Huang, who is obsessive about ingredient quality, only serves French beef. To him, US agriculture comes tainted with the connotation of “GMOs and other problems”.Hold on, you might say. Isn’t it inconsistent to oppose Trump’s tariffs while also promoting food protectionism? Fair point: it’s hard to find a “one size fits all” approach to globalisation. It has harmed some workers in wealthy economies while also reducing the gap between low-income nations and high-income ones. No country on Earth has a fully self-contained advanced semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, and in sectors where globalisation has become excessive, it might be even more economically harmful to roll back. None of that, though, means that things that have resisted becoming fully global should all of a sudden be opened up – food most of all.Ramzi Saadé is a Lebanese-Canadian chef whose Paris restaurant, Atica, is dedicated to a fiercely regional approach to haute cuisine. But taking his diners on a voyage of discovery doesn’t mean his food has to go on one too; despite focusing on first Basque, and now Corsican cuisine, he sources almost all of his ingredients from the area surrounding Paris. For a lamb dish involving 13 different elements, only the nepeta, a Corsican herb, had travelled, he said. “Is my role today to bring you Japanese culture via wasabi flown to Paris?” Saadé asked. “No, my role is to explain to you that it’s grated this way and put on fish for this reason, and I can do that with wasabi from France.”I couldn’t help but think that it’s actually far more interesting to do it his way – to interpret a cuisine rather than attempt to transpose it.We are what we eat. A cuisine is a medium of communication; it is, indelibly, tied up with the stories we tell about who we are. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see food held hostage, or weaponised, in the pursuit of economic or geostrategic goals.Europe’s intense and varied regionality is an enormous part of how it eats and therefore what it is. Opening the market to mass penetration by US agriculture would, little by little, nibble away at that richness. It’s the kind of proposition that, if it ever makes it out of the kitchen, should be sent back straight away.

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More

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      I grew up on American food. Trust me, it’s the last thing Europe needs | Alexander Hurst

