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      Four deputies to New York mayor resign in fallout over dropped corruption charges

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      Four deputies to New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, resigned on Monday as the growing chaos following a justice department request to drop corruption charges against him, widely seen as a reward for his help with Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, engulfs his three-year-old administration.According to reports, four of Adams’ deputies – first deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer, deputy mayor for operations Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for health and human services Anne Williams-Isom, and deputy mayor for public safety Chauncey Parker – said they were stepping down.“I am disappointed to see them go, but given the current challenges, I understand their decision and wish them nothing but success in the future,” Adams said in a statement.Torres-Springer, Williams-Isom and Joshi issued a joint statement, citing “the extraordinary events of the last few weeks” and “oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families” as what led them to the “difficult decision” to leave.Parker said the role was an “honor of a lifetime”.The deputies’ likely departure was first reported by WNBC and the New York Times on Monday, both citing sources within Adams’ administration.A justice department request to drop charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions against Adams last week led to a mutiny by prosecutors in New York who brought the case. At least seven prosecutors have resigned rather than comply with the request.According to WNBC, Adams held a Zoom call on Sunday with at least three of his deputies who expressed their intention to resign. The Democratic mayor is facing mounting calls for his own resignation, first over corruption charges filed last summer, and now over their resignations.Adams has pleaded not guilty, denied any wrongdoing and rejected calls for his resignation. He has also indicated he believes the charges were brought in retaliation for criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies, blaming them for the city’s struggles with absorbing tens of thousands of new arrivals.Adams has reportedly agreed to some cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) immigration agents, including allowing federal authorities to restart operations on Rikers Island, which holds the city’s largest jail.The mayor has also rejected accusations that dropping the federal charges against him would amount to making him a political prisoner of the Trump administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“No matter what they write, no matter all those who are tripping over themselves to state who I am and who I am going to be beholden to and how I am no longer independent, I know who I am,” Adams said on Sunday.Adams said that he is “going nowhere” despite protests calling for his removal by the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul.“And I want you to be clear, you’re going to hear so many rumors and so many things, you’re going to read so much,” Adams told a church congregation on Sunday. “I am going nowhere. Nowhere.” More

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      Netanyahu seeks to draw Trump into future attack on Iranian nuclear sites

