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      Lester Holt to exit NBC Nightly News as MSNBC cuts Ayman Mohyeldin’s show

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      NBC’s Lester Holt is stepping down as anchor of its Nightly News show, and MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin is stepping down from a similar role at his namesake weekend evening show as the liberal networks’ owners continue a major programming shake-up on Monday.Others at MSNBC affected by changes revealed on Monday include Katie Phang and Jonathan Capehart, the New York Post reported.Holt, who has served as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News for a decade, is leaving the broadcast early this summer, the network reported.A successor for Holt on the program is yet to be named. He will reportedly continue to work with NBC, which shares an owner with MSNBC, as the principal anchor at Dateline, a role he has held for nearly 15 years.At the same time, staff of Mohyeldin’s show, named Ayman, learned on Monday that the last episode of Ayman is likely to air on 20 April. Another source at the network said Mohyeldin would anchor a new program yet to be announced.The New York Post reported learning that Phang and Capehart’s shows were also being canceled but would remain at the network. The plan is for Capehart, like Mohyeldin, to host a new show, and Phang would continue as a legal correspondent.In a recording of a meeting about the cancellation of Mohyeldin’s show, an MSNBC official said the network was “making several changes to our programming lineup”.The official subsequently said that the network had “hit success” with ensemble shows and was looking to invest in shows with the ensemble format in order to meet “audience needs”.Those remarks came a day after news broke that MSNBC had canceled the longstanding anchor Joy Reid’s show, The ReidOut. The network plans to replace Reid’s show with a new one led by three co-anchors: Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele, who have been co-hosting MSNBC’s The Weekend Show.Mohyeldin has hosted several shows at MSNBC, including Morning Joe First Look, an early morning pre-show for one of the network’s flagship shows. In 2021, his namesake show was given a prime-time weekend evening slot.The anchor also served as a correspondent for NBC in Gaza during a monthlong conflict in 2014, receiving praise from media critics for reporting that departed from “the standard pro-Israel coverage that dominates establishment American press coverage”.The changes affecting Reid and Mohyeldin result from a reshuffling by the network’s new president, Rebecca Kutler, who took over the role in February.Kutler, who was previously MSNBC’s senior vice-president for content strategy, succeeds the former MSNBC president Rashida Jones.According to a statement given to the Guardian by MSNBC, the network will also introduce a new trio of co-hosts to anchor a morning and evening edition of The Weekend on Saturdays and Sundays at 7am and 6pm ET.Jonathan Capehart, an MSNBC host and Washington Post associate editor, will serve as one co-anchor of the morning edition.Mohyeldin will serve as anchor of a different group on the evening addition. Ali Velshi will also expand his namesake program, Velshi, to three hours on the weekends.MSNBC confirmed that Joy Reid will be leaving the network. Rotating anchors will host the hour in the coming weeks.The network also confirms that it will sunset its broadcasting operation in Miami. This affects the Miami-based shows José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show.According to a source, the entire staff of The ReidOut, José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show are being let go. Staff will be given the option to reapply for a job on one of the shows or take severance and quit. They have six weeks to decide which option to take, the source said.That source added that the changes are due in part to MSNBC no longer wanting to use Telemundo, the Spanish-language network that is headquartered in Miami.In November last year, the Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski faced backlash after meeting with Trump to discuss “a new approach” after his election in November to a second presidency.Also in November, Comcast announced plans to spin off several cable networks, including MSNBC, as the TV networks faced declining ratings, which only further declined following election fatigue.Chuck Todd, a prominent anchor and former host of Meet The Press, announced in January that he was leaving NBC, another Comcast company, after 18 years. The announcement followed Todd’s pushback against NBC’s decision to hire Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chairperson during Donald Trump’s first presidency, in March 2024. McDaniel was eventually removed from her position.Trump, who has previously described news media as “the enemy of the people”. celebrated the cancelation of Reid’s show on his platform Truth Social, saying she should have been “canned long ago”. More