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      All over European media, the take seems to be similar – that the EU is “under pressure” to conclude some sort of deal with the US in order to avoid Donald Trump’s 9 July deadline for the unilateral imposition of broad tariffs. What might be on the table in the attempt to secure that? In early May, the EU trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, was already suggesting that a deal to increase purchases from the US could include agricultural products – a possibility that seems to remain even though Šefčovič later clarified that the EU was not contemplating changing its health or safety standards.Since I have failed to Abba (“Always be boldly acronyming”) and don’t have anything as good as Taco (“Trump always chickens out”) – coined by the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong – at the ready, I’ll simply reach for the easy line: opening the door even slightly to more US food imports into the EU would leave a bad taste in all our mouths. Trump’s hostage-taking approach to trade should not be rewarded, certainly not with something that hits as close to home as food does.“The European Union won’t take chicken from America. They won’t take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak,” declared the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in April. Laughter aside, every time I go back to the US I become a vegetarian for the duration of my trip – even though US grocery store vegetables are themselves generally big, blemish-free and bland. Why? Call me paranoid, but I simply don’t want to ingest the same growth hormones that Lutnick’s “beautiful” meat probably contains traces of and that are banned in the EU.Growing up in Ohio, I experienced the full force of US food culture. It was the 90s, which meant that margarine was most definitely in and butter was out; an example that highlights how processed everything took root, including – in my vegetarian family – highly processed meat alternatives. The people around me meant well, but how do you fight a system that, from top to bottom, was designed to push high fructose corn syrup into practically everything (and most worryingly into school lunches)?To be fair, all of this has since generated a domestic backlash, but there’s an intense amount of momentum behind it still: almost without fail, I find that the standard sugar level in the US soars far beyond what I now find appealing. Even in places I wouldn’t expect to find added sugar at all, like pizza.And why would the Trump administration’s full-scale savaging of the US government’s administrative and regulatory capacity, including the Food and Drug Administration, increase anyone’s trust that what US regulation does exist is actually being followed?Some of you are perhaps rolling your eyes, thinking: Alexander Hurst, a naturalised French citizen, has gone full “chauvin”; converts are the worst. Except it’s not just me. There is an entire internet subgenre of content extolling the virtues of French butter, or involving Americans who come to France and realise that this is what peaches, or strawberries, really taste like.Beyond the question of whether or not Europeans want to eat US agricultural output, a hypothetical trade deal would involve hugely negative climate impacts. The distance that food travels already accounts for 20% of global agriculture-related emissions pollution, and Europe’s share in imported agriculture emissions is already high. We need to be reducing it, not adding to it through foodstuffs carted unnecessarily across the Atlantic.How can we ask European farmers to accelerate their transition to regenerative agriculture (which offers the potential to drastically reduce agriculture emissions) if, at the same time, they are being undercut by US producers who face far lower regulatory standards?“Europe already produces and grows everything it could possibly need. The last thing we want to see circulating is hormone-pumped beef or chlorinated poultry,” says Lindsey Tramuta, the author of The Eater Guide to Paris. “Even beyond the goods themselves, there’s the issue of distance: why bring food over from the US if Europeans can get their needs met from much closer to home?”Yannick Huang, who manages the Vietnamese restaurant Loan in Paris’s Belleville neighbourhood, agrees. “At a time when we’re trying to do organic, local, it’s pointless to want to import anything from the US,” he told me. Huang, who is obsessive about ingredient quality, only serves French beef. To him, US agriculture comes tainted with the connotation of “GMOs and other problems”.Hold on, you might say. Isn’t it inconsistent to oppose Trump’s tariffs while also promoting food protectionism? Fair point: it’s hard to find a “one size fits all” approach to globalisation. It has harmed some workers in wealthy economies while also reducing the gap between low-income nations and high-income ones. No country on Earth has a fully self-contained advanced semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, and in sectors where globalisation has become excessive, it might be even more economically harmful to roll back. None of that, though, means that things that have resisted becoming fully global should all of a sudden be opened up – food most of all.Ramzi Saadé is a Lebanese-Canadian chef whose Paris restaurant, Atica, is dedicated to a fiercely regional approach to haute cuisine. But taking his diners on a voyage of discovery doesn’t mean his food has to go on one too; despite focusing on first Basque, and now Corsican cuisine, he sources almost all of his ingredients from the area surrounding Paris. For a lamb dish involving 13 different elements, only the nepeta, a Corsican herb, had travelled, he said. “Is my role today to bring you Japanese culture via wasabi flown to Paris?” Saadé asked. “No, my role is to explain to you that it’s grated this way and put on fish for this reason, and I can do that with wasabi from France.”I couldn’t help but think that it’s actually far more interesting to do it his way – to interpret a cuisine rather than attempt to transpose it.We are what we eat. A cuisine is a medium of communication; it is, indelibly, tied up with the stories we tell about who we are. Perhaps that’s why it’s so disturbing to see food held hostage, or weaponised, in the pursuit of economic or geostrategic goals.Europe’s intense and varied regionality is an enormous part of how it eats and therefore what it is. Opening the market to mass penetration by US agriculture would, little by little, nibble away at that richness. It’s the kind of proposition that, if it ever makes it out of the kitchen, should be sent back straight away.

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist More

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      Trump news at a glance: President mulls whether ‘bunker busters’ can destroy Iranian nuclear site

