Trump administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares54 Views

      in US Politics

      Five key points on how a long-respected US human rights report became a ‘cudgel’ under Trump

      by

      In May, Donald Trump took to the stage at a business conference in Saudi Arabia’s capital, promising that the US would no longer chastise other governments over human rights issues or lecture them on “how to live and how to govern your own affairs”.With the release this week of the US government’s annual report on human rights worldwide, the president has – in part – followed though on that pledge.The report – compiled by the state department – softens its criticism of nations that have sought closer ties with the US president, while alleging “significant” human rights breaches among traditional allies across Europe, all while vastly scaling back criticism of discrimination against minority groups.Hungary and El Salvador receive softer treatmentThe report’s claims of “no credible” human rights abuses in Hungary and El Salvador sit at odds with the state department’s own report from a year earlier, which described the situation in Hungary as “deteriorating”, while highlighting “arbitrary killings”, “enforced disappearance” and “torture” in El Salvador.In April, a delegation of EU lawmakers warned that the rule of law in Hungary is “rapidly going in the wrong direction” under Viktor Orbán’s government. They highlighted threats to press freedom and targeting of minorities. In June a law banning content about LGBTQ+ people from schools and TV was found to violate basic human rights and freedom of expression by a scholar at the European court of justice.Meanwhile, activists and opposition leaders in El Salvador have warned the country is on the path towards dictatorship after its congress scrapped presidential term limits, paving the way for President Nayib Bukele to seek indefinite re-election. Bukele’s hardline approach to crime has been accompanied by an assault on civil society and democratic institutions.Orbán and Bukele have both positioned themselves as Trump adherents – with El Salvador opening up a notorious mega-prison to detain US deportees. Orbán, who came to power in 2010, was once described as “Trump before Trump” by the US president’s former adviser Steve Bannon.European countries singled outFrance, Germany and the United Kingdom are among the European countries singled out as having seen a worsening human rights situation. The picture is a far cry from the previous report, which saw no significant changes.Criticism over the handling of free speech – in particular relating to regulations on online hate speech – was directed at the governments of the UK, Germany and France.The criticism comes despite the US itself moving aggressively to deny or strip visas of foreign nationals over their statements and social media postings, especially student activists who have criticised Israel.Since being returning to power, Trump and his administration have stepped up criticism of traditional allies – in February the vice-president, JD Vance, accused European leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs.The report also singles out Brazil, where Trump has decried the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil, the report says, has “undermined democratic debate by restricting access to online content deemed to ‘undermine democracy.’”Israel-Gaza warThe report’s section on Israel and the Palestinian territories is much shorter than last year’s edition and contains no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis or death toll in Gaza. It acknowledges cases of arbitrary arrests and killings by Israel but says authorities took “credible steps” to identify those responsible.More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza, the Gaza health ministry says, as a result of Israel’s military assault after an attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas in October 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed.Notable omissionsSections within the report highlighting discrimination have been vastly pared back. Any criticism focused on LGBTQI rights, gender-based violence or racial and ethnic violence which appeared in Biden administration editions of the report, appear to have been largely removed.A group of former state department officials called some omissions “shocking,” particularly highlighting the lack of detail on Uganda, which in 2023 saw the passing of some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world, including the death penalty for some homosexual acts.The backlashFor decades, the report has been used as a blueprint of reference for global rights advocacy – but critics have labelled this year’s edition politically driven.“The report demonstrates what happens when political agendas take priority over the facts,” says Josh Paul, a former state department official, adding “the outcome is a much-abbreviated product that is more reflective of a Soviet propaganda.”In April, secretary of state Marco Rubio wrote an opinion piece saying the bureau that prepares the report had become a platform for “left-wing activists,” and vowed that the Trump administration would reorient it to focus on “western values”.State department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the report was restructured to improve readability and was no longer an expansive list of “politically biased demands and assertions”.Democratic party lawmakers, however, have accused Trump and Rubio of treating human rights only as a “cudgel” against adversaries, in a statement released this week.Rubio’s state department has “shamelessly turned a once-credible tool of US foreign policy mandated by Congress into yet another instrument to advance Maga political grievances and culture war obsessions,” said Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.With Reuters More

    • 188 Shares54 Views

      in US Politics

      California governor calls for a special election to introduce new US House maps – live

      by

      “Today is liberation day in the state of California,” Gavin Newsom said, announcing his plans to ask voters to approve new congressional maps in response to a redistricting plan by Texas.To critics who fear a redistricting arms race, Newsom said:
      It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire.
      Other blue states need to stand up.
      While the timing of a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) raid on Thursday outside the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, was announcing a redistricting plan, struck many as an intentional act of intimidation by federal forces, the CBP chief who led the raid claimed during the show of force that he had no ides the governor was there.Video of the raid posted on X by a popular pro-Trump influencer included an interview with Gregory Bovino, a CBP chief in Southern California who has become the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, through his frequent appearances on Fox News and in social media clips produced by influencers and his own agents.“We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians who will do that, we do that ourselves”, Bovino said in the clip.“You know the governor’s inside right there” the person recording the interview noted.“Oh I didn’t- I don’t know where he’s at”, Bovino replied.“He’s about a hundred feet behind us; do you have any comment for him, any message?” the videographer asked.“We’re making Los Angeles and California a safer place”, the CBP chief said, as an armed agent with a digital camera behind him filmed the raid. “We’re going to continue to do that and they can take that one to the bank, and cash it”.Eric Holder, who served as attorney general in the Obama administration and now leads an organization aimed at eliminating politics from the process of drawing congressional districts, endorsed California governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to redraw his state’s map if Texas goes ahead with its plan to draw a new map this year.Here’s how the statement from Holder, the chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee begins:
      Nobody wins a redistricting arms race, least of all the American people. But Trump’s demand for extreme and unjustified mid-decade gerrymanders in Texas and beyond—with too many Republicans ready and willing to be complicit in his orders to predetermine the outcome of the next federal election—has brought a new, dangerous threat to free and fair elections in America. That’s why I support responsible and responsive actions—on a temporary basis—to ensure that the foundations of our democracy are not permanently eroded and to leave a basis for needed reform.
      Governor Newsom’s proposal for a redraw process adheres to that vision. It stands in stark contrast to the power grab unfolding in Texas, by allowing voters a chance to weigh in and, in 2030, returning California to its long-standing commission process.
      “Our democracy is under attack. We have no choice but to defend it,” Holder said, adding that congress should pass “a federal ban against partisan gerrymandering, to ensure that our nation never has to go through this again”.