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      Starmer has the backing of Britons to stand up to Trumpism. At the White House, he should do so | Polly Toynbee

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      Day by day another vast hole opens up beneath what was once solid. The man who is on course to become Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, once the most pro-US of leaders, has declared Nato in effect over. In his clear-eyed perception of Donald Trump’s first month, 80 years of shared transatlantic values have fallen into that crater. The US “doesn’t care about the fate of Europe one way or another” and Washington’s actions have been “no less drastic, dramatic, and ultimately no less brazen” than Moscow’s, he said. Now, Europe must defend itself.The moment smacks of that 1940 David Low cartoon of a British soldier standing on a rock in a stormy sea, shaking his fist as the Luftwaffe approach: “Very well, alone”. But this time we Europeans are alone. JD Vance, the US vice-president, declared war on European values and traditions; Europe’s liberal “enemies within” are more dangerous in his eyes than Russia or China. Those spell-breaking words told Europeans that the US can never be trusted again; at any time, Americans may vote for a leader who betrays old allies, sharing no affinity with Europe’s liberal democracies, international rights or laws. “The west” no longer exists as an entity bound by shared beliefs.Keir Starmer knows that every step he takes inside the White House on Thursday could set off some Trumpian explosive device. Emmanuel Macron will have already tested the ground (he arrived there today). The US president’s wild unpredictability, whether by design, delusion or distraction, is a weapon in itself, and a wary Starmer is war-gaming it with his advisers. That “bridge” of a “special relationship” remains in No 10’s official briefing lexicon, but by now it is wholly illusory.View image in fullscreenStarmer’s task is to salvage the best possible agreements on Ukraine, tariffs and defence without wavering on what once were mutual principles. He has his red lines, echoed across Europe: “No talks about Ukraine, without Ukraine”. No mafioso protection racket grabbing Ukraine’s mineral wealth to pay off bogus debts. Reuters reports that unless Volodymyr Zelenskyy pays half a trillion dollars, the US will cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite communications network, crippling the country’s defences. In the face of such brutishness, Starmer is the right man: lawyerly, calm and diplomatic. He will not be riled into pointless verbal warfare. He brings Europe’s pledges to spend more, and possibly the hubristic offer of the UK’s new ambassador, Peter Mandelson, of a “new economic partnership” with the UK as a hub for US AI to “Make our economies great again”.But everyone can see that Trump’s “reset” with Vladimir Putin is irreconcilable with Nato. The alliance is dead if it fails to resist a Russian aggressor, a despot who murders opposition politicians, commits unspeakable war crimes, kidnaps thousands of Ukrainian children, with a declared intent to return Warsaw pact countries to its embrace. Trump is Russia’s greatest asset.Starmer will avoid verbal spats with a champion spitter. Be bold, comes the best advice from Merz, warning Europe’s leaders “not to come to Washington as a dwarf” or they “will be treated as one”. As Europe speedily circles the wagons, the UK finds its role will be vital, as Macron and Merz call for a joint nuclear shield to be provided by France and the UK, pivoting from US nuclear dependence. In a continent that is losing the security we relied on all our lives, trade disputes become a trivial quibble, Brexit an irrelevance. Merz is calling for Europe to come together in foreign, trade and security policy. Starmer ought to seize the chance, and abandon Labour’s fears of Brexiters.With its colossal majority, Labour has nothing to fear in rallying the country around joint European defence as a necessary patriotic cause, leaving the Tories and Reform confounded. The public that welcomed Ukrainians rejects Trump’s betrayal plans: 21% of people strongly support British soldiers being stationed in Ukraine as peacekeepers, and 37% of people “somewhat” support the idea. Only 21% are opposed to it. The idea of a European army would have been unthinkable during the Brexit referendum. Meanwhile, on trade, a majority of voters in every constituency thinks the government should prioritise trade with the EU over the US, even in Clacton, Nigel Farage’s seat.Fifty-five per cent of Britons now say it was wrong to leave the EU, while just 11% call Brexit a success. There’s no need to reopen those old wounds. A Europe united against new perils seems likely to loosen its rigid single market rules on trade, given that Britain would be contributing so much in mutual defence. As Britain strives to spend up to 3% compared with Germany’s 1.5% defence spending, the doors to trade must surely open for the UK to regain some of the 4-5% of GDP it has lost since Brexit.View image in fullscreenThe Brexiters now sound bizarrely out of tune. Last week, David Frost, who led the UK’s negotiations with the EU, frantically tweeted: “Labour are taking us back into the EU orbit by stealth and hoping you won’t notice till it’s too late. Don’t let them get away with it.” Yet those days are done. Instead, all of Europe and the UK need defence eurobonds for all to borrow. If the opposition attacks the chancellor for breaking a borrowing pledge, Labour need only point to the frightening new world where Elon Musk sends warm congratulations not to Germany’s new leader, but to the far-right AfD.There will be a White House press conference during Starmer’s visit, a dangerous opportunity for Trump to say unspeakable things while leaving Starmer dumbstruck. If he’s lost for words, he might remember those spoken by a particularly memorable British prime minister at a press conference with a US president in 2003. Hugh Grant, playing the prime minister in Love Actually, told the president, Billy Bob Thornton: “I fear that this has become a bad relationship; a relationship based on the president taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to Britain. We may be a small country, but we’re a great one, too … And a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the president should be prepared for that.”The real world is not scripted by Richard Curtis for happy endings. Poking presidents in public is not politic, and Starmer is likely to offer Trump a carriage ride with King Charles. But he will have no trouble rousing voters to defend European and British values against Trumpism.

      Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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      Julianne Moore’s freckles? How Republican bans on ‘woke’ books have reached new level

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      When the actor Julianne Moore learned her children’s book, Freckleface Strawberry, a tale of a girl who learns to stop hating her freckles, had been targeted for a potential ban at all schools serving US military families, she took to Instagram, posting that it was a “great shock” to discover the story had been “banned by the Trump Administration”.Moore had seen a memo that circulated last week revealing that tens of thousands of American children studying in about 160 Pentagon schools both in the US and around the world had had all access to library books suspended for a week, while officials conducted a “compliance review” to hunt out any books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics”.Although whether Moore’s book would be selected for “further review” or banned entirely remains unclear, the episode brought into stark relief that the movement to ban books in the US – which has been bubbling up for several years, mostly in individual states – had reached a whole new level: the federal one.Donald Trump’s re-election, and his subsequent crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, has many campaigners fearing that the Pentagon move to scrub its libraries of anything it opposes ideologically could be the first of a series of broad attempts to eliminate any discussions of race, LGBTQ+ issues, diversity and historical education from public schools.The Trump administration has scoffed at the idea that it is banning books, and last month it instructed the Department of Education to end its investigations into the matter, referring to bans as a “hoax”. Indeed, many deny that banning books is censorship at all – a disconnect that stems not just from the historical context of book banning, but from a semantic dispute over what it means to “ban” something.In the early 20th century, books such as Ulysses by James Joyce and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck were banned due to “moral concerns”.Likewise, the red scare of the 1950s saw increased censorship of materials perceived as sympathetic to communism, while the 1980s saw attacks against books dealing with race and sexuality, such as The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which was nearly banned two years after its release in 1984 after a parent petitioned against its use in an Oakland, California, classroom.The difference today, however, is that instead of coming primarily from conservative community organizers, the book banning movement is now coming from government – school boards, local governments and now, with the Pentagon move, even the federal government, increasingly working in lockstep.The modern wave of book bans could be said to have started with a backlash against The 1619 Project, a journalistic anthology by Nikole Hannah-Jones published by the New York Times. The project aimed to reframe US history by centering the contributions of Black Americans, but conservative politicians – including Trump – claimed it taught students to “hate their own country”.View image in fullscreenIn response, Republican lawmakers moved to ban the work in schools, marking the beginning of an intensified campaign against so-called “anti-American” literature.According to PEN America, a non-profit dedicated to defending free expression in literature, more than 10,000 book bans occurred in public schools during the 2023-2024 school year. Books that address racism, gender and history were disproportionately targeted.