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      Will he or won’t he? That’s the question many are asking regarding whether Donald Trump will join Israel’s attacks on Iran and take out one of its most difficult targets: the Fordow nuclear enrichment site.But another question has arisen. Can he?Trump signalled on Thursday that he will take two weeks to decide whether or not to strike. Guardian reporting suggests he is not fully convinced the US Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs – better known as “bunker busters” – will effectively destroy Fordow, built deep into a mountain south of Tehran. That the 13.6-tonne bomb could fall short of that goal is a concern that some military analysts have echoed.But it’s a coveted target for Israel, which has already destroyed some of Iran’s nuclear capability but lacks the powerful bombs and aircraft to do any real damage to the secretive site. The US is the only country in the world to possess bunker busters and only US aircraft can deliver them.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump sets deadline of two weeks to decide if US will join Israel’s war on IranTrump has set a two-week deadline to decide whether the US will join Israel’s war with Iran, allowing time to seek a negotiated end to the conflict, the White House has said.The president also denied a report by the Wall Street Journal that he told senior aides he had approved attack plans but was delaying on giving the final order to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program. The report cited three anonymous officials.Read the full storyLA Dodgers say they denied Ice agents entry to Dodger StadiumThe Los Angeles Dodgers said they blocked US immigration enforcement agents from accessing the parking lot at Dodger Stadium on Thursday and got into public back-and-forth statements with Ice and the Department of Homeland Security, which denied their agents were ever there.Read the full storyOutrage as DHS moves to restrict lawmaker visits to detention centersThe Department of Homeland Security is now requiring lawmakers to provide 72 hours of notice before visiting detention centers, according to new guidance. The guidance comes after a slew of tense visits from Democratic lawmakers to detention centers amid Trump’s crackdowns in immigrant communities across the country.Read the full storyJudge blocks Trump plan to tie states’ transportation funds to immigration enforcementA federal judge on Thursday blocked Trump’s administration from forcing 20 Democratic-led states to cooperate with immigration enforcement in order to receive billions of dollars in transportation grant funding.Chief US district judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, granted the states’ request for an injunction barring the Department for Transportation’s policy, saying the states were likely to succeed on the merits of some or all of their claims.Read the full storyHegseth reportedly orders ‘passive approach to Juneteenth’ at PentagonThe office of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, requested “a passive approach to Juneteenth messaging”, according to an exclusive Rolling Stone report citing a Pentagon email.The messaging request for Juneteenth – a federal holiday commemorating when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free – was transmitted by the Pentagon’s office of the chief of public affairs. This office said it was not poised to publish web content related to Juneteenth, Rolling Stone reported.Read the full storyWere the ‘No Kings’ protests the largest single-day demonstration in US history?Depending on who you ask, between 4 and 6 million people showed up to last weekend’s “No Kings” protests. Now the real number is becoming clearer, with one estimate suggesting that Saturday was among the biggest.Read the full storyKaren Bass in hot seat as Trump targets Los Angeles – but it’s not her first crisisKaren Bass, a 71-year-old former community organizer, is leading Los Angeles’ response to an extraordinary confrontation staged by the federal government, as federal agents have raided workplaces and parking lots, arresting immigrant workers in ways family members have compared to “kidnappings”. Here’s what to know about the mayor of Los Angeles.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Friends and family of Moises Sotelo, a well-known vineyard manager, say they are “disappointed and disgusted” after he was detained outside the Oregon church he attends.

      Brad Lander, the New York mayoral candidate arrested by Ice says “Trump is looking to stoke conflict, weaponize fear”.

      What is Donald Trump’s plan for Iran? The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang and Andrew Roth discuss in the Politics Weekly America podcast. Also, this Today in Focus episode explores what Israel’s new war means for Gaza.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 18 June 2025. More

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      Judge blocks Trump plan to tie states’ transportation funds to immigration enforcement

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      A federal judge on Thursday blocked Donald Trump’s administration from forcing 20 Democratic-led states to cooperate with immigration enforcement in order to receive billions of dollars in transportation grant funding.Chief US District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, granted the states’ request for an injunction barring the Department of Transportation’s policy, saying the states were likely to succeed on the merits of some or all of their claims.The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a group of Democratic state attorneys general who argued the administration was seeking to unlawfully hold federal funds hostage to coerce them into adhering to Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.The states argued the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, lacked the authority to impose immigration-enforcement conditions on funding that Congress appropriated to help states sustain roads, highways, bridges and other transportation projects.Since returning to office on 20 January, Trump has signed several executive orders that have called for cutting off federal funding to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that do not cooperate with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as his administration has moved to conduct mass deportations.Sanctuary jurisdictions generally have laws and policies that limit or prevent local law enforcement from assisting federal officers with civil immigration arrests.The justice department has filed a series of lawsuits against such jurisdictions, including Illinois, New York and Colorado, challenging laws in those Democratic-led states that it says hinder federal immigration enforcement.The lawsuit before McConnell, who was appointed by Barack Obama, was filed after Duffy on 24 April notified states they could lose transportation funding if they do not cooperate with the enforcement of federal law, including with Ice in its efforts to enforce immigration law.The states argue that policy is improper and amounts to an unconstitutionally ambiguous condition on the states’ ability to receive funding authorized by Congress as it leaves unclear what exactly would constitute adequate cooperation.The administration has argued the policy was within Duffy’s discretion and that conditions should be upheld as there is nothing improper about requiring states to comply with federal law.The 20 states are separately pursuing a similar case also in Rhode Island challenging new immigration enforcement conditions that the homeland security department imposed on grant programs. More