      As the federal takeover of the DC police continues, the Pentagon said today that all 800 national guard troops have been mobilised – with around 200 soldiers at a time taking turns to assist federal agents and the Metropolitan police department (MPD). Last night protesters heckled federal law enforcement officials as they reportedly stopped dozens of cars at a checkpoint along a busy street in Washington DC – chanting “get off our streets” and “go home, fascists”. The White House said that federal officers made 45 arrests on Wednesday evening.

      Meanwhile, Donald Trump repeated the baseless claim that crime in the nation’s capital is the “worst it’s ever been”, despite data from the justice department showing that DC experienced a 30-year low in violent crime in 2024. Trump also said, again without evidence, that DC officials have created fake statistics to portray the rate of violent crime declining in the city. He added that they are “under investigation”, but didn’t name anyone specifically.

      Also today, DC police chief Pamela Smith issued an executive order that allows the MPD to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents about undocumented immigrants they find during traffic stops. For his part, the president called this “a great step” while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office.

      And looking beyond Washington, the president prefaced his summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on a couple of occasions today. He said that his chief aim was to set up a second meeting with Putin, himself and Volodymyr Zelenskyy all present. “I’d like to see it happen very quickly,” he said.

      Notably, Trump was less forthright when asked if “anything less than an unconditional and immediate ceasefire” would be considered a success at tomorrow’s summit. “We’re going to find out where everybody stands … if it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly, and if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future,” he said.

      The president also made an international cold-call last month to Norway’s finance minister – to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, according to reports today by Norwegian press.

      Finally, and closer to home, California governor Gavin Newsom announced plans to hold a special election to approve new congressional maps in response to a redistricting plan by Texas. “We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire,” he said today at a press conference.