“The whole principle of public education is that it is not supposed to be dictated by particular ideologies that aim to censor what other people can learn and access in schools,” Jonathan Friedman, the managing director for US free expression programs at PEN America, said.Rightwing politicians, however, have increasingly used book banning as a rallying cry, portraying certain books as tools of “indoctrination” – failing to note the irony that indoctrination is the process of carefully limiting ideas, like banning books.One key figure has been the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. He has echoed Trump’s dismissal of book bans as a “hoax”, and spearheaded multiple attempts to reshape education to reflect only conservative values, including the Stop Woke Act, which restricts discussions on systemic racism, and the Parental Rights in Education Act, widely known as the “don’t say gay” law, which limits discussions of gender identity and sexuality in classrooms.Banned titles in Florida schools now include Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Normal People by Sally Rooney, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.What DeSantis and other rightwingers often say is that these efforts don’t truly constitute “bans” because they only remove books from schools, rather than totally outlawing them from being bought in the US, and therefore don’t encroach on free speech. John Chrastka, the executive director and founder of EveryLibrary, argued that this is faulty reasoning.“The private marketplace is protected by the first amendment in ways that the government is not beholden to,” he said. “The idea that because a book is still available for sale means that it’s not being banned outright is only the difference between a framework that was in place prior to the 1950s” and today.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe noted that Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was first published in 1928 in Europe, was banned in the US for several years before finally getting its American publication in 1959 in what was a watershed affirmation of the right to free speech. Realizing that the first amendment prevented them from blocking the book from US bookstores, critics turned their attention to libraries instead, a grayer area in terms of constitutional protections.DeSantis and other rightwing politicians have taken the lesson: if the constitution prevents you from banning a book from being bought or sold in Florida, the next best thing is to ban it from the places most people would have the easiest access to it – schools and libraries.“It doesn’t add up,” Chrastka added, “the idea that a teenager in a state where it’s impossible for them to get to an independent bookstore because they don’t exist any more somehow has enough liberty to buy the book when the school library is blocked from having it available for them.”Another key distinction is between banning books from classroom curriculum versus removing them from school libraries – which, unlike classrooms, are historically protected spaces for free access to ideas.“What you read for a class supports the curriculum,” says Chrastka, whereas “the school library is supposed to support independent reading. One of them is required reading and the other one isn’t, but [the reading material] is meant to be available.”The landmark supreme court case Island Trees School District v Pico in 1982, when a school board in New York removed books from its libraries it deemed “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy”, established that school boards cannot restrict the availability of books in their libraries simply because they don’t like or agree with the content.Critics contend the new wave of book bans, although not yet about preventing sales at bookshops, fails to meet the intended purpose of libraries: to preserve and provide a variety of ideas and information that may not be readily or equally accessible to everyone.Now, many fear that once certain books are established as unacceptable in schools, the censorship could spread to colleges, bookstores and eventually nationwide bans. Even if that does not happen, experts say one of the most reliable ways to ensure ideas are suppressed is to dismantle the education system, making Trump’s repeatedly stated goal of eliminating the Department of Education a particular concern.“The vast majority of the budget for the Department of Education and the laws and regulations that make sure that the department is functional go to help students succeed and protect students who are otherwise vulnerable,” said Chrastka.With the education system having been chipped away at for decades with budgets cuts, low literacy rates and high dropout rates, book bans only make it weaker.“What we need in this country is for students to feel supported and to find their own identities, and reading is a core component of that,” Chrastka said. “Let’s let the kids discover themselves and discover their own path forward in the process.” More