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      Outrage as DHS moves to restrict lawmaker visits to detention centers

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      The US Department of Homeland Security is now requiring lawmakers to provide 72 hours of notice before visiting detention centers, according to new guidance.The guidance comes after a slew of tense visits from Democratic lawmakers to detention centers amid Donald Trump’s crackdowns in immigrant communities across the country. Many Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks have either been turned away, arrested or manhandled by law enforcement officers at the facilities, leading to public condemnation towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (Ice) handling of such visits.Lawmakers are allowed to access DHS facilities “used to detain or otherwise house aliens” for inspections and are not required “to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility”, according to the 2024 Federal Appropriations Act.Previous language surrounding lawmaker visits to such facilities said that “Ice will comply with the law and accommodate members seeking to visit/tour an Ice detention facility for the purpose of conducting oversight,” CNN reported.However, in the new guidance, the DHS updated the language to say that Ice “will make every effort to comply with the law” but “exigent circumstances (eg operational conditions, security posture, etc) may impact the time of entry into the facility”.The new guidance also attempts to distinguish Ice field offices from Ice detention facilities, noting that since “Ice field offices are not detention facilities” they do not fall under the visitation requirements laid out in the Appropriations Act.The Guardian has contacted Ice for comment.In response to the updated guidance, Mississippi’s Democratic representative and the ranking member of the House committee on homeland security, Bennie Thompson, condemned what he called the attempt by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to “block oversight on Ice”.“Kristi Noem’s new policy to block congressional oversight of Ice facilities is not only unprecedented, it is an affront to the constitution and federal law. Noem is now not only attempting to restrict when members can visit, but completely blocking access to Ice field offices – even if members schedule visits in advance,” Thompson said.“This unlawful policy is a smokescreen to deny member visits to Ice offices across the country, which are holding migrants – and sometimes even US citizens – for days at a time. They are therefore detention facilities and are subject to oversight and inspection at any time. DHS pretending otherwise is simply their latest lie.”Last month, the New Jersey representative LaMonica McIver was charged with assaulting federal agents during a visit to a detention facility in Newark alongside two Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation. McIver called the charges against her “purely political … and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight”.New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, also condemned the charges, saying it was “outrageous for a congresswoman to be criminally charged for exercising her lawful duty to visit a detention site in her own district”.On the day of McIver’s visit, law enforcement also arrested the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, who they charged with trespassing as he attempted to join McIver’s delegation visit. The charges against Baraka were later dropped and Baraka has since filed a lawsuit against the state’s top federal prosecutor over his arrest.Bonnie Watson Coleman, another New Jersey representative who was part of McIver’s visit, rejected the DHS’s claims that the lawmakers assaulted law enforcement officers.“The idea that I could ‘body-slam’ anyone, let alone an Ice agent, is absurd,” the 80-year-old representative said on X last month, adding: “We have an obligation to perform oversight at facilities paid for with taxpayer dollars.”Earlier this month, law enforcement officers forced the California senator Alex Padilla on to the ground as he attempted to ask a question to Noem during a press conference in Los Angeles.Despite repeatedly identifying himself, Padilla was handcuffed and forced into the hallway before law enforcement officers shoved the two-term US senator chest-first on to the floor. Following the incident, which triggered widespread outrage across both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, Noem said she did not recognize the two-term senator and claimed that he did not request a meeting with her. The two then reportedly met for 15 minutes after the incident.On Tuesday, the Illinois representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Jonathan Jackson were denied entry during their attempted visit to an Ice facility in Chicago.That same day, the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, was forcibly arrested by multiple federal agents and detained for hours as he tried to accompany a Spanish-speaking immigrant out of a courtroom. The DHS claimed Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”, an accusation Lander denies.Following his release, New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, called his arrest “bullshit” and said that the charges against Lander had been dropped.A day later, the New York representatives Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler were refused entry into Ice detention facilities in Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza, despite requesting a visit in advance via letter, the City reports. More

