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      Trans youth fight for care as California clinics cave to Trump: ‘How can this happen here?’

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      Eli, a 16-year-old Los Angeles student, is spending his summer juggling an internship at a natural history museum, a research project, a physics class and cheer practice – and getting ready to apply for college.But in recent weeks, he has been forced to handle a more urgent matter: figuring out how he is going to access vital medical treatments targeted by the Trump administration.Last month, Eli was stunned to get an email alerting him that Children’s hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) was shutting down its Center for Transyouth Health and Development, which had provided him critical healthcare for three years. The center, which has served transgender youth for three decades, offered Eli counseling and helped him access gender-affirming hormone therapy that he said allowed him to live as himself and flourish in school.CHLA said it was shuttering the center due to the federal government’s threats to pull funding, part of the president’s efforts to eradicate trans youth healthcare. The move has forced Eli and his mother to scramble for alternatives, taking time out of his busy summer to contact new providers and ensure he doesn’t run out of medications.California became the first sanctuary state for trans youth healthcare in 2022 and has long positioned itself as having the strongest protections for LGBTQ+ children. Now, for families like Eli’s, it feels like that safety is rapidly disappearing.View image in fullscreen“I was always worried for people in conservative states and had a lot of fear for my community as a whole. But I never thought it would directly affect me in California,” Eli said on a recent afternoon, seated with his mom at a Latino LGBTQ+ organization in Boyle Heights. “I wish people understood they’re doing so much more harm than they could possibly imagine – that so many lives will be hurt and lost and so many people torn apart.”Eli is one of nearly 3,000 patients who learned on 12 June they would be abruptly losing their healthcare at CHLA, one of the largest and most prominent centers in the nation to treat trans kids. Then, on 24 June, Stanford Medicine revealed it had also paused gender-affirming surgeries for trans minors and 18-year-olds, with reports that some families had appointments suddenly canceled and leaving other patients fearful it was the beginning of a wider crackdown on their care.Families across California told the Guardian they were exploring options to stockpile hormones, researching how to get care outside the US, growing increasingly fearful that parents could face government investigations or prosecutions, and discussing options to permanently flee the country.CHLA, in a letter to staff, said its decision to close the trans center was “profoundly difficult”, but as California’s largest pediatric safety net provider, it could not risk losing federal dollars, which makes up a majority of its funds and would affect hundreds of thousands of patients. Stanford said its disruption in services followed a review of “directives from the federal government” and was done to “protect both our providers and patients”.“This is Los Angeles – how can this be happening here?” said Emily, Eli’s mother, who is an educator; the Guardian is identifying them by only their first names to protect their privacy. “My parents left their Central American countries for a better life – fleeing poverty and civil war, and I cannot believe I’m sitting here thinking: what would be the best country for my family to flee to, as so many immigrant families have done? I never thought I might have to leave the US to protect my son.”‘This care gave me my life’Katie, a 16-year-old film student who lives two hours outside Los Angeles, started going to CHLA for gender-affirming care in 2018 when she was nine. For several years, the care involved therapy and check-ins, but no direct medical interventions. Throughout that time, Katie was consistent about her identity as a girl, which CHLA providers supported.“It was so meaningful and incredible for them to say: ‘We see you for who you are, but also you can be who you are,’” recalled Katie, who asked to go by a pseudonym to protect her privacy. “It was like, I have a future. I’ll get to have my life.”In gender-affirming care, young children may first socially transition by using new names, pronouns and clothes. When youth are persistent about their gender, doctors can consider prescribing puberty blockers, which pause puberty, and eventually hormone therapies that allow for medical transition. Trans youth surgeries are rare.View image in fullscreenThe treatment has for years been considered the standard of care in the US, endorsed by major medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, and linked to improved mental health. In recent years, Republicans have passed bans on gender-affirming care in more than 25 states, and Trump has called the treatments “chemical and surgical mutilation”. There has also been a growing international backlash against the care, including in the UK, which has banned puberty blockers for trans kids.Last month, the US supreme court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth. Families and civil rights groups have argued the bans are discriminatory, as cisgender children can still receive the same treatments; cis boys with delayed puberty may be prescribed testosterone, for example, while trans boys cannot.Katie, who was eventually prescribed puberty blockers and hormones, broke down crying recounting how the care saved her. “Sometimes I think: What would my life be if I never got this?” she said. “And I just don’t see myself here. I can’t see myself at 16 if I didn’t come out and transition … Losing this now would destroy my life.”Sage Sol Pitchenik, a 16-year-old CHLA patient, who is non-binary, said the care helped them overcome debilitating depression caused by their severe gender dysphoria: “Every day, I couldn’t even get up because I just didn’t want to see myself, not even my reflection in the window. I was so terrified to look at my body.”They compared the care to the essential treatment their twin brother had earlier received at the same institution: a liver transplant. “CHLA saved my life, just like they saved my brother,” they said.Eli, who came out as trans while in middle school during pandemic lockdowns, said it was hard to return to school when he felt so uncomfortable in his body. At the start of high school, he avoided making friends: “I’m really sociable. I love talking to people and joining clubs, but I felt restricted because of how embarrassed I felt and scared of how people would react to me.”The testosterone therapy helped restore his confidence, he said, recounting “euphoric moments” of his transition: growing facial hair, his voice deepening, staying in the boys’ cabin at camp. His friends celebrated each milestone, and his mom said the positive transformation was obvious to his whole family: “It was like day and night – we are a traditional Latino Catholic family, but they were all loving and accepting, because he is such a happier kid.”View image in fullscreen‘Treating our kids as disposable’CHLA started treating trans children around 1991, and that legacy was part of its appeal for parents. “It’s not just the best place in LA to get care, it’s also one of the most important research centers in the country,” said Jesse Thorn, a radio host who has two trans daughters receiving care there.Critics of gender-affirming care have claimed that vulnerable youth are rushed into transitioning without understanding treatment consequences, and that there is not enough research to justify the care. CHLA, Thorn said, countered those claims; families have appointments and build long-term relationships with doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers. The process is slow and methodical, and the center was engaged in extensive research on the effects of treatments, he said.