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      More than 150,000 Canadians sign petition to revoke Musk’s citizenship

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      More than 150,000 people from Canada have signed a parliamentary petition calling for their country to strip Elon Musk’s Canadian citizenship because of the tech billionaire’s alliance with Donald Trump, who has spent his second US presidency repeatedly threatening to conquer its independent neighbor to the north and turn it into its 51st state.British Columbia author Qualia Reed launched the petition in Canada’s House of Commons, where it was sponsored by New Democrat parliamentary member and avowed Musk critic Charlie Angus, as the Canadian Press first reported over the weekend.Born in South Africa and helming US companies including electric vehicle-maker Tesla, aerospace company SpaceX and the social media platform Twitter/X, Musk has Canadian citizenship through his mother, who is from Saskatchewan’s capital, Regina. He has been crusading to slash the US federal government’s size at the behest of the US president, who has consistently challenged Canada’s sovereignty since returning to the White House for a second presidential term on 20 January.Reed’s petition – filed on 20 February – accuses Musk of having “engaged in activities that go against the national interest of Canada” by acting as an adviser to Trump. Trump has invited the scorn of Canada’s 40 million residents by making threats about imposing steep tariffs on Canadian products and openly boasting about having the US annex the country, including shortly before its national hockey team defeated a selection of American opponents in a politically charged 20 February tournament final.The petition asserts that Musk’s alignment with Trump makes him “a member of a foreign government that is attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty”. It asks Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to take away Musk’s Canadian passport and revoke his citizenship with immediate effect.Trump has often mocked Trudeau as “governor”, the title given to US states’ chief executives. And Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he bought in 2022 for $44bn to relish Trudeau’s announcement in January that he would resign as the head of Canada’s Liberal party after it selected a new leader, with the tech billionaire praising clips of the prominent Canadian Conservative party chief Pierre Poilievre.As the Canadian Press noted, petitions like Reed’s require 500 or more signatures for them to gain the certification necessary to be presented to Canada’s House of Commons and potentially garner a formal government response. Reed’s petition evidently had no trouble clearing that threshold, having collected about 157,000 signatures as of late Sunday, with no indication that the number would soon stop rising.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCanada’s House of Commons is scheduled to resume its work on 24 March, though the country could call for a general election before parliamentary members return. The signing period for Reed’s petition was set to expire on 20 June.Musk’s directive to ostensibly cut federal spending – after Trump lost re-election in 2020 to Joe Biden but then secured it in November at the expense of Kamala Harris – has affected hundreds of thousands of US government civil servants. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.An Economist/YouGov poll of nearly 1,600 respondents recently found Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) are far less popular with the public that they claim to be serving than many of the areas they are targeting.Nonetheless, on Friday at a gathering of conservatives in Maryland, Musk made light of his involvement in the Trump administration by giddily waving a giant chainsaw in the air.And on Sunday, Musk boosted an X post reading: “Of course we support Doge! Those who don’t support it are unAmerican.” More

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      There is a clear Trump doctrine. Those who can’t see it won’t have a say in reshaping the world | Nesrine Malik