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      Hegseth reportedly orders ‘passive approach to Juneteenth’ at Pentagon

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      The office of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, requested “a passive approach to Juneteenth messaging”, according to an exclusive Rolling Stone report citing a Pentagon email.This messaging request for Juneteenth, a federal holiday commemorating when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free, was transmitted by the Pentagon’s office of the chief of public affairs. This office said it was not poised to publish web content related to Juneteenth, Rolling Stone said.The mandate comes amid Donald Trump’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the government, including the US military, which Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has enthusiastically executed.“The President’s guidance (lawful orders) is clear: No more DEI at @DeptofDefense,” Hegseth said in a January post on X.“The Pentagon will comply, immediately. No exceptions, name-changes, or delays,” Hegseth also wrote. He posted an apparently hand-written note that read “DOD ≠ DEI.”Hegseth has continued to espouse anti-DEI talking points, claiming without evidence that these policies put military service members in harm’s way.In prepared testimony to a Senate hearing this week, Rolling Stone noted, Hegseth said: “DEI is dead. We replaced it with a color-blind, gender-neutral, merit-based approach, and the force is responding incredibly.”In response to Rolling Stone’s request for comment, the Pentagon said that the Department of Defense “may engage in the following activities, subject to applicable department guidance: holiday celebrations that build camaraderie and esprit de corps; outreach events (eg, recruiting engagements with all-male, all-female, or minority-serving academic institutions) where doing so directly supports DoD’s mission; and recognition of historical events and notable figures where such recognition informs strategic thinking, reinforces our unity, and promotes meritocracy and accountability”.Asked for comment by the Guardian, a defense spokesperson said: “We have nothing additional to provide on this.”President Joe Biden in 2021 made 19 June a federal holiday. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery in the midst of the civil war.It was not until this date in 1865 that enslaved Black persons in Galveston, Texas, were told about Lincoln’s decree. While Robert E Lee had surrendered that April, some supporters of the Confederacy continued to fight.Trump signed an executive order in January that eliminated DEI in the military. He also appeared to sound off on DEI initiatives in an address to graduating West Point cadets on 24 May.“They subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes, while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars. We fought for other countries’ borders but we didn’t fight for our own borders, but now we do like we have never fought before,” Trump said.He also stated “the job of the US armed forces is not to host drag shows or transform foreign cultures”, an apparent allusion to drag shows on US military installations.Biden’s defense department ended drag shows on military bases in 2023 amid Republican criticism. More

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      Ice is cracking down on Trump’s own supporters. Will they change their minds? | Tayo Bero