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      Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that, with Donald Trump’s support, his government will “finish the job” of neutralising the threat from Iran, amid US reports that Israel is considering airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites in the coming few months.Trump has said he would prefer to make a deal with Tehran, but also made clear that he was considering US military action if talks failed, and his administration has laid down an early maximalist demand: Iranian abandonment of its entire nuclear programme.“All options are on the table,” the US national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told Fox News on Sunday. The new administration will only talk to Iran, Waltz added, if “they want to give up their entire programme and not play games as we’ve seen Iran do in the past in prior negotiations”.Earlier this month, Trump offered the Iranian regime a stark choice.“I would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear,” he told the New York Post. “I would prefer that to bombing the hell out of it.”In politics as in business, Trump’s vaunted “art of the deal” has relied heavily on bluster and threats, but analysts question how well that will work with Tehran. They also warn that the window for a diplomatic resolution to the standoff with Tehran will get narrower with each passing month, as Iranian nuclear capabilities progress, and Netanyahu works to persuade Trump to participate in joint strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities while it is at its most vulnerable.Israel’s prime minister has tried and failed to convince successive US administrations to take part in military action against Iran, including Trump’s. During his first term in the White House, Trump declined, in line with his aim of keeping the US out of foreign wars.In 2018, however, Trump did fulfil another Netanyahu request, withdrawing the US from a three-year-old multilateral agreement that had constrained Iran’s programme in return for sanctions relief. Since then, Iran has pushed forward with nuclear development and now produces increasing amounts of 60%-enriched uranium, which means it is a small technical step away from the production of weapons-grade fissile material.Tehran insists it has no intention of making a nuclear weapon and remains a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could upend that policy if Iran’s nuclear sites came under threat.Israel and Iran launched a series of tit-for-tat attacks on each other last year, culminating in substantial Israeli airstrikes on 25 October that inflicted significant damage on Iran’s air defences.That damage, combined with Israel’s crippling campaign over the past year against Iran’s most important ally in the region, Hezbollah, has left Iran in its most militarily vulnerable state for decades.View image in fullscreenStanding alongside the new US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Sunday, Netanyahu made clear he wanted to take advantage of that vulnerability.“Over the last 16 months, Israel has dealt a mighty blow to Iran’s terror axis. Under the strong leadership of President Trump, and with your unflinching support, I have no doubt that we can and will finish the job,” he said.US intelligence agencies have been briefing reporters over the past week that they believe Israel is likely to attack Iranian nuclear sites in the first half of 2025. But the intelligence assessments also underlined Israeli reliance on US support in the form of aerial refuelling, intelligence and reconnaissance. US officials also said such strikes would, at most, set back Iran’s programme by a few months, and could trigger Tehran’s decision to take the decisive step towards making weapons-grade uranium.Whatever the misgivings in Washington, the Trump administration approved the sale earlier this month of guidance kits for bunker-busting BLU-109 bombs, likely to be essential in inflicting damage on Iran’s most deeply buried enrichment plant at Fordow.Netanyahu was the first foreign visitor to be invited to the White House after Trump’s re-election, and according to the Washington Post, the two leaders discussed “several possible levels of American backing, ranging from active military support for a kinetic strike – such as intelligence, refuelling or other assistance – to more limited political backing for a coercive ultimatum”.Raz Zimmt, a research fellow and Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said there was another clock ticking on diplomacy with Iran. Under the 2015 nuclear agreement, its remaining signatories, including the UK, France and Germany, can trigger a “snap back” of all international sanctions on Iran, but that leverage expires in October this year, giving European capitals the options of “use it or lose it”. If the mechanism is triggered, it could lead to a further escalation, Zimmt said.“I think there is a very limited diplomatic window of opportunity until August or September, to reach some kind of settlement between Iran and the US,” he said. “If there is no agreement by then … I think it will be much easier for Netanyahu to get not just a green light [from Washington] but perhaps some kind of military capabilities which will make it easier for Israel to achieve a broader and more effective impact.”Netanyahu regularly describes Trump as the “best friend” Israel ever had in the White House, a description echoed by Rubio and other administration officials, but that friendship will be put to a decisive test as Israel continues to press the case for an attack on Iran.Ariane Tabatabai, a Pentagon policy adviser in the Biden administration, said it would fuel “tension between the ‘restraint’ camp in the administration and the more traditional Republicans who are more inclined toward a more forceful approach to Iran”.“It’s not clear yet in these early days which group will have more influence in the inter-agency process and ultimately drive policy, but that’ll be a factor as well.” Tabatabai said.Trump prides himself in keeping the US out of foreign wars, but he has shown himself ready to take military action against Tehran, ordering the assassination by drone of a Revolutionary Guards commander, Qassem Suleimani, in Baghdad in January 2020.Saudi Arabia is reportedly offering to mediate to avoid a conflagration, but even if Trump wanted to hammer out a deal, argued Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, Trump’s browbeating style of negotiation could easily backfire when it came to Tehran.“The Trump style is he goes in heavy,” Vatanka said. “But Ali Khamenei has to be extremely careful how he responds to Trump so his personal image is not damaged.”“Iran has been weakened in the region – no doubt about it – but they still claim to be leading proponents of the Islamic cause who stand up to western bullying,” he added. “So what might work with certain countries in Europe or in Latin America will not necessarily work with the Iranian regime.” More

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      Trump administration firing hundreds of FAA employees despite four deadly crashes in four weeks