“The youth most in danger with the clinic closing are those with parents who aren’t sure about this care,” Thorn added. “That’s a lot of parents. They’re not hateful bigots. They’re overwhelmed and scared, and the institution means a lot.”View image in fullscreenOne LA parent, who requested anonymity to protect her trans son’s privacy, said she knew parents who traveled from Idaho to get CHLA’s care: “It really was a beacon of the entire western United States. It is a remarkable loss.”Parents told the Guardian that they were putting their children on waitlists at other clinics and beginning intake processes, but remained worried for families who have public health insurance and fewer resources.Like CHLA, Stanford has long researched and championed trans youth healthcare. The prestigious university’s recent pullback on care only affects surgeries, which are much more rare than hormone therapy and puberty blockers. But families whose care has remained intact, for now, say they are on edge.“There’s a constant feeling of not knowing what you need to prepare for,” said one mom of a 17-year-old trans boy, who said her son waited six months to first be seen by Stanford. “We all understand the pressures the doctors and institutions are under. But ceding the surgeries doesn’t mean the pressure will end. It’s just showing us our kids are seen as disposable.”Parents and advocates say they fear that other institutions could follow CHLA and Stanford, particularly as the White House significantly escalates attacks in ways that go far beyond funding threats.Fears of prosecutionTrump’s focus on California trans youth and gender-affirming care has been relentless. The president has directly attacked a 16-year-old trans track runner, with the US justice department and federal Department of Education fighting, so far unsuccessfully, to force the state’s schools to ban trans female athletes and bar trans girls from women’s facilities. Trump has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in education funding over a state law meant to prevent schools from forcibly outing LGBTQ+ youth to their parents.Perhaps most troubling for families and providers, the FBI has said it is investigating providers who “mutilate” children “under the guise of gender-affirming care”, and the DoJ said this week it had issued subpoenas to trans youth clinics and doctors.This has led to growing fears that the US will seek to prosecute and imprison clinicians, similar to efforts by some Republican states to criminally charge abortion providers. Many parents say they worry they could be targeted next.“There’s an outcry of terror,” said another LA mother of a trans child. “It feels like there is a bloodlust to jail any doctor who has ever helped an LGBTQ+ kid. There’s this realization that the world is constricting around us, and that any moment they could be coming for us.”Some families hope that California will fight back, but are wary of how committed the governor, Gavin Newsom, really is. Newsom faced widespread backlash in March when he hosted a podcast with a conservative activist and said he agreed with the suggestion that trans girls participating in sports was “deeply unfair”.California’s department of justice, meanwhile, has repeatedly emphasized that when institutions withhold gender-affirming care for trans youth, they are violating the state’s anti-discrimination laws.A spokesperson for Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, said Trump was “seeking to scare doctors and hospitals from providing nondiscriminatory healthcare”: “The bottom line is: this care remains legal in California … While we are concerned with the recent decisions by CHLA, right now we are focused on getting to the source of this problem – and that’s the Trump administration’s unlawful and harmful threats to providers.”A CHLA spokesperson shared a copy of its staff letter, noting that Trump’s threats to its funding came from at least five federal departments, and saying it was working with patients to identify alternative care and would “explore” reassigning affected employees to other roles. A Stanford spokesperson did not answer questions about how many patients were affected by its recent changes, but said in an email it was “committed to providing high quality, thorough and compassionate medical services for every member of our community”.Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in an email that Trump has a “resounding mandate” to end “unproven, irreversible child mutilation procedures”, adding: “The administration is delivering.”Katie’s mother said she expected the state’s leaders to do more: “The quiet from the governor and others on trans rights is very unsettling. My husband and I grew up in California, went to public schools here, and always thought we’d be safe here and that the state would hold the line. It’s hard to tell right now if that’s true.”Izzy Gardon, Newsom’s spokesperson, defended the governor, saying in an email that his “record supporting the trans community is unmatched”.“Everyone wants to blame Gavin Newsom for everything. But instead of indulging in Newsom-derangement syndrome, maybe folks should look to Washington.”‘We can’t be quiet’Affected youth are increasingly speaking out. Since the news broke, protesters have organized weekly demonstrations in front of CHLA to call for the healthcare to be restored.At one recent evening rally, organized by the LA LGBT Center, families and supporters marched and chanted outside the busy hospital on Sunset Boulevard, holding signs saying “Trans joy is resistance” and “blood on your hands”, and at one point shouting: “Down with erasure, down with hate, shame on CHLA!”View image in fullscreen“We can’t be quiet any more. We’ve been polite for too long and taken so much bullshit from people who hate us,” said Sage, who spoke at an earlier rally. “I didn’t stand up just for myself or the people affected by this, but also for the trans people who came before us who still have incorrect names on their graves, who don’t have a voice.” Sage, who is now in a creative writing program, said they hoped to become a journalist.Katie, who aspires to be a television writer in LA, said she could not be silent as anti-trans advocates force families to consider fleeing: “How dare you try to drive me out of the place where I was born, where my best friends are, where the job I want to do is, where I’ve experienced my whole life? This is my home.”Eli said he didn’t feel as if he was being an activist. He was simply asking for the “bare minimum”: to be left alone and able to access basic healthcare. “Trans services like hormone therapy truly saves lives,” he said. “We just want people to be able to live their lives. I’m just asking for what is commonsense.” More