      This comes as Texas Democrats said on Thursday they are prepared to return to the state under certain conditions, ending a nearly two-week-long effort to block Republicans from passing a new congressional map that would add five GOP seats.
      In a statement, the Department of Defense said that all 800 national guard troops deployed this week are now mobilised.Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson underscored that troops will not be arresting people, “but they may temporarily limit the movement of an individual who has entered a restricted or secured area without permission”.About 200 soldiers at a time will support federal law enforcement and the Metropolitan police department (MPD) in the nation’s capital. “They will remain there until law and order has been restored in the district, as determined by the president – standing as the gatekeepers of our great nation’s capital,” Wilson said.Texas Democrats said on Thursday they are prepared to return to the state under certain conditions, ending a nearly two-week-long effort to block Republicans from passing a new congressional map that would add five GOP seats.The lawmakers said they would return as long as the legislature ends its first special session on Friday, which Republicans have said they plan to do. Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has said he will immediately call another special session.The Democrats also said they would return once California introduces a new congressional map that would add five Democratic seats, offsetting the gains in Texas.Gene Wu, chair of the Texas house Democratic caucus, said in a statement that he and his colleagues “successfully mobilized the nation against Trump’s assault on minority voting rights”.“Facing threats of arrest, lawfare, financial penalties, harassment and bomb threats, we have stood firm in our fight against a proposed Jim Crow congressional district map,” he said. “Now, as Democrats across the nation join our fight to cause these maps to fail their political purpose, we’re prepared to bring this battle back to Texas under the right conditions and to take this fight to the courts.”“Today is liberation day in the state of California,” Gavin Newsom said, announcing his plans to ask voters to approve new congressional maps in response to a redistricting plan by Texas.To critics who fear a redistricting arms race, Newsom said:
      It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire.
      Other blue states need to stand up.
      Border patrol has showed up outside Gavin Newsom’s event at the democracy center in Los Angeles.Local news reported that at least one man was arrested, as the governor vowed on X that Democrats would “not be intimidated”.Inside, speakers referenced the enforcement activity. Ann Burroughs, president of the Japanese American National Museum, said the center was built on the site because it was where, in 1942, Japanese American families were forced onto buses that took them to incarceration camps for the duration of the second world war.“What happened in 1942 is not much different from what is happening now,” she said, “as Ice is stalking the streets of our city and the terror that Ice is inflicting on our sisters and brothers in the immigrant community.”Democrats have gathered in Los Angeles in a show of unity in support of the Election Rigging Response Act.Speakers have included labor leaders, a teachers union, the state’s Planned Parenthood head and a member of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission who said she believes mapmaking is best left out of the hands of politicians. But, she said, “extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures”.Jodi Hicks of Planned Parenthood assailed the nine House Republicans from California who supported legislation rolling back reproductive rights: “You take away our freedoms, we’ll take away your seats.”David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was arrested and detained during protests over the administration’s immigration raids in June, said his state is fighting to save the country from “an authoritarian” in the White House.“I trust California voters will save our democracy,” he said.Donald Trump called Norway’s finance minister out of the blue last month to discuss tariffs – and to tell him that he wanted the Nobel peace prize, Norwegian business daily Dagens Næringsliv reported today.“Out of the blue, while finance minister Jens Stoltenberg was walking down the street in Oslo, Donald Trump called,” Dagens Næringsliv reported, citing unnamed sources. “He wanted the Nobel prize – and to discuss tariffs.”This was not the first time Trump had raised the prize in discussions with Stoltenberg, the paper noted.In a comment to Reuters, Stoltenberg said the call was to discuss tariffs and economic cooperation before Trump’s call with Jonas Støre, the Norwegian prime minister. “I will not go into further detail about the content of the conversation,” he added.Several White House officials, including treasury secretary Scott Bessent and trade representative Jamieson Greer, were on the call, Stoltenberg added.Several countries including Israel, Pakistan and Cambodia have nominated Trump for brokering peace agreements or ceasefires, and the president has claimed many times that he deserves the Norwegian-bestowed accolade, which four of his White House predecessors, including Barack Obama, have received.With hundreds of candidates nominated each year, laureates are chosen by the Norwegian Nobel committee, whose five members are appointed by Norway’s parliament according to the will of Swedish 19th-century industrialist Alfred Nobel. The announcement comes in October in Oslo.The White House on 31 July announced a 15% tariff on imports from Norway, the same as the European Union. Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that Norway and the United States were still in talks regarding the tariffs.Hello from the very intentionally chosen National Center for the Preservation of Democracy at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where Gavin Newsom has teased a “major” redistricting announcement.Seated in the front row are several Democratic members of the California congressional delegation including representatives Maxine Waters, Pete Aguilar and Judy Chu and senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, holding signs that say “defend Democracy” and “election rigging response act”.The California governor has vowed to retaliate against Texas’s plan to redraw its maps to give Republicans a five-seat advantage before the 2026 congressional midterms.Beyoncé’s Texas Hold ’em just played on the loudspeaker.Sean Dunn, the Washington DC man who was charged with assault on Wednesday after throwing a sandwich at a federal law enforcement agent, worked for the justice department and has been fired, the US attorney general Pam Bondi said on Thursday.Dunn worked in the department’s criminal division as an international affairs specialist in the office of international affairs, according to a department spokesperson.“If you touch any law enforcement officer, we will come after you,” Bondi said in a post on X. “You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.”That statement was immediately met with ridicule online. The department currently employs Jared Wise, a former January 6 defendant, who urged rioters to kill police officers. Trump issued a blanket pardon on his first day in office to roughly 1,500 people involved in the Capitol riot, many of whom attacked law enforcement.When asked whether “anything less than an unconditional and immediate ceasefire” would be considered a success at Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin tomorrow, the president avoided the question.“All I want to do is set the table for the next meeting, which should happen shortly. I’d like to see it happen very quickly,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out where everybody stands, and I’ll know within the first two minutes … it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly, and if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future.”But yesterday, the president said, unequivocally, that Russia would face “very severe consequences” if Putin does not agree a ceasefire at his initial summit with Trump in Alaska.The president said, once again without evidence, that DC officials have created fake statistics that show the rate of violent crime declining in the city.He added that they are “under investigation”, but didn’t name anyone specifically.“They’re phony crime stats, and Washington DC is at its worst point, and it will soon be at its best point,” he said.The president just called an executive order – signed by DC police chief Pamela Smith – “a great step”. The action, signed today, allows the department to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents about undocumented immigrants they find during traffic stops.Trump didn’t confirm whether he pressured the Metropolitan police department to issue the order, when asked by a reporter in the Oval Office. “I think that’s going to happen all over the country,” he added. More

    • 213 Shares32 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump falsely claims crime in US capital is ‘worst it’s ever been’ as protesters confront federal officers

      by

      Donald Trump falsely claimed that crime in Washington DC is “the “worst it’s ever been” on Thursday, amid an ongoing federal takeover of the city’s police department and deployment of the national guard and federal agents in the city.“Washington DC is at its worst point,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “It will soon be at its best point.” He also baselessly accused DC law enforcement officials of giving “phony crime stats” and said “they’re under investigation”.The president’s comments came after protesters heckled federal law enforcement officials as they reportedly stopped dozens of cars at a checkpoint along a busy street in Washington DC on Wednesday night.About 20 law enforcement officers, some of whom appeared to be from the Department of Homeland Security, pulled over drivers for infractions such as broken taillights and not wearing seatbelts, according to the Washington Post. At least one woman was reportedly arrested as more than 100 protesters gathered and reportedly yelled things like “get off our streets”, according to NBC News. Some protesters began warning drivers to avoid the area, the outlet reported.Nearly 800 national guard troops have begun arriving in the city this week and the Department of Defense said on Thursday that about 200 national guard members at a time will be on the streets to support federal and local law enforcement. The White House says officials have made more than 100 arrests since Trump announced the takeover on Monday. The Metropolitan police department (MPD) said it made 74 arrests on Wednesday and has made 217 arrests since Monday.The chief of the MPD also reportedly issued an executive order on Thursday allowing the department to notify Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents about undocumented immigrants they find during traffic stops. Previously, the department could not report immigrants to Ice if they had not been charged with a crime. Trump on Thursday called it a “great step”, declining to say whether he pressured the police department to enter into the agreement. “I think that’s going to happen all over the country,” he said.DC’s Home Rule Act of 1973 allows the president to take control of the city’s police force for 30 days for “federal purposes” that the president “may deem necessary and appropriate”. Trump has suggested he will seek to extend that past 30 days. Doing so would require authorization from Congress.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, said on Wednesday that his party would not support Trump’s efforts to extend the takeover. “No fucking way,” Schumer said during a podcast interview with Aaron Parnas. “We’ll fight him tooth and nail.”If Congress doesn’t grant the extension, Trump suggested on Wednesday he could declare an emergency to unilaterally extend the takeover.“If it’s a national emergency we can do it without Congress, but we expect to be before Congress very quickly,” Trump said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has portrayed the US capital as a crime-ridden metropolis. However, violent crime in DC hit a 30-year low in 2024 after a spike in 2023.“We don’t live in a dirty city,” Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, told community groups on Tuesday. “We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks. We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed. We have to be clear about our story.”Phil Mendelson, a Democrat serving as the chair of the Washington DC city council, told the Washington Post that despite Trump’s politicization of the takeover, the relationship between law enforcement agencies had actually been collaborative.“I think collaborating with MPD and providing additional resources can only be for the good,” he said. “But the president has a national platform, and he’s painted the city as a cesspool of crime. We know that’s not true, but that is damaging to the city.” More