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      By now, the cycle of Donald Trump supporters being slapped in the face by his policies is common enough that it shouldn’t warrant a response. What is noteworthy is the fact that his crusade of mass deportations seems to have taken the Maga crowd by surprise in a way that makes little sense if you’ve been paying attention to Trump, his campaign promises, his party and the people he surrounds himself with.Even as they witness friends and family members hurt by this administration’s immigration clampdowns, some Trump supporters appear resistant to doing a full 180.Bradley Bartell, whose wife, Camila Muñoz, was recently detained, says he has no regrets about voting for Trump. Muñoz is from Peru and overstayed a work-study visa that expired right when Covid hit. She was trying to get permanent residency in the US when she was detained.“I don’t regret the vote,” Bartell told Newsweek. His rationale? Trump is a victim of a bad immigration system that his administration inherited. “He didn’t create the system but he does have an opportunity to improve it. Hopefully, all this attention will bring to light how broken it is.”For Jensy Machado from Manassas, Virginia, things are a bit more complex. Machado, a naturalized US citizen, was driving to work when, according to NBC 4, he was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, who brandished guns and surrounded his truck. According to Machado, a man facing a deportation order had given Machado’s home address as his, and when Machado assured agents that they had the wrong person and offered them his Virginia driver’s license, they ordered him to leave his car and handcuffed him.“I was a Trump supporter,” Machado, who is Hispanic, said. “I voted for Trump last election, but, because I thought it was going to be like … against criminals, not every Hispanic, Spanish-lookalike.“They will assume that we are all illegals,” he continued. “They’re just following Hispanic people.”Machado said his support for the administration had been shaken. Others have been rattled by how and where Trump’s policies are being applied.That dissonance is well articulated in a recent New York Times piece about a small Missouri town that supported Trump – and is now grappling with the effects of his decisions.Many residents of Kennett, Missouri, were stunned when a beloved neighbor, Carol, was arrested and jailed to await deportation after being summoned to Ice offices in St Louis in April. According to the government, Carol came to the US from Hong Kong in 2004, and has spent the past two decades trying to secure legal stay in the country, ultimately being granted a temporary permission to stay known as an order of supervision. Carol’s most recent order of supervision was supposed to be valid through August 2025, but on the day of her arrest, she was told it was being terminated.Now, despite the fact that she’s spent the last two decades building a life and community in this small town, getting married and buying a house, she’s spent weeks moving between jails as she awaits a final decision on her deportation.“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” said Vanessa Cowart, who knows Carol from church. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves … This is Carol.”That last line – and the Kennett story as a whole – reveals a deeply American way of thinking about law and order and civil liberties: that anything is fair game once someone is considered a “criminal”. It’s an idea that has been sent into overdrive in the Trump years, where “criminal” has become a catch-all for the most evil, dangerous and undesirable in our communities, and shorthand for referencing anyone society doesn’t want to deal with.Trump ran on a campaign of hate, and the voters who helped cement that hatred and codify it into policy are now encountering the kind of state-sanctioned violence they endorsed at the ballot box.Still, to say “I told you so” in a moment like this is not only useless, it feels like a cruel understatement when the thing you were warning about is so destructive.So what can we learn from this? US leadership is clearly invested in the destruction of vulnerable American lives. If people who have been directly affected by Trump’s behaviour still find reasons to rationalize his leadership, it’s a reminder that ousting this regime will require the rest of us to speak out against tyranny and the establishment politics that got us here in the first place.

      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

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      The US is woefully underprepared for wildfire season, say insiders: ‘The stakes are life and death’