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      Doge wants to replace our institutions with a tech utopia. It won’t work | Mike Pepi

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      Elon Musk has stepped away from Doge with very little “efficiency” to show for it. While it may have been more of a showpiece than real policy, this brutal and short experiment in Silicon Valley governance reveals a long-simmering battle between digital utopians and the institutional infrastructures critical to functioning democracies.Doge’s website dubiously claims $190bn in savings. The receipts show that they are less about efficiency than they are aimed at effective dissolution, a fate met by USAID, the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign assistance.Don’t be fooled. These brash new reductions are not just your garden-variety small-government crusades or culture-war skirmishes. This administration’s war on institutions derives from the newfound power of Silicon Valley ideology – a techno-determinism that views each institution’s function as potential raw material for capture by private digital platforms.All the while, Elon Musk sold the White House on an “AI-first strategy” for the US government. The recent executive order Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence mandates that barely tested Silicon Valley AI be jammed into the government’s work. It directs agencies to use AI to “lessen the burden of bureaucratic restrictions”. This is a thinly veiled attempt not just to reduce institutional activities; it’s also a degradation play.Doge makes plain an often misunderstood tension: Silicon Valley’s final dream is a world without institutions. Since the rise of the internet, startups have long encouraged, and profited from, institutional decline. This anti-institutionalism goes back to the roots of computing. Charles Babbage’s difference engine, central to modern computing, was built on technologies meant to control labor. It was a reflection of Babbage’s belief that the highest intention of the factory manager was to reduce the skill and cognitive complexity of laborers’ tasks. If the machine could manage production, humans – now smoothed-out automatons – would hardly need accompanying social protections, or even any governance at all.In 1948, Norbert Wiener founded the discipline of cybernetics, “the science of control and communications in the animal and machine”. This automated governance was eventually brought into direct competition with public institutions. The revolt against the state took many forms in the history of computing thereafter, from the libertarian California ideology (“information wants to be free”) to the very idea that a new “cyberspace” would be liberated from governments. Here the individual is an entrepreneur of the mind, able to instantly improve their lot without the mediating hand of the institutional form.To get to the real heart of Doge’s ideology, read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond’s manifesto on building open-source software. For Raymond, cathedrals are “carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation”. This slow, deliberate work is no match for the networked and digitally enabled bazaar, where many software developers move fast by releasing early and often, delegate everything they can, and are open to the point of promiscuity. Something like scripture for computer engineers, Raymond’s ideas soon jumped out of the network and into governance of the physical world, where all human organizations were scrutinized as the maligned “cathedral”.Entrepreneurs loved this idea, too. The management method known as the “lean startup” is a lightweight program of data-driven optimizations designed to quickly scale businesses. Instead of human labor and judgment, lean startups use data and algorithms to experiment their way toward governance.But there’s a catch: a public institution is not supposed to be run like a digital startup. Silicon Valley may have carved out a niche in which its organizational philosophies mastered food delivery apps, AI girlfriends and money-laundering shitcoins, but the moment they take these methods to institutions entrusted with public welfare, they’ve lost the plot. Governments don’t have customers – they care for citizens. If classical liberalism had the state and its many sovereign institutions, and neoliberalism had the divine hand of the free market, today’s platform class elevates computation as the ultimate arbiter of truth. When presented with an institutional force, the platform class first asks: how could this be delivered by way of a digital platform?Digital technology doesn’t have to be this way. Good software can augment institutions, not be the rationale for their deletion. Building this future requires undoing Silicon Valley’s pernicious opposition to the institutional form. By giving into the digital utopian’s anti-institutionalism, we allowed them to reshape government according to their growth-at-all-costs logic.If the newly empowered digital utopianism goes unchecked, we face a platform-archy where black-box AI makes decisions once adjudicated through democratic institutions. This isn’t just a Silicon Valley efficiency fantasy; it’s on the roadmap of every authoritarian who ever sniffed power.Thankfully, the anti-Doge backlash was swift. The abrupt layoffs backfired, leading many Americans to fully understand just how much research and resources for advancing science, medicine and culture are tied to federal support.In the private sector, since capital is no longer free after the federal government hiked interest rates in 2022, the growth of the big Silicon Valley platforms have almost completely stalled. In search of an answer, Silicon Valley is making a big bet on AI, overwhelming users with automated answers that hallucinate and mislead at every turn. It’s becoming harder and harder for the average person to buy what the digital utopians are selling.The response to this assault on our institutions might be a kind of Digital New Deal – a public plan for institutions in the AI era. This 21st-century economics must go well beyond solving for mass unemployment. Reconstructing the institutional foundations of public goods such as journalism, libraries and higher education requires more than just restoring the public funds stripped by Doge. It will require forceful assertions about their regulatory value in the face of a fully automated slop state. Governments come and go, but free and open institutions are critical to the functioning of democracy. If we make the mistake of misrecognizing digital platforms for public institutions, we will not easily reverse Doge’s mistakes.