    • 163 Shares42 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican doesn’t wear seatbelt in DC ‘because of carjacking’ despite data showing decline

      by

      A Republican senator said that he doesn’t wear a seatbelt when he’s driving in Washington DC so he can act more swiftly if he gets carjacked, adding further fuel to repeated rhetoric by the Trump administration that crime is on the rise in the US – despite statistics indicating otherwise.Markwayne Mullin told Fox News on Wednesday that he avoids buckling up, violating local traffic ordinances, so he can “exit in a hurry”.“I’m not joking when I say this. I drive around in Washington DC in my Jeep and, yes, I do drive myself. And I don’t buckle up. And the reason why I don’t buckle up, and people can say whatever they want to, they can raise their eyebrows at me, again, is because of carjacking,” he said.While praising Donald Trump’s controversial deployment of national guard troops to the US capital and a federal takeover of the Metropolitan police department, Mullin said he wouldn’t wear a seatbelt in other cities controlled by Democrats. But he said he did wear a seatbelt in other jurisdictions.“If you look at car theft only, if Washington DC was a state, Washington DC would be three times higher than any other state,” Mullin said. “And we’re talking about a city. And we’re comparing it to full states.”Mullin’s comments come as a war of words over Washington DC’s crime rate continues between supporters and opponents of Trump’s order, which he casts as an effort to combat record-breaking levels of violent crime.“Murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever,” Trump said on Monday. “They say 25 years, but they don’t know what that means because it just goes back 25 years.”Trump also said: “The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogotá, Colombia; Mexico City; or some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on Earth. It’s much higher.”Those stats align with a White House-provided graph unpacking 2024 homicides, revealing a homicide rate of 27.5 per 100,000 inhabitants in Washington – which puts the capital above cities like Bogotá, Colombia (15); Panama City, Panama (15); San José, Costa Rica (13); Mexico City, Mexico (10); Lima, Peru (7.7); and Brasília, Brazil (6.8).But official statistics tell a different story. Homicides dropped to 187 in 2024 from 274 a year earlier – the highest number since 1997. This year, there have been 100 homicides to 12 August, according to the New York Times, a slight decline from 112 at the same date last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCompared with other capitals around the world, as also noted by the New York Times, Washington’s homicide rate is much lower, including in places such as Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with a rate of 67.2 per 100,000 people; Cape Town, South Africa, with 66.8; and Kingston, Jamaica, with 64.2. All have higher homicide rates, according to data compiled by the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian thinktank, in 2023.Trump has claimed that “the number of car thefts has doubled over the past five years, and the number of carjackings has more than tripled”. The city’s dashboard shows carjackings rose for three years, from 2020, before declining in 2024.This year, through 9 August, there were 188 carjackings, compared with 299 during the same time period in 2024, and compared with 607 in 2023, a police spokesperson told PolitiFact. Car theft also dropped 25% from 2023 to 2024.An analysis by the Washington Metropolitan police department, as reported by CNN, has also shown that overall crime in Washington has also decreased in 2025 – in line with the decline seen in other major US cities, such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. More

    • 188 Shares46 Views

      in US Politics

      These rural radio stations are a lifeline for their communities. Trump’s cuts threaten their future