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      Summer temperatures are rising and the US is bracing for another hot, dry and hectic wildfire season. But with the promise of extreme conditions in the months to come, federal fire crews are also growing concerned that a series of changes brought on by the Trump administration have left them underprepared.Severe cuts to budgets and staff have hamstrung the agencies that manage roughly 640m acres of the nation’s public lands, leaving significant gaps in a workforce that supports wildfire mitigation and suppression. The administration’s crackdown on climate science and the dismantling of departments that provided world-class research and weather forecasting, may also undermine early warning systems, slowing response and strategic planning.Donald Trump has championed firefighters and called for bolstering preparedness for the a year-round fire season, using the devastating fire storms that leveled communities across Los Angeles at the start of the year as a call to action. But in the six months since, the administration has only added obstacles to addressing the key issues.There are also fears that Trump’s new wildfire directive to bring the country’s federal firefighters together under a new agency will be rushed, adding another layer of uncertainty and chaos just as crews are trying to prepare for another grueling season.Many areas have had an exceptionally warm spring following a dry winter. The south-west and Pacific north-west are already experiencing sizzling heatwaves, and on landscapes across California, Montana and Texas, there’s a high danger for ignitions to turn into infernos. Climate forecasters are predicting the potential for forest fires is higher this year than in the previous two years.“If this turns out to be a major fire year, it’s going to be a shit show,” said Dr Hugh Safford, a fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis, who spent more than two decades working for the US Forest Service (USFS) before retiring in 2021.Five federal firefighters, who spoke with the Guardian under the condition of anonymity because they are barred from speaking publicly, echoed Safford’s unease. When asked if their agencies were ready for the season ahead, the answer was a resounding “no”.And it’s already getting busy.Homes and businesses were lost to the flames in Oregon this week, and dozens of blazes are tearing through Canada – where more than 8.5m acres have already been consumed by fires – brought the rising risks forming across the continent into sharper focus.During a Senate appropriations committee hearing last week, Tom Schultz, the chief of the USFS, which currently employs the bulk of the US government’s fire workforce, said his teams are well-positioned for the months ahead.Many fire experts, firefighters and lawmakers don’t agree.“The reality is on the ground we have lost workers whose jobs are absolutely essential,” Patty Murray, a US senator, said during the hearing, sharing that an estimated 7,500employees have been pushed out of the USFS this year. That includes scientists, maintenance staff and administrators who support wildfire response, and workers who had qualifications to fill in as firefighters on blazes when they were needed.“The stakes are life and death here – and this raises serious alarms about this agency being ready for this critical fire season.”A fraying firefighter workforceFears are mounting that the loss of support staff could mean a range of needs, from meals to medical services, will not be in place during large fires when they are needed most.“Those agencies were already understaffed,” Lenya N Quinn-Davidson, director of University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources Fire Network, said. “Now they are skeletal.”Already, there have been reports of crews being left without power for weeks due to cut maintenance workers, paychecks being late or halved because administrative roles were left empty, or firefighters having to mow lawns outside their offices, manage campsites, and do plumbing work at their barracks in addition to their other duties.Access to purchase cards that teams typically rely on for everything from bathroom supplies to fuel for chainsaws were revoked. District offices couldn’t buy ink or paper for their printers. Others struggled to get safety and tactical supplies for the season, including radios and fire shelters.A squad leader for the USFS said some newly hired firefighters had had to go for months without healthcare and seasoned ones were left waiting on backpay because the human resources department has less than a quarter of the staff it did previously. Another firefighter said thousands of cases are lagging in HR because people haven’t gotten paid properly and promotions aren’t being processed.“I think we have taken those people for granted for a long time,” the squad leader added. “Now that they aren’t around we are going to be in for a shock.”View image in fullscreenCapacity will probably be crunched on the fire line too.The forest service is going into the summer with fewer firefighters and teams than it had last year, when overwork led to an increase in injuries and burnout.Schultz confirmed the agency has hired 11,000 firefighters, roughly 900 fewer than last season, and that there are 37 incident management teams, down by five. Those teams are a crucial need for responding to complex and large-scale disasters, and there may not be enough to go around.“It is just another example of the administration making these kneejerk reactions and truly not understanding what it takes to respond to wildfires and other disasters,” said Riva Duncan, a former manager and firefighter in the USFS and vice-president of ​​Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a non-profit advocacy group. “Come August, when more geographic areas are on fire, I think we are going to see some glitches in the system.”Roughly 4,800 USFS workers have signed on to a program offering workers paid administrative leave through September if they opted to resign or retire, pushed by the Trump administration as a way to rapidly shrink the federal government. That figure includes 1,400 people with so-called “red cards”,trained to join operations on the fire line if needed.Schultz told senators that, because the offer to leave was voluntary, the USFS didn’t do an analysis ahead of time to strategically make cuts or keep staff who might be needed when emergencies strike. Now in an effort to get some of those workers back, the Department of Agriculture, which the USFS falls under, has called for volunteers willing to take fire assignments until their contracts end.A spokesperson for the USDA said it was a top priority for Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, to “ensure the entire agency is geared to respond to what is already an above normal summer fire season”, and claimed the forest service was well on its way with 96% of its hiring goals met. They cited the program to bring those on administrative leave back to active duty as an indication that the USFS “is operationally ready for the fire season ahead”.Even if some do opt to sign on for the summer, time is running short to reposition resources and get them ready.