      Mike Pepi is a technologist and author who has written widely about the intersection between culture and the Internet. His book, Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia, was published by Melville House in 2025 More

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      Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is the ultimate betrayal of his base | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”, which will eviscerate the living standards, healthcare and aspirations of his white, working-class base, conclusively draws the curtain down on his Maga populist conceit, the most elaborate charade in recent American political history.The price will be staggering: $1tn in cuts to Medicaid; throwing 17 million people off health coverage closing rural hospitals and women’s health clinics; battering food assistance for families, children and veterans; the virtual destruction of US solar and wind energy manufacturing; limiting access to financial aid for college; and, according to the Yale Budget Lab, adding $3tn to the national debt over the next decade, inexorably leading to raised interest rates, which will depress the housing market. These are the harsh, brutal and undeniable realities of Trumpism in the glare of day as opposed to his carnival act about how he will never touch such benefits.The president’s Maga populism has been a collection of oddities reminiscent of PT Barnum’s museum on lower Broadway before the civil war that exhibited a 10ft tall fake petrified man, the original bearded lady and the Fiji mermaid, the tail of a large fish sewn on to a bewigged mannequin. Trump attached plutocracy to populism to construct the Maga beast. But after the passage of the bill, the Fiji mermaid that is Maga has come apart at the seams, the head separated from the tail.“I just want you to know,” Trump said as he signed the bill, “if you see anything negative put out by Democrats, it’s all a con job.” He claimed the law was the “single most popular bill ever signed”. It is, in fact, the most unpopular piece of legislation since George W Bush proposed partial privatization of social security, which he abandoned without a single congressional vote. A Quinnipiac poll showed 53% opposing Trump’s bill, with only 27% support – 26 points underwater.At a meeting where Trump lobbied Republican House members to vote for his bill, he told them it would not cut Medicaid because that would damage their electoral prospects. “But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one Republican member complained to the publication Notus. In response to the obvious contradiction, a White House spokesperson issued a statement that the bill would “protect Medicaid”. Problem solved.Even if Trump didn’t actually know what was in his bill, too bored to pay attention to minute details or even if he was pulling a con, he coerced the Republicans into walking the plank. If he didn’t know, they certainly knew what was in the bill and they hated it. But they feared his retribution if they did not vote for it, even though it would severely harm their base and trample their own principles. The Freedom Caucus of far-right House members who boldly declared that the debt was the hill they would die on simply folded.The Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri strenuously objected to the Medicaid cuts he warned would devastate rural hospitals: “I am confident it will not be put on the floor as it is currently. Something will change.” Then, after some minor changes, he said: “I’m going to vote yes on this bill.”The Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, up for re-election in 2026, decried the Medicaid cut to his constituents. Trump threatened to primary him. Tillis all but said: you can’t fire me, I quit. “Great News!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Tillis’s seat would likely be lost to the Democrats, but the offender was dispatched; another problem solved.The final holdout, the Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, teetered until the last minute as the decisive vote. “We are all afraid,” she said in April about the Republican senators’ fear of Trump’s retaliation. “Retribution is real … I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.” If she had voted against the bill, it would have failed. She used her exquisite position to gain some protection for rural hospitals and food assistance in Alaska, as well as tax credits to about 150 Alaskan whaling captains. Yet one-third of Alaskans receive healthcare under Medicaid and 35,000 would lose coverage, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Murkowski was willing to trade small pieces to lose the larger ones. “Did I get everything I wanted? Absolutely not,” she said. She voted in favor. “Do I like this bill? No,” she said, adding with a passive-voice euphemism that, “in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.” She acted like an alderman, exclusively focused on her tiny district, the rest be damned. Even then, her vote helped strip tens of thousands of her constituents of basic necessities, food and healthcare above all.Murkowski’s capitulation affirmed Trump’s view of human nature, that in the end the narrowest selfishness will win out over everything else. At the signing ceremony, Trump singled her out for getting “something”: “Right, Lisa? … You are fantastic!” He had succeeded in getting her to betray her fundamental beliefs on his behalf. He harpooned her for a whaling crew.Trump lies constantly, but has never concealed his intentions. Since 12 January 2016, at a rally in Iowa, Trump has recited a song dozens of times called The Snake, about a kindly woman who nurses back to health a frozen snake, who responds by biting her. When she asks why the snake has poisoned her:
      Oh shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin
      You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.
      Trump explained that the song is part of his demonization of immigrants and Muslims, initially aimed at Syrians, whom he suggested on a talkshow a few months later might commit a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. “Bad things will happen – a lot of bad things will happen. There will be attacks that you wouldn’t believe. There will be attacks by the people that are right now that are coming into our country, because I have no doubt in my mind.”Trump apparently ignored a cease and desist letter from the children of the author of the song’s lyrics, an extraordinary artist, composer, music producer, playwright and civil rights activist, Oscar Brown Jr, who meant it as a parable for the danger of not recognizing evil for what it is. His poem was turned into a minor Motown hit by the soul singer Al Wilson.Time and again, rally after rally, Trump told his worshipful acolytes that he would betray them. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in. When they heard him recite those words, they interpreted them to mean that he would be their protector. But the story is of deception in plain sight. The snake will betray the one who takes him in, who does not understand that the snake’s nature is to be a snake.Trump appears to believe everyone betrays everyone all the time. It is evidently his rule for living. If he didn’t betray, he would have to be trustworthy. For him to behave in a trustworthy way would undermine his apparent understanding of reality: everyone cheats, lies and steals. If they haven’t, it’s because they either would like to but are inhibited by foolish moral or ethical constraints, or they are too stupid or fearful to grasp that it is the only way to act in their interest. Those people are losers, chumps and marks.The wrong question is: whom has Trump betrayed? The right question is: whom hasn’t he betrayed?The story of Trump’s betrayals is an epic, covering his entire career, encompassing his private life and his public one. He betrayed the Polish immigrant construction workers who cleared the way for Trump Tower by underpaying them – or not paying them at all, just as workers have said he stiffed them on many other projects. He has betrayed his brother and nephew, cutting off the sick child’s health insurance. He appears to have betrayed his personal physician, after a bodyguard and Trump lawyer showed up at the doctor’s office to take Trump’s medical records, leaving the doctor feeling as if he had been “raped”. Trump University betrayed its students, who sued him for false advertising, resulting in a $25m settlement. The Trump Foundation was dissolved by court order amid accusations of self-dealing.Trump’s betrayals of the law and the constitution are innumerable. Now, he appears to betray the emoluments clause rapaciously using the presidential office for self-enrichment to the tune of untold billions.Who wouldn’t he betray? He cut off Roy Cohn, who taught him the tricks of intimidation, when he was dying of Aids. Trump, said Cohn “pisses ice water”. Once he betrayed Cohn, there was no one he would not and did not betray. It was inevitable that he would betray Elon Musk, the richest person in the world who thought he was also the cleverest.Trump’s compulsion is to compound his betrayals. He glories in the humiliation of others as the proof of his domination. His fervent fans bask in his acts of degradation against the weak, the powerless, the Other. They cheer his cruelty, his calls for violence, his insults. They think he’s doing it on their behalf. But Trump does nothing on anybody else’s behalf. He has no benevolent, philanthropic or idealistic motives. “I hate them, too,” he said at an Iowa rally on 3 July about Democrats after his bill passed. “I really do. I hate them.” His Maga devotees may love him for the objects of his hatefulness. They don’t register that someone whose nature is to betray everyone will surely betray them. They may not even grasp that their betrayal has already happened. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

      Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast More

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      Threats, delays and confusion: 10 key points to understand another week of Trump tariff turmoil

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      Donald Trump ramped up his trade rhetoric this week, firing off more than 20 letters to governments outlining new tariff rates if agreements aren’t reached by 1 August.In April, Trump announced a 10% base tariff rate and additional duties ranging up to 50% for many other countries, although he later delayed the effective date for all but 10% duties until 9 July after market panic.Trump officials initially suggested they would strike dozens of deals with key economies by the 9 July deadline, but as the 90-day pause ended this week, the president announced a range of new rates for various countries, but delayed their implementation until next month.Here’s what’s happened:

      Trump informed powerhouse suppliers Japan, South Korea and a number of other nations at the start of this week that they will face tariffs of at least 25% starting from August unless they can quickly negotiate deals.

      On Wednesday he announced more tariffs on countries like the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Algeria, as well as a 50% tariff on products from Brazil, tying the move to what he called the “witch-hunt” trial against its former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Trump criticised the trial Bolsonaro is facing over trying to overturn his 2022 election loss. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, threatened to hit back with reciprocal 50% tariff on US goods.

      On Thursday, Trump announced the US would impose a 35% tariff on imports from Canada, despite ongoing negotiations and prime minister Mark Carney’s decision last month to rescind a digital services tax that faced criticism from the US president. Carney said his government would continue to defend Canadian workers and businesses in their negotiations and work towards the 1 August deadline.

      Trump also said on Thursday that a letter would be sent to the European Union, the US’s biggest trading partner, “today or tomorrow”. Last week the EU and US were closing in on a high-level “framework” trade deal that would avert 50% tariffs on all exports from the bloc.

      The steep tariff rates announced throughout the week range from 25-50%, with some of the harshest levies imposed on developing nations in south-east Asia, including 32% for Indonesia, 36% for Cambodia and Thailand and 40% on Laos and Myanmar, a country riven by years of civil war.

      On his first official visit to Asia, US secretary of state Marco Rubio sought to reassure regional powers of Washington’s commitment to them, saying countries there may get “better” trade deals than the rest of the world. Prior to Rubio’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim condemned the tariffs at the opening of an Asean foreign ministers’ meeting.

      Trump has also vowed to implement tariffs of up to 200% on foreign drugs and 50% on copper. Copper prices hit a record high in the US after the announcement.

      US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said he expected several trade announcements this week, but to date the US has secured just two deals with trading partners. The first with the UK, signed on 8 May, includes a 10% tariff on most UK goods, including cars, and zero tariffs for steel and aluminium. A second deal was reached with Vietnam last week that sets a 20% tariff for much of its exports, although the full details are unclear, with no text released.