      by

      Since Republicans last month slashed over $1bn in funds designated for public broadcasting, non-commercial TV and radio stations around the country have been reeling.The cuts led the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nearly 60-year-old organization that has long supported local TV and radio stations across the US, to shut down operations entirely, leaving more than 1,500 local stations nationwide without a critical source of income.For rural radio stations that rely heavily on federal grant and matching funds – and that are often the only sources of free and reliable programming in their regions – the consequences are especially dire. Often, these stations are residents’ only reliable avenue for not only news and cultural programming, but also local health and public safety information, including emergency alerts.To understand what this programming means to rural Americans and the hardships communities could face if broadcasts went quiet, the Guardian spoke to two radio stations that serve distinct populations.Here is what they shared.Reaching Spanish-speaking farm workers in rural WashingtonWildfires are a frequent threat in Yakima county, Washington. Rural, hot and dry, the agricultural region can face days on end of poor air quality – an occupational hazard to the thousands of farm workers who work outside, many of whom exclusively speak Spanish.National broadcasters like NPR put out emergency announcements in English, but their information, about an evacuation or unsafe breathing conditions, may go unheard by a Spanish speaker.The local public radio station Radio KDNA has found a way to combat that gap. Built specifically for the region’s Spanish-speaking farm workers in this county where more than half of the population identifies as Latino, the station has developed a system in which DJs translate the English emergency notices into Spanish – live on the air. It’s one of many ways the station, which its director of operations, Elizabeth Torres, says is the only 24-hour Spanish-language public broadcaster in the region, meets the needs of its unique listener base.“Over the years, it has developed a sense of trust with the community,” Torres said.It’s not the only public service Radio KDNA provides. In operation since 1979, the station runs programs focused on public health, highlighting Spanish-language clinics and vaccine drives; occupational health, with guests speaking to the specific concerns of people who work outside and on farms; education, featuring presenters from the local community college; and children’s entertainment, designed explicitly for the many parents in the community juggling work and childrearing.Every week, the Yakima Valley Farmworkers’ Clinic goes on the air for an hour to discuss the services they provide, Torres said. Community health workers will share diabetes prevention information. Sometimes, doctors come on as guests to discuss heart disease, or the importance of maintaining regular flu and Covid vaccinations. They even ran a Spanish-language special on long Covid. “We’re focused on information that will help our community make better decisions,” Torres said.The station produces its own news segments three times a day – two of which are entirely live. In today’s dynamic political environment, these broadcasts are especially valuable for immigrants, who face a daily barrage of information and misinformation about raids and deportations and need help deciphering fact from rumor. KDNA has also partnered with an immigrant services organization that provides legal advice and detention tracking services.“We don’t put out any information on Ice until it’s verified,” Torres said. “We’re trying to minimize misinformation.”Considering the lifestyle and literacy rates of its listener base, KDNA’s broadcasts – and audio as a medium – are designed to be accessible. “You can tune in and out as you’re working or as you’re driving,” she said. “All of our programming is developed in a way that people will understand.”Running such an operation is not cheap, and Torres says that federal funding has played a huge part in the station’s ability to do this work, with 40% of KDNA’s revenue coming from the CPB on average every year. The station already operates on a tight budget, Torres said, with staff members wearing multiple hats. The news director moonlights as the audio tech if the regular engineer is unavailable; the underwriter (who coordinates paid sponsorships) is also the building manager.She fears that the funding cuts could dramatically restrict what is feasible in terms of output. KDNA will probably need to reduce staffing, cut back on community events, and limit the external broadcasts they pay to air, like NPR’s Spanish-language shows, she said. Her biggest concern is if live programming is limited, there may not be an on-air DJ to translate critical alerts.“Families that need to evacuate, they might not get the message,” she said. “That is going to have a real impact.”‘The only voice available’ in Navajo territoryListening to the radio was a big part of Richard Grey’s 1960s childhood. He remembers the voices of AM DJs traveling through his house as he got ready for school in the mornings and listening to the BBC when it came on the air every evening. Not many people who lived on Arizona’s rural Navajo nation had television. Radio was how they got information about their community – and beyond. “It brought the world to us,” Grey said.Today, between limited broadband access and the vast distances residents drive to reach brick-and-mortar resources like libraries or post offices, public radio remains a vital resource for the Navajo nation, which, at over 27,000 square miles spread across three states, is the country’s largest Indian reservation. Since 1989, residents have tuned into KGHR Navajo Public Radio to access everything from Indigenous cultural programming to political commentary to world news. Broadcasting with more than 100,000 watts of power, the station is able to reach almost all residents on the western side of the reservation, which is no small feat in a region defined by challenging geography.Grey, who has worked with the station since 2011, says that makes it an invaluable service: “Phones can’t go down into a canyon or around a mesa, but radio does.”In terms of infrastructure, KGHR is bare bones. It shares its facilities with Greyhills Academy, a high school in Tuba City, and is primarily run by part-time contractors. Its only full-time staff member, announcer Keri Blackrock, came onboard a little over one year ago.View image in fullscreenBut the station’s output is robust. KGHR offers Indigenous cultural programming, including music curated by audio engineer Michael Begay and a Navajo Word of the Day show coordinated by students at the school. It syndicates a wide range of national and international news programs, like Native Voice 1, NPR and the BBC World Service. And it produces its own coverage of local sports games, parades and community events.“Hearing a community member – and a tribal member – go live on the air is very meaningful,” said Begay, noting that announcer Blackstone is herself Navajo. “The audience can go, ‘It’s one of us, a familiar face, a familiar voice.’”By his own account, Begay was a floundering high schooler at Greyhills Academy in the mid-1990s when he wandered into the station. Working as a student DJ gave him a sense of purpose, and when he realized that he couldn’t go on the air if he wasn’t at school, his grades started to improve. He suggests that without KGHR, his life would have taken a very different path – and perhaps even been cut short. “I would be a statistic,” he said.The station also protects public safety. As part of the country’s emergency alert system, it broadcasts vital information about heatwaves, wildfires and floods. For many people on the reservation, KGHR is their only avenue to learn about an evacuation order – like last month, when a wildfire swept across 100,000 acres near the New Mexico border. Knowing rural residents may not have reliable internet or cell service, Blackrock broadcast updates from local tribal police and shared information residents were posting on Facebook on the air.“It’s our job to broadcast incidents so that the community is kept informed and safe,” said Begay.Now, this crucial service is under threat. Almost all of the station’s funding comes from federal sources, said Grey, and CPB is KGHR’s main source of revenue. Going forward, they might need to venture into new territory entirely, like hosting live events, airing paid advertisements for sponsors, or creating digital content for paid subscribers. “I don’t believe we’ve ever really asked for donations,” said Blackrock.Without KGHR, the airwaves will lack Native perspectives on politics and culture, and issues that are underrepresented in the mainstream media, like missing and murdered Indigenous people, will get even less attention. For those reasons, they don’t plan to go off the air – at least, not without a fight.“Tribal radio stations will continue to serve as vital platforms for preserving Indigenous language and cultural traditions,” said Begay. “Our job is ensuring these aspects remain vital and present for future generations.” More