“A lot of those folks have missed their fire refreshers, they have missed taking their fitness tests, they are behind the curve,” Duncan said “And, not everybody is willing to come back.”A fire planner at the USFS, who also asked not to be named, said he did not expect many to sign up. He said the loss will result in heavy “brain drain”, as people with decades of experience are now missing from the agency’s roster.View image in fullscreenTeams are bracing for another round of cuts expected to come. An executive order signed by Trump last week directing the government to combine federal firefighters under a new agency in the Department of Interior is shaking up the workforce just as the season enters full-swing. The order gives departments just 90 days to formulate plans.Federal firefighters have spent years advocating for the move, but there are concerns the process will be rushed and mismanaged. Leaders were told the consolidation wouldn’t happen until next year.“It seems like a joke if you can’t even pay my guys or get them insurance,” the squad leader said of the administration’s aim to merge departments while pressing needs of their crews go unaddressed. He added that the idea of a new agency – one that puts firefighters in positions to make key decisions – is promising. “But I don’t have faith in these people putting it together.”It’s a feeling the other firefighters who spoke to the Guardian share.There have long been challenges at the agencies they work for, especially at the USFS. Now there are fears that the administration’s answers to those problems are ignoring firefighters’ needs. Morale has continued to plummet.One USFS firefighter said the lack of workforce planning “could be catastrophic”: “I am not seeing our interests being represented.”An anti-science agendaBeyond the personnel shortage, grants that support important forest health and fire mitigation work are being phased out, leaving more landscapes vulnerable to burning.Schultz told senators during the hearing that those grants – including funds that support wildfire risk reduction on state, local and tribal lands, as well as a program that helps private landowners maintain their trees – were halved this year so that more than $43m could go toward the program incentivizing early resignations and retirements. In next year’s budget, the grants are completely closed out.Some funds appropriated by Congress were not distributed at all. Murray, the senator, highlighted that $97m budgeted to support state, rural and volunteer fire departments in wildfire reduction work was withheld by the agency this year.The effects of these deep cuts are expected to be far-reaching and long term, especially due to the loss of science and research capacity that support land management work and wildfire mitigation.“The administration’s budget for Forest Service research is $0 – this for the world’s most important forest research organization,” Safford said. It’s not just new research being squashed; Trump has enforced an anti-science agenda across the government that will leave the US less prepared as the climate crisis unfolds.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), which saw large-scale layoffs earlier this year, may also be less able to provide important forecasts and data used to plan prescribed burns, warn the public and pre-position crews during extreme weather events. National Weather Service stations no longer have the staff for round-the-clock monitoring, especially in high fire-prone regions in California and the Pacific north-west. The overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) could leave gaps in response and recovery.View image in fullscreenThe USFS is also returning to a “full-suppression” ethos that has shocked ecologists and firefighters alike. Rather than letting some backcountry blazes burn – wildfires that can be healthy for forests that evolved with fire – Schultz ordered the agency to revert to a strategy widely recognized as a key culprit in the increase in catastrophic fire. The USFS chief has also placed higher restrictions on prescribed burning.“We have known since the late 1960s that full-tilt suppression is reactive and does nothing to solve the underlying issues,” Safford said. A push to put all fires out immediately, regardless of their ecological benefit or risks to communities, “wastes extraordinary amounts of money, puts firefighters at risk, and additionally has all sorts of negative environmental and ecological repercussions in both the short and long term”.Plugging the shortfallsStates are now scrambling to fill the gaps left by the federal government.California issued nearly $72m in May to support land management projects in the state and fast-tracked projects in partnership with tribes, private landowners and local districts.In Colorado this spring,Jared Polis, the governor, issued $7m in state wildfire mitigation grants. “Forest fires aren’t going to take four years off just because of who’s in the White House,” he told Politico at the time. “So it’s really important that states up the bar on preparation.”This is, in part, by design.“There’s going to be a shift to put greater reliance on state and local governments to cover those costs on their own without direct federal support,” Schultz told lawmakers at the hearing.For Quinn-Davidson, these moves speak to the importance of community-based work and leadership. With less federal support, it will fall to individuals and local groups to do the important work needed in their own backyards to prevent the worst fires.Quinn-Davidson, who oversees programs helping communities conduct prescribed burns, thinks they will be up for the challenge. She lamented the loss of passionate federal workers but said people were jumping at the opportunity to get involved and do what’s required to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in their own backyards.“The more involved people can be at the local level, and the more we can empower communities to have leadership on fire,” she said, “the more resilient we will be in the face of disaster.” More