      On Thursday, Trump said the tariffs had been “very well-received”, adding that the stock market “hit a new high today”.

      Global stock markets have largely shrugged off the latest threats. Analysts say traders now expect a deal or another delay, while investors appear to be waiting until a deal is done or the tariffs kick in. More

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      Trump news at a glance: state department plans mass layoffs in line with president’s ‘America First’ policy

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      The state department has announced that it plans to move forward with mass layoffs as part of the most significant restructuring of America’s diplomatic corps in decades. Officials say the cuts will align their mission with Donald Trump’s “America First” vision.The layoffs, which are commonly called reductions in force (or RIFs), along with voluntary redundancies, will affect nearly 15% of the state department’s domestic staff. A senior department official said that was close to 1,800 people. The restructuring will also see several hundred bureaus merged or eliminated entirely.Meanwhile, in the courts, a judge has blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship order and certified a class-action lawsuit, one of many challenging the order.Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:State department to push ahead with mass layoffsThe state department has gone forward with the layoffs, which were long expected, after the US supreme court sided this week with the Trump administration against a federal judge’s hold on plans for mass government firings that could affect hundreds of thousands of federal employees.“In the coming days, the department will be communicating to individuals affected by the reduction in force,” read a memo attributed to Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary for management and resources, announcing the layoffs. “First and foremost, we want to thank them for their dedication and service to the United States.”Read the full storyJudge blocks Trump’s birthright citizenship orderDonald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship suffered a courtroom defeat on Thursday as a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the controversial executive order nationwide and certified a sweeping class-action lawsuit that could protect tens of thousands of children.Read the full storyBrazil to retaliate against Trump’s 50% tariff threatBrazil is drawing up plans to hit back against 50% US tariffs on the country’s exports, setting the stage for further escalation in Trump’s trade war with Latin America’s largest economy.The US president vowed to impose steep duties on Brazilian goods on Wednesday, accusing the country of conducting a “witch hunt” against its previous president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing a trial over his attempt to overturn his 2022 election defeat.Read the full storyUS will impose 35% blanket tariffs on Canadian imports, Trump says in letterDonald Trump said on Thursday the US would impose a 35% tariff on imports from Canada next month and planned to impose blanket tariffs of 15% or 20% on most other trade partners.In a letter released on his social media platform, Trump told Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, the new rate would go into effect on 1 August and would go up if Canada retaliated.Mahmoud Khalil files $20m claim against Trump officialsLawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist who was detained by the Trump administration for months, have filed a claim for $20m in damages, alleging Khalil was falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted and smeared as an antisemite as the government sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.The filing – a precursor to a lawsuit – names the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the state department. “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Read the full storyTrump’s inaugural fund received $19m from fossil fuel industryThe fossil fuel sector poured more than $19m into the president’s inaugural fund, accounting for nearly 8% of all donations it raised, a new analysis shows, raising concerns about the White House’s relationship with big oil.Read the full storyPlanned Parenthood offices begin rejecting MedicaidAt least two regional Planned Parenthood affiliates have notices on their websites telling patients that, due to a provision in Republicans’ new tax-and-spending bill that “defunds” the reproductive healthcare giant, they can no longer accept Medicaid.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Six Secret Service agents have been suspended without pay after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last July.

      Federal immigration officials carrying out raids on two southern California cannabis farms clashed with protesters, firing chemical munitions to disperse the crowd.

      Trump appointed his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, as interim administrator of Nasa, six weeks after withdrawing the nomination of an Elon Musk ally for the role.

      Explained: why is Trump going after Brazil? Here’s what you need to know about the tariff spat.

      The UN special rapporteur investigating abuses in Gaza, Francesca Albanese, has responded to being sanctioned by the Trump administration, saying “the powerful punishing those who speak for the powerless, it is not a sign of strength, but of guilt”.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 9 July 2025. More

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      Mahmoud Khalil says he filed $20m claim against Trump officials ‘because they think they are untouchable’ – US politics live