    • 250 Shares52 Views

      in US Politics

      Maga star Katie Miller’s new podcast reeks of toxic femininity. I listened so you don’t have to | Arwa Mahdawi

      by

      Want to hear a cute little story about JD Vance and a Dutch baby? Don’t worry, he didn’t deport it, he cooked one for breakfast. Then he sat down with Katie Miller to tell her all about his baking skills in the very first episode of her brand-new podcast. Which, by the way, I have heroically listened to all 44 excruciating minutes of so that you don’t have to.Miller, for the uninitiated, is a Maga bigwig and married to Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s far-right chief of staff and a man so odious his own uncle once wrote an article calling him a “hypocrite”.A Trump loyalist, Miller has form when it comes to surrounding herself with odious men: she held top communications jobs during Trump’s first term and, earlier this year, became a spokesperson for Elon Musk’s pet project, the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).In May, she absconded to a mysterious role at Musk’s private ventures. I imagine that she was attracted to Musk’s views on free speech (summed up as: I can say whatever I fancy but you can’t) because it’s been reported that when Miller was in university she once stole and threw away student newspapers because she didn’t like the politician they endorsed.Now, she’s launched the Katie Miller Podcast, the first episode of which came out on Monday. Why jump from the highest echelons of government into podcasting? According to Miller, it’s because “as a mom of three young kids, who eats healthy, goes to the gym, works full-time, I know there isn’t a podcast for women like myself”.In a promo video, in which she sits cross-legged on an armchair (with shoes on!) in front of a bookshelf with three books on it, including The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird, she explains that “there isn’t a place for conservative women to gather online” and she wanted to create a space to have “real honest conversations” about what matters to women.Apparently what matters to women is the minutiae of vice-president Vance’s life: the first 44-minute episode, which I suggest she rename Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, was devoted to fawning over a man who has said professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over children.Miller, who is not a natural host, awkwardly serves softball questions (“is a hotdog a sandwich?”) while Vance drones on about what a great daddy and vice-president he is and how much he loves ice-cream and joking around with Marco Rubio. The closest they get to a controversial topic is Vance talking about all the memes he’s inspired and saying that one of his favourites features the pope, Usha Vance and a couch. (There have been online jokes that Vance was intimate with a couch and that he killed the pope.) There is also light mockery of Late Show host Stephen Colbert, whose show recently got cancelled.Other than the memes, the most memorable moment of the episode is when Miller seems to imply that her husband subsists entirely on a diet of mayonnaise, like some sort of anaemic vampire. Stephen Miller also apparently runs around his house with his shoes on, as does JD. Usha, sensibly, takes her shoes off at the front door. All of this is exactly the sort of content I’m sure the busy mums are desperate for.Miller has said she thinks there is a gap in the market for podcasts aimed at conservative women, but the market says otherwise. While young women in the US tend to be progressive, there is a thriving “womanosphere” of anti-feminist media aimed at conservatives. Some of these outlets don’t explicitly cater to young conservative mums in the way that the Katie Miller Podcast says it does, but they’re still aiming for the same general demographic.Gen Z commentator Brett Cooper, for example, who has 1.6 million YouTube subscribers, looks at pop culture with a rightwing slant and her show attracts conservative female listeners. In between hot takes on Justin Bieber, Cooper argues that feminism’s goal is to “make men angry and dominate them”, a worldview that recently got her a gig at Fox News. Then there’s Candace Owens, a conservative conspiracy theorist who recently turned on Maga over the Jeffrey Epstein files fiasco. Owens has 4.57 million subscribers on YouTube and her streams get millions of views. Bari Weiss also has a successful podcast and is currently in talks to sell her “anti-woke” media startup The Free Press for more than $200m to CBS News. The Financial Times recently reported: “Weiss has won over [CBS owner David Ellison] partly by taking a pro-Israel stance … as well as her ability to build a younger, digitally savvy audience.”Then, of course, you’ve got all the trending “tradwife” content on TikTok, where creators such as Estee Williams and Gwen the Milkmaid glorify traditional gender roles. Beyond tradwives, there’s an ecosystem of lifestyle content aimed at young women that camouflages rightwing messages. Think: makeup tutorials with a running commentary about how feminism will make you miserable. Canadian media outlet Global News recently obtained a report prepared by Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre that warns female “extremist influencers” are using popular online platforms to radicalize and recruit women.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“A body of open-source research shows that women in extremist communities are taking on an active role by creating content specifically on image-based platforms with live streaming capabilities,” the report says. “These women foster a sense of community and create spaces that put their followers at ease, thereby normalizing and mainstreaming extremist rhetoric.”While Miller’s podcast may not exactly be revolutionary, it is yet another reminder that Republicans are doing a far better job of spreading their talking points on new media than the Democrats. Sure, the Katie Miller Podcast isn’t an “official” White House podcast, but the humanizing interview with Vance, along with Miller’s deep Maga ties, suggest it is very much Trump-approved. In an interview with the Washington Post published on Tuesday, Miller also insinuated that her podcast is a voter recruitment drive for 2028. “In order to cultivate the future of Maga, we have to talk to women,” she said.As the Republicans stretch their tentacles further into the world of podcasting and TikTok, Democrats are still desperately jumping on cringe memes to appeal to a younger audience while flailing around writing long policy documents about how they can spend millions of dollars manufacturing a “Joe Rogan of the left”. The Katie Miller Podcast may not end up being a hit, but it’s just one small part of a very effective Republican messaging strategy.Of course, the really important issue here – the question I’m sure you’re pondering right now – is whether the veep thinks a hotdog is a sandwich? The answer is: definitely not. Which, coincidentally, is also my answer to the question: will you ever voluntarily listen to the Katie Miller Podcast again? More