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      A resonant phrase during Donald Trump’s first administration was the advice to take him “seriously, but not literally”. It was a singularly detrimental expression, widely quoted by politicians and the media. Its adoption fit with the position many felt most comfortable taking: Trump was bad, but he wasn’t smart. He wasn’t intentional. He wasn’t calculated and deliberate. He sounded off, but rarely followed up with action. He was in essence a misfiring weapon that could do serious damage, but mostly by accident.The residue of that approach still persists, even in analysis that describes Trump’s first executive orders as a campaign of “shock and awe”, as if it were just a matter of signalling rather than executing. Or that his plan for Gaza is to be taken – you guessed it – seriously, not literally. When that was suggested to Democratic senator Andy Kim, he lost it. “I understand people are bending over backwards to try to mitigate some of the fallout from these statements that are made,” he told Politico. But Trump is “the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world … if I can’t take the words of the president of the United States to actually mean something, rather than needing some type of oracle to be able to explain, I just don’t know what to think about when it comes to our national security.”Part of the problem is that people are reluctant to imbue Trump with any sort of coherence. But a Trump doctrine is emerging, most sharply in foreign policy. It has clear features, contours and a sort of unified theory of conflict. First, it is transactional, particularly when it comes to warfare in which the US is playing a role. Nothing has a history or any objective sense of right and wrong. Time starts with Trump, and his role is to end things, ideally while securing some bonus for the US.That upside is the second feature of the Trump doctrine: financialisation, or the reduction of politics to how much things cost, what is the return and how it can be maximised. Trump sees conflicts and financial assistance that have not produced anything tangible for the US. From the Gaza war, some sort of real estate deal can be salvaged. In Ukraine, a proposal for almost four times the value of US assistance so far in minerals is like the stripping of a distressed company by a new investment manager trying to recoup the funds disbursed by predecessors.The third feature is the junking of any notions of “soft power” – something that is seen as expensive, with questionable benefits that are abstract and unquantifiable. Soft power might even be a myth altogether, a fiction that flattered previously gullible regimes, giving them some sense of control while others fed off the US’s resources. In Gaza or Ukraine, the US was going through the motions of action without a definitive breakthrough. Where others saw soft power, Trump sees quagmires.The features of this approach may change, and they might be shortsighted and deleterious to the US’s security. And they may not entirely come from Trump himself, but rather the intersection of different political strands of the configuration of interests that support and advise him. Channelled through Trump, the doctrine takes on the hallmarks of his character – rambling, narcissistic, ignorant. However, none of this should be confused with a lack of underlying consistency and resolve to follow through.This leaves other leaders, particularly in Europe, in a place where their historical arrangements and understandings when it comes to US compact have been wiped out. European countries are now simply junior nations who can either dispense with their cancelled notions of the importance of rebuffing Vladimir Putin, join Trump in bringing an end to the war on his terms, or pick up the pieces themselves when the US withdraws its support.The ensuing anger and language of “appeasement” and “capitulation” feels like a misreading of what is happening, an echo of a time when it was universally agreed upon that aggressive enemies are to be stood up to, and anything else is a moral defeat and sign of weakness. But Trump is functioning in a different value system, one where these notions don’t even apply or have different definitions.As Europeans seethe, Trump’s plan for Ukraine is being worked out not only away from Europe in Washington, but in the Middle East, at new centres of middleman power that have always been transactional. They themselves are in the throes of redefining their relationship with the US, and have no illusions about the world that is emerging. Sergei Lavrov met with Marco Rubio in Riyadh and Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew to the region preparing for Gulf-mediated peace talks in Abu Dhabi. Those whose relationships with the US have been hard-edged, about mutual self-interest rather than shared values, and have always had to manage the US to greater or lesser extents, seem best positioned now to not freeze in moral horror.For the rest, for the country’s more intimate friends and family, those who shared America’s values and security liabilities, the regime change is a bitter pill to swallow. It is likely that there can be no persuasion, negotiation or hope of a “transatlantic bridge”, as Keir Starmer has been described, a figure that can act as an intermediary between the US and Europe and head off rupture. Perhaps Starmer can appeal to Trump’s ego? Or “tread a diplomatic line”, or convince him that giving in to Putin makes him look weak? All that assumes some measure of impulsiveness on Trump’s part that can be reined in (and by a prime minister not exactly known for his pyrotechnic charm), and also that Trump even shares similar notions of “judgment of history” or the same understanding of “weakness”. There is no small, but still shared, middle ground.There are now two options for the US’s former close friends and security partners: shed everything, dispense with notions of European solidarity, fast-forward the end of the postwar order, and make peace with defence vulnerability and political subordination. Or embark on a colossal power-mapping exercise. This entails rapid, closely coordinated action on a political, bureaucratic and military level to either replace the US, or at least demonstrate that they constitute a bloc that has some power, agency and agility – and challenge Trump in the only language he understands.It is tempting to think that Trump doesn’t mean it, or needs to be managed and cajoled because all that underlies his actions is recklessness. Or that there is a way to reconcile what are now in essence two incompatible conceptions of the global order. Who wants to wake up every day and reckon with the end of the world as they know it? But it is so. And the sooner political leaders come to terms with the fact that roads back to the old way are closed, the more likely it is that this new world will not be fashioned entirely on Trump’s terms.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump names conservative podcaster Dan Bongino as FBI deputy director