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      Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.The Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly voted to adopt an amendment on Thursday that blocks the Trump administration from changing the site of a new FBI headquarters building.Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, cast the deciding vote on the amendment introduced by Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, which bars the Trump administration from spending any of the previously appropriated $1.4 billion in funds to move the FBI anywhere but the site in Greenbelt, Maryland which was chosen in a competetive process.Last week the administration notified congress that it intended to permanently relocate the FBI to the Ronald Reagan building in Washignton, DC instead of proceeding with the planned building in suburban Maryland.Such an “unauthorized use of funds” Van Hollen said in a statement, would have been “directly at odds with what has been passed by the Congress on a bipartisan basis” and would have set “a dangerous precedent for executive overreach into Congress’s power of the purse.”The measure passed 15-14.In her comments before the vote, Murkowski said that she had no information on how the administration had determined that the Reagan building was a secure enough location.“I, for one, would like to know”, Murkowski said, “this is the right place and it’s the right place, not for a Trump administration, not for a Biden administration, not for a Jon Ossoff administration, but this is the right place for the FBI”.Murkowski paused after her reference to the possibility that the Democratic senator from Georgia could be the next president.“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start any rumors”, she added to laughter from her colleagues.Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, has reportedly accepted an invitation to visit Donald Trump during the US president’s expected trip to Scotland this month, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters on Thursday.There is, as yet, no word on the details of the rumored visit to the homeland of Trump’s mother, but Severin Carrell, the Guardian’s Scotland editor, reports that police in Scotland are gearing up for a possible visit to his golf resort in Aberdeenshire.“It is thought Trump will officially open a new 18-hole golf course at his resort on the North Sea coast at Menie, north of Aberdeen, being named in honour of his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump”, Severin reported on Wednesday.“Planning is under way for a potential visit to Scotland later this month by the president of the United States” , assistant chief constable Emma Bond said. Police are bracing for likely large-scale protests, given Trump’s deep unpopularity in his mother’s homeland. There were demonstrations in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen during Trump’s last official visit as president in 2018.That year, Trump was greeted at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland by a Greenpeace activist who paraglided directly over his head trailing a banner that read: “Trump: Well Below Par.” The scene was captured on video by the activist group and journalists.Trump’s first visit to Scotland as a politician came the morning after the UK voted to leave the European Union. He hailed the result that morning, despite the fact that Brexit was opposed by nearly two-thirds of Scottish voters.Trump, whose mother was from a remote part of Scotland (the Western Isles, where 55 percent of voters opposed leaving the EU), seemed oblivious to nationalist sentiment there that day, telling reporters the vote meant, “Basically, they took back their country.”During his first official state visit to the UK as president in 2018, Trump started to claim, falsely, that his 2016 visit had been “the day before” the Brexit referendum, not the day after it, and took credit for having “predicted” the outcome. Trump’s obviously false claim about the date of a foreign visit baffled reporters who accompanied him on the trip.In an Oval Office meeting with Ireland’s leader in 2019, as Brexit negotiations stalled, in part over the issue of the Irish border with the North of Ireland, Trump again repeated his fictional account of having visited Scotland ahead of the Brexit vote, claiming that he had “predicted it” at a news conference at one of his golf courses in Scotland which actually took place the day after the vote.Oregon’s junior senator, Jeff Merkley, announced on Thursday that he is running for re-election next year, citing the threat posed by “Donald Trump and his Maga cronies”.Merkley, a liberal Democrat, will turn 70 before election day in 2026, and his decision to run for a fourth term will not please party activists who are concerned that there are too many older Democrats in Congress. He was first elected to the senate in 2008.Oregon’s senior senator, Democrat Ron Wyden, who is 76, was elected to a fifth term in 2022.In an interview with the Washington Post in 2023, Merkley said that while he did not support calls for a mandatory retirement age for senators: “I do say to my team, when I am at that point, that pivot in my life, where you start to see the changes in my abilities, don’t let me run for re-election.”The Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a claim against the Trump administration seeking $20m in damages, alleging he was falsely imprisoned. The suit comes as Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who has not been charged with a crime, is out on bail and the administration continues to actively seek his removal from the US. The Thursday filing is a precusor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act. “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked,” Khalil said in a statement.Here’s what’s also happened so far today:

      A US district judge issued an injunction blocking Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, certifying a nationwide class of plaintiffs

      Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, pushed back against new evidence from a whistleblower suggesting Department of Justice lawyers were instructed to ignore court orders.