    • 225 Shares59 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s DC takeover harkens back to a dark incident 33 years ago – when crime was far worse

      by

      Donald Trump’s takeover of Washington DC’s police department and decision to deploy the national guard was sparked by the assault of a former Doge staffer who nicknamed himself “Big Balls”. Thirty-three years ago, a fatal attack on a congressional staffer also provoked an effort by the federal government to impose law and order on the nation’s capital – but in that case, it came from Capitol Hill.On Monday, Trump said he was taking “a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse. This is liberation day in DC and we’re going to take our capital back.”In 1992, it was the death of 25-year-old Tom Barnes, a staffer for Senator Richard Shelby, a Democrat of Alabama, that prompted the senator to introduce legislation to legalize the death penalty in the district. Shelby, a conservative Democrat who would become a Republican two years later, acknowledged that many DC community leaders had historically been opposed to the death penalty, but argued that the tide had changed – using similar dystopian language as Trump.“The terror that comes with living in a war zone has prompted many residents to reconsider the appropriateness, ethically and legally, of a death penalty,” Shelby wrote in a March 1992 Washington Post op-ed. “… People are using guns to settle arguments about clothes and girlfriends. They are ‘smoking’ others because they feel like it. They will even ‘bust a cap in you’ if they don’t like the way you look at them.”In announcing the police takeover on Monday, Trump cited the attack on Edward Coristine, whom he said was “savagely beaten by a band of roaming thugs” and was “left dripping in blood”. He also referenced the June slaying of Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, an intern for the Republican representative Ron Estes, of Kansas, who was killed by crossfire in a drive-by shooting. Last week, his mother, Tamara Tarpinian-Jachym, told ABC News that she supported Trump’s idea of a federal takeover, which he had threatened in a social media post.There was one key difference between then and now: Trump is painting an exaggerated picture of crime in DC, where violent crime is at a 30-year low. But back in January 1992, Washington really was a crime-plagued city. It was coming off a year that saw 482 murders in 1991, earning it the ignoble title of the murder capital of the US. By contrast, there were 187 homicides last year and the city is on pace for a lower number this year.According to the book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington DC by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood, Barnes, the Shelby staffer, left his home on a Saturday night in January 1992 to go to the corner store to get coffee grounds for the next morning. A group of teenagers approached him and demanded his money or they’d “put a cap” in him. “Leave me alone,” Barnes replied, and turned up the street. One of them shot him in the head, landing him in a coma. He died four days later, marking the 22nd homicide of the new year.A Capitol Outrage, ran the headline on a Tuscaloosa News editorial two days later. “Beset by drug-related violence,” the newspaper declared, “Washington has become a national disgrace, an American embarrassment.”“Tom’s death was the catalyst for my involvement in trying to find solutions to the violent crime that plagues our city,” said Shelby, who had known Barnes since he was a toddler.His bill to impose the death penalty on DC failed, but he did get Congress to vote to force the city to hold a referendum on that fall’s ballot asking Washingtonians to authorize capital punishment. “The criminal justice system is out of control in this city and Congress is not going to turn its back on this issue,” Shelby said. Even some home-rule champions on the Hill voted with Shelby, such as Leon Panetta, a Democratic representative from California.“I really think the District of Columbia ought to handle its own affairs,” said Panetta, who would go on to serve as chief of staff to Bill Clinton, CIA director and defense secretary. “But crime continues to be a very serious problem in the district. Part of it is the urban crisis that is part of every city’s social and economic problems. But I don’t get the sense that the district has a strong commitment to confront this issue.”The DC council had repealed the death penalty in 1981, but the last execution in Washington took place in 1957, years before the city won home rule in 1973.This week, Washington leaders bristled at Trump’s takeover of the police. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a non-voting delegate representing DC in the House of Representatives, called it “an historic assault on DC home rule”, while the mayor, Muriel E Bowser, described it as “unsettling and unprecedented”.There was a similarly visceral reaction to Shelby’s death penalty referendum.“There is something approaching rage among the voters of the district about their disempowerment, about Congress forcing this on us,” said Norton, who was in her first term in Congress at the time. “When you mandate a death penalty vote, you engage that issue directly.”Leading up to the referendum, dozens of ministers denounced it at Sunday sermons, the Washington Post reported.On 3 November 1992 – the same day Democrat Bill Clinton won his first presidential election – Washingtonians rejected the death penalty referendum by a 2-1 margin.“Today the voters sent a powerful message to every member of the US Congress that we are citizens of this country,” the then mayor, Sharon Pratt Kelly, said after the vote, while Norton said the vote showed the city “will not tolerate this interference from the outside”.But the climate of fear around crime had won some support for capital punishment.“In neighborhoods across the city, among rich and poor, black and white, some residents have argued that violence has become so random and brutal that convicted killers should be punished with the ultimate act of retribution, regardless of whether it serves as a deterrent,” the Post reported. But others cited concerns that it would be used unfairly against Black defendants, or didn’t like Congress interfering in the city’s affairs, in their votes against it.Even the city council chair, John Wilson, who supported the death penalty, urged a no vote as a signifier of DC’s independence. (Today, the city hall is named for him.)“It’s not that they didn’t favor the death penalty,” Jaffe and Sherwood wrote of DC voters. “Many black Washingtonians are quite conservative, law-and-order advocates … They just resented a white senator from Alabama telling them that they needed a death penalty to make their streets safe.”Today, there is definitely some resentment at a white president from New York who says he wants to clean up the city streets. And Bowser is using it as a way to rally support for the long-held goal of DC statehood.“My message to residents is this: we know that access to our democracy is tenuous,” she said at a news conference after Trump’s takeover. “That is why you have heard me and many, many Washingtonians before me advocate for full statehood for the District of Columbia. We are American citizens. Our families go to war. We pay taxes, and we uphold the responsibilities of citizenship.”