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      Dan Bongino, a former US Secret Service agent who has written bestselling books, run unsuccessfully for office and gained fame as a conservative pundit with TV shows and a popular podcast, has been chosen to serve as the FBI’s deputy director.President Donald Trump announced the appointment on Sunday night in a post on his Truth Social platform, praising Bongino as “a man of incredible love and passion for our country”. He called the announcement “great news for law enforcement and American justice”.The selection places two staunch Trump allies atop the nation’s principal federal law enforcement agency at a time when Democrats are concerned that the president could seek to target his adversaries. Bongino would serve under Kash Patel, who was sworn in as FBI director at the White House on Friday and who has signalled his intent to reshape the bureau, including by relocating hundreds of employees from its Washington headquarters and placing greater emphasis on the FBI’s traditional crime-fighting duties.Patel has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue Trump’s political opponents.The deputy director serves as the FBI’s second-in-command and is traditionally a career agent responsible for the bureau’s day-to-day law enforcement operations.Bongino, 49, served on the presidential details for then-presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush, before becoming a popular rightwing figure. He became one of the leading personalities in the Maga political movement to spread false information about the 2020 election.For a few years following Rush Limbaugh’s death in 2021, he was chosen for a radio show on the same time slot of the famous commentator.Bongino worked for the New York police department from 1997 through 1999, before joining the Secret Service. He began doing commentary on Fox News more than a decade ago, and had a Saturday night show with the network from 2021 to 2023. He is now a host of the Dan Bongino Show, one of the most popular podcasts, according to Spotify.Bongino ran for a US Senate seat in Maryland in 2012 and for congressional seats in 2014 and 2016 in Maryland and Florida, after moving in 2015. He lost all three races.During an interview last year, Bongino asked Trump to commit to forming a commission to reform the Secret Service, calling it a “failed” agency and criticizing it for the two assassination attempts last year.“That guy should have been nowhere near you,” Bongino said about the man who authorities say camped outside Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, before he was spotted with a rifle. More

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      Trump administration briefing: Zelenskyy rejects US minerals demand; bomb threat sent to anti-Trump conference