      US senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to flooding in Texas.
      Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and his wife, state senator Angela Paxton, announced on Thursday they were getting divorced.The Texas radio station KUT obtained the petition for divorce filed in Collin county. The petition accuses the attorney general of adultery and says the couple hasn’t lived together since June 2024.Ken Paxton, who is running for US Senate, said on X:
      After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives. I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time.
      Angela Paxton said on X:
      Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage. I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.
      The fossil fuel industry poured more than $19m into Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, accounting for nearly 8% of all donations it raised, a new analysis shows, raising concerns about White House’s relationship with big oil.The president raised a stunning $239m for his inauguration – more than the previous three inaugural committees took in combined and more than double the previous record – according to data published by the US Federal Election Commission (FEC). The oil and gas sector made a significant contribution to that overall number, found the international environmental and human rights organization Global Witness.The group pulled itemized inaugural fund contribution data released by the FEC in April, and researched each contributor with the help of an in-house artificial intelligence tool. It located 47 contributions to the fund made by companies and individuals linked to the fossil fuel sector, to which Trump has voiced his fealty.Six Secret Service agents have been suspended without pay after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last July.The suspensions range from 10 to 42 days, with a loss of both salary and benefits during the absence, the agency’s deputy director, Matt Quinn, told CBS News.The disciplinary action comes nearly a year after the 13 July 2024 shooting at the Butler farm show grounds, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple rounds from an unsecured rooftop, grazing Trump’s ear and killing firefighter Corey Comperatore.Quinn defended the agency’s decision not to dismiss the agents outright, telling CBS News the service would not “fire our way out of this” crisis.“We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation,” he said, adding that suspended personnel would return to reduced operational roles.In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, called Khalil’s claim “absurd,” accusing him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.The state department said its actions toward Khalil were fully supported by the law.Mahmoud Khalil said in a statement that he wanted to send a message that he won’t be intimidated into silence. In lieu of a settlement, Khalil suggested he would accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies.He said of the Trump administration: “They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable. Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil is planning to share any settlement money with others targeted by officials over pro-Palestinian protests.The AP has more on the filing. It says the Trump administration smeared Mahmoud Khalil as an antisemite while it sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.The filing — a precursor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act — names the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the state department.It comes as the deportation case against Khalil, a 30-year-old recent graduate student at Columbia University, continues to wind its way through the immigration court system.Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose role in college campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza led to his detention for over three months in immigration jail, is now seeking $20m in damages from the Trump administration.His lawyers filed a claim Thursday, alleging false imprisonment and malicious prosecution after his March arrest by federal agents. Khalil, a legal US resident, said he suffered severe anguish in jail, and continues to fear for his safety. The government has accused him of leading protests aligned with Hamas, but has not provided any evidence of a link to the terror group.Citing the CNN report about bureaucratic hurdles at Fema, US senator Ron Wyden said homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was responsible for deaths related to the flooding.“Kids in Texas died as a direct result of Kristi Noem’s negligence. She should be removed from office before her incompetence gets Oregonians killed in a wildfire,” Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, posted on the social media network Bluesky.New cost-cutting measures at FEMA may have slowed the agency’s response to the Texas floods, CNN reported on Thursday.
      Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose department oversees FEMA — recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.
      For FEMA, where disaster response costs routinely soar into the billions as the agency contracts with on-the-ground crews, officials say that threshold is essentially “pennies,” requiring sign-off for relatively small expenditures.
      In essence, they say the order has stripped the agency of much of its autonomy at the very moment its help is needed most.
      “We were operating under a clear set of guidance: lean forward, be prepared, anticipate what the state needs, and be ready to deliver it,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN. “That is not as clear of an intent for us at the moment.”
      For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country.
      In the past, FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told CNN.
      But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets. Noem didn’t authorize FEMA’s deployment of Urban Search and Rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN.
      Read the full story here.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, is pushing back amid new disclosures from a fired DoJ lawyer suggesting justice department attorneys were instructed to defy court orders.“We support legitimate whistleblowers, but this disgruntled employee is not a whistleblower – he’s a leaker asserting false claims seeking five minutes of fame, conveniently timed just before a confirmation hearing and a committee vote,” she wrote in a post on X. “As Mr. Bove testified and as the Department has made clear, there was no court order to defy, as we successfully argued to the DC Circuit when seeking a stay, when they stayed Judge Boasberg’s lawless order.”“And no one was ever asked to defy a court order. This is another instance of misinformation being spread to serve a narrative that does not align with the facts. This “whistleblower” signed 3 briefs defending DOJ’s position in this matter and his subsequent revisionist account arose only after he was fired because he violated his ethical duties to the department.”As temperatures soared on a sweltering July day in New York City, shoppers at Queens’s largest mall said they were feeling the heat – of rising prices.“T-shirts, basic t-shirts, underwear, the basic necessities – the prices are going up,” said Clarence Johnson, 48, who was visiting the Macy’s at the Queen Center mall to pick up shirts he ordered online.As Donald Trump presses on with his trade wars, retailers have been passing price increases onto customers. Department stores – which rely on a variety of imported goods and materials, from shoes to t-shirts – have particularly been scrambling to deal with the flux in prices.At Macy’s, signs advertising sales of as much as 60% off original prices were sprinkled around the store – even next to diamond-encrusted necklaces locked inside display cases in the jewelry department. But for some customers, the prices are still too high.The future of the US government’s premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades.Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life.But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed.A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website. The Guardian replicated the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access. More

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      Mahmoud Khalil files $20m claim against Trump administration for false imprisonment

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      Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist who was detained by the Trump administration for months, have filed a claim for $20m in damages against the administration, alleging Khalil was falsely imprisoned, maliciously prosecuted and smeared as an antisemite as the government sought to deport him over his prominent role in campus protests.The filing – a precursor to a lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act – names the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the state department.Khalil, 30, was released from US immigration detention last month after having been held for more than three months over his activism against Israel’s war on Gaza. He has become the most high-profile of the students who have been arrested by the Trump administration for their pro-Palestinian activism.Upon his release, Khalil told reporters: “Although justice prevailed, it’s very long overdue and this shouldn’t have taken three months. I leave some incredible men behind me, over 1,000 people behind me, in a place where they shouldn’t have been.”Asked by the Guardian to respond to allegations made by the Trump administration, which has fought for months to keep him detained, that his pro-Palestinian organizing constituted a national security threat, he said:“Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this. That doesn’t mean there is a right person for this. There is no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide.”Khalil told reporters he was looking forward to returning home to spend time with his infant son, who was born while he was detained. “I can actually hug him,” Khalil said.Khalil’s arrest was widely decried as a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against speech protected by the US constitution’s first amendment. Khalil has not been charged with a crime, and his deportation case is still continuing in immigration court.Trump administration officials had accused Khalil of antisemitism and of pro-Hamas advocacy, although they didn’t provide evidence at any point during his arrest or detention.In an emailed statement to the Associated Press, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, called Khalil’s claim for $20m “absurd”, and accused him of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.Khalil told the AP that the goal of his legal claim is to send a message that he will not be intimidated into silence.“They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”Khalil said he plans to share any settlement money with others targeted in Trump’s “failed” effort to suppress pro-Palestinian speech. In lieu of a settlement, he would also accept an official apology and changes to the administration’s deportation policies. More