      Frederic J Frommer, a writer and sports and politics historian, has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, History.com and other national publications More

    • 150 Shares52 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Censorship’: over 115 scholars condemn cancellation of Harvard journal issue on Palestine

      by

      More than 115 education scholars have condemned the cancellation of an entire issue of an academic journal dedicated to Palestine by a Harvard University publisher as “censorship”.In an open letter published on Thursday, the scholars denounced the abrupt scrapping of a special issue of the Harvard Educational Review – which was first revealed by the Guardian in July – as an “attempt to silence the academic examination of the genocide, starvation and dehumanisation of Palestinian people by the state of Israel and its allies.”The writers note that the issue’s censorship is also an example of “anti-Palestinian discrimination, obstructing the dissemination of knowledge on Palestine at the height of the genocide in Gaza”.The special issue of the prestigious education journal was planned six months into Israel’s war in Gaza to tackle questions about the education of Palestinians, education about Palestine and Palestinians, and related debates in schools and colleges in the US, as the Guardian previously reported.“The field of education has an important role to play in supporting students, educators, and policymakers in contextualizing what has been happening in Gaza,” the journal’s editors wrote in their call for abstracts – which came against the backdrop of the devastation of Gaza’s educational infrastructure, including the shuttering of hundreds of schools and destruction of all of the territory’s universities.More than a year later, the special issue was just about ready – all articles had been edited, contracts with most authors had been finalized, and the issue had been advertised at academic conferences and on the back cover of the previous one. But late in the process, the Harvard Education Publishing Group, a division of the Harvard Graduate School of Education which publishes the journal, demanded that all articles be submitted to a “risk assessment” review by Harvard’s general counsel – an unprecedented demand.When the authors protested, the publisher responded by abruptly cancelling the issue altogether. In an email obtained by the Guardian, the group’s executive director, Jessica Fiorillo, cited what she described as an inadequate review process and the need for “considerable copy editing” as well as a “lack of internal alignment” about the special issue. She said that the decision was not “due to censorship of a particular viewpoint nor does it connect to matters of academic freedom”.The authors and editors flatly rejected that characterization, telling the Guardian that the cancellation set a dangerous precedent and was an example of what many scholars have come to refer to as the “Palestine exception” to academic freedom.“The decision by HEPG to abandon their own institutional mission – as well as the responsibilities that their world-leading stature demands – is scholasticide in action,” the dozens of scholars who signed the recent letter also wrote, using a term coined by Palestinian scholars to describe Israel’s “deliberate and systematic destruction” of Palestine’s educational system.“It is unconscionable that HEPG have chosen to publicly frame their cancellation of the special issue as a matter of academic quality, while omitting key publicly-reported facts that point to censorship.”Arathi Sriprakash, a professor of sociology and education at the University of Oxford and one of the letter’s signatories, told the Guardian that the special issue’s cancellation has mobilised so many education scholars “precisely because we recognise the grave consequences of such threats to academic freedom and academic integrity”.“The ongoing genocidal violence in Gaza has involved the physical destruction of the entire higher education system there, and now in many education institutions around the world there are active attempts to shut down learning about what’s happening altogether. As educationalists, we have to remain steadfast in our commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and learning without fear or threat.”‘Assault on academic freedom’The ordeal around the special Palestine issue played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s crackdown on US higher education institutions’ autonomy on the basis of combating alleged antisemitism on campuses.Harvard is the only university that has sued the administration in response to it cutting billions of dollars in federal funds and other punishing measures it has unleashed on universities. But internally, Harvard has pre-empted many of the administration’s demands, including by demoting scholars, scrapping initiatives giving space to Palestinian narratives and adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism that critics say is antithetical to academic inquiry.In conversations with the Harvard Educational Review editors, the journal’s publisher acknowledged that it was seeking legal review of the articles out of fears that their publication would prompt antisemitism claims, an editor at the journal said.Harvard is reportedly close to finalizing a settlement with the Trump administration along the lines of those reached by other top universities.Thea Abu El-Haj, a Palestinian-American anthropologist of education at Barnard College and one of 21 contributors to the cancelled special issue, criticized the university’s handling of the matter as yet another sign of institutional capitulation.“If the universities – or in this case a university press – are not willing to stand up for what is core to their mission, I don’t know what they’re doing,” she told the Guardian last month. “What’s the point?”A spokesperson for the Harvard Graduate School of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest letter but in an earlier statement to the Guardian wrote that the publisher “remains deeply committed to our robust editorial process”.Last month, the free speech group PEN America also condemned the special issue’s cancellation as a “blatant assault on academic freedom”.“Canceling an entire issue so close to publication is highly unusual, virtually unheard of,” Kristen Shahverdian, the program director for the group’s Campus Free Speech initiative, said in a statement.“Silencing these scholarly voices robs academics, students, and the public of the opportunity to engage with their insights. It also sends a chilling message in the context of the Trump administration’s unrelenting pressure on Harvard University and mounting political interference in higher education, including efforts that target scholarship on Palestine.” More