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      As Ukraine prepared to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of the country, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he would be willing to step down if it meant peace or membership of Nato, something the US and some other Nato member states oppose. Zelenskyy insisted he wanted good, “friendly” relations with America – a “strategic partner” – and shrugged off Trump’s bruising description of him as a “dictator” for not holding elections during wartime.But he also said that he would not sign a $500bn minerals deal proposed by the US. He said the figure was far higher than the US’s actual military contribution of $100bn.“I’m not signing something that 10 generations of Ukrainians are going to pay later,” he said.Here is what else happened on Sunday:Zelenskyy says he would ‘quit for peace’ as he refuses US demand for Ukraine mineralsVolodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is not willing to cave in to intense US pressure to sign a $500bn minerals deal and that he wants Donald Trump to be “on our side” in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv ahead of the third anniversary on Monday of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy said he did not recognise the sum demanded by the White House as apparent “payback” for previous US military assistance.Read the full storyTrump ‘surrendering to the Russians’ on Ukraine, top Democrat saysA senior Democratic lawmaker accused Donald Trump of “surrendering to the Russians” on Sunday, as Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff said talks between the US and Russia over Ukraine was “the only way to end the carnage”.Read the full storyBomb threat sent to anti-Trump conference singles out officer who tangled with ex-Proud Boys leaderPeople attending a center-right political conference in Washington DC were forced to evacuate on Sunday, after someone claiming to be Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group, allegedly emailed a bomb threat against the event. Tarrio, who was convicted and then pardoned for his role in the 6 January insurrection, denied any involvement in the incident.Read the full storyKash Patel tells FBI staff to ignore Elon Musk request to list their achievementsThe new FBI director, Kash Patel, has told his agency employees to hold off on responding to an email from the Donald Trump administration asking them to list their accomplishments in the last week as tech billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the federal government’s size.Read the full storyTrump administration eliminating 2,000 USAid positions in US, notice saysThe Trump administration on Sunday said it was placing all but a handful of USAid personnel around the world on paid administrative leave and eliminating about 2,000 of those positions in the US, according to a notice sent to agency workers and posted online.Read the full storyTrump halts medical research funding in apparent violation of judge’s orderThe Trump administration has blocked a crucial step in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) process for funding medical research, likely in violation of a federal judge’s temporary restraining order on federal funding freezes.Read the full storyOpposition to Trump, slow to energize, shakes off its slumberProgressive activists and concerned constituents spent the first week-long recess of the new Trump administration pressuring congressional Republicans to stand up to the president, Musk and their potentially unlawful power grabs.At congressional offices, Tesla dealerships and town halls across the country, including in solidly conservative corners of Georgia, Wisconsin and Oregon, voters registered their alarm over Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the widening influence of Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” and the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle or entirely eliminate federal agencies that Americans rely on for essential services.Read the full storyPolitical theatre confirms Elon Musk’s Maga hero status at jubilant CPACWhat do you give the man who has everything? A ballroom full of cheering conservative activists found out this week when Elon Musk was presented with a chainsaw by Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who has used the power tool as a symbol of his push to impose fiscal discipline.Wearing sunglasses, a black Maga baseball cap and a gold necklace, Musk giddily wielded the chainsaw up and down the stage. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” he declared. Members of the audience shouted: “We love you!” Musk replied: “I love you guys, too!” And he quipped: “I am become meme.”It was a wild political theatre that confirmed Musk’s status as a new hero of the Maga movement.Read the full storyCan Keir Starmer persuade Trump not to give in to Putin?When Keir Starmer is advised on how to handle his crucial meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, he will be told by advisers from Downing Street and the Foreign Office to be very clear on his main points and, above all, to be brief.Starmer will also be advised to flatter Trump when he can, to say that everyone is so grateful that he has focused the world’s attention on the need for peace between Russia and Ukraine. But to flatter subtly. And not to lay it on too thick.Read the full storyTrump compared to mobster Tony Soprano by former envoy to PanamaThe former US ambassador to Panama has launched a stinging critique of Donald Trump’s approach towards Latin America, comparing his conduct to that of the ruthless and egotistical fictional mob boss Tony Soprano.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Trump said in a post on social media Sunday that Dan Bongino, a conservative talk show host, will be deputy director of the FBI. Bongino will join Kash Patel, who was recently confirmed by the Senate as director of the FBI. Trump said Bongino was named to the role by Patel. The position does not require Senate confirmation.

      A contentious Trump administration proposal to give the US $500bn worth of profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for its wartime assistance to Kyiv has been taken off the table, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday.

      Republican US senator Markwayne Mullin poured cold water on extremist conservative fantasies that Trump could find a way to run for an unconstitutional third presidential term, saying he would not support that barring an amendment to the US constitution that would legalize it.

      New York Governor Kathy Hochul says she told Trump in a private meeting at the White House that congestion pricing tolls in New York City are necessary and working, yet the Democrat predicted the courts will probably decide the matter.

      Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was prepared to resume fighting against Hamas after the Palestinian group accused it of endangering a five-week-old Gaza truce by suspending prisoner releases. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said he was headed to the Middle East this week to “get an extension of phase 1” of the truce. More