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      The Trump administration has begun firing hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), including some who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure, despite four deadly crashes since inauguration day.According to the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (Pass) union, “several hundred” workers received termination notices on Friday.Many of the workers were probationary employees, those employed for less than a year and lacking job protections, which makes them low-hanging fruit for the Trump administration’s streamlining efforts.According to the US office of personnel management, there are about 200,000 probationary employees within the federal government.The firings at the FAA do not include air traffic controllers, but did appear to include engineers and technicians.A spokesman for the union said non-probationary technicians had been fired, citing of a figure of less than 300 roles so far. The positions terminated include maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, environmental protection specialists, aviation safety assistants and management administration personnel.Former FAA air traffic controller Dylan Sullivan claimed on social media that agency personnel who were terminated “maintain every piece of equipment that keeps flying safe, from the radars to the ILS, to ATC automation”.Job cuts at the FAA are likely to raise concerns. The agency has struggled to recruit air traffic controllers in recent years. An increase in recruitment during the previous two administrations was hobbled by budget cuts that limited training and certification.The move also comes less than three weeks since a midair collision between an army helicopter and a civilian jet over Washington DC that killed 67 people. Initial reports suggested there was just one air traffic controller working both civilian and military flights in the notoriously busy airspace at the time of the collision.Since then, seven people died when a plane crashed near Philadelphia; 10 died when another crashed in Alaska; and one person died when the landing gear on a private plane belonging to Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil failed as it landed and crashed into another parked aircraft.On Monday, a Delta aircraft flipped over when arriving at Pearson international airport in Toronto, Canada, with 80 people onboard. Early reports suggested all survived.The Pass union, which represents more than 11,000 FAA and Department of Defense workers who install, inspect and maintain air traffic control systems, posted on its website: “Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety.”David Spero, national president of Pass, said on X of the fired employees: “They are our family, friends, neighbors. Many are veterans. It is shameful to toss aside dedicated public servants.”Spero added that the move was “especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month”.The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said on X that he “talked to the DOGE [‘department of government efficiency’] team” and “they are going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system”. Aviation experts have long pointed to outdated air traffic control systems used by the FAA as a source of concern.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDoge head Elon Musk later reposted Duffy, saying his department will “aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system”.Probationary employees targeted by Doge have little recourse to employment tribunals.On Sunday, it was reported that some probationary employees with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were let go and then reinstated. The Department of Energy later said that fewer than 50 were removed from “primarily administrative and clerical roles”.Federal News Network, a federal government news source, said it had obtained a termination letter to an employee at the Department of Agriculture that indicated that the onus is on the employee to demonstrate why they should not be fired.“Until the probationary period has been completed, a probationer has ‘the burden to demonstrate why it is in the public interest for the government to finalize an appointment to the civil service for this particular individual.’ The agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest. For this reason, the agency informs you that the agency is removing you from your position.”Sullivan, the former FAA air traffic controller, said in his social media post: “FAA technicians undergo years of specialized training to maintain mission critical systems and cannot be replaced quickly. In the 30 years since I began my controller career, we have never had a surplus of technicians and engineers.“Once our aviation safety infrastructure is compromised, it will take decades to bring it back. Money will not be saved and lives may be lost.” More

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      Trump administration files first supreme court appeal over firing of government watchdog

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      Donald Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to approve the firing of the head of a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers in the first appeal of Trump’s new term and a key test of his battle with the judicial branch.Hampton Dellinger, the head of the office of the special counsel (OSC), is among the fired government watchdogs who have sued the Trump administration, arguing that their dismissals were illegal and that they should be reinstated.The OSC is an independent federal agency that serves as “a secure channel for federal employees to blow the whistle by disclosing wrongdoing”.It is also intended to enforce the Hatch Act, a 1939 law designed to ensure that government programs are carried out in a nonpartisan way, and to enforce a merit system by investigating and prosecuting racial discrimination, partisan political discrimination, nepotism and coerced political activity.Dellinger has said his office’s work was “needed now more than ever”, noting the “unprecedented” number of firings, in many cases without any specified cause, of federal employees with civil service protections in recent weeks by the Trump administration.On Wednesday, the federal judge Amy Berman Jackson reinstated Dellinger to his position pending a 26 February court hearing, writing that the language of the 1978 law that created Dellinger’s position “expresses Congress’s clear intent to ensure the independence of the special counsel and insulate his work from being buffeted by the winds of political change”.According to that law, the special counsel “may be removed by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office”.As the Trump administration implements sweeping firings throughout the federal government, Dellinger has argued that his dismissal, via a one-sentence email that did not specify the cause, was unlawful.Now, the Trump justice department has petitioned the supreme court to undo Jackson’s order, arguing that allowing a judge to reinstate an agency head for two weeks, pending a 26 February hearing on the case, is an impermissible check on presidential power.“Until now, as far as we are aware, no court in American history has wielded an injunction to force the president to retain an agency head,” Trump’s acting solicitor general, Sarah M Harris, wrote in the brief, obtained by the Associated Press on Sunday.The case is not expected to be docketed until after the supreme court returns from the Presidents’ Day holiday weekend, meaning the justices will not respond until Tuesday at the earliest.The Trump administration argues in its brief that letting the order in Dellinger’s case stand could “embolden” judges to issue additional blocks in the roughly 70 lawsuits the Trump administration is facing so far.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt notes some of the dozen or more cases where judges have slowed Trump’s agenda, including by ordering the temporary lifting of a foreign aid funding freeze and blocking workers with Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” team from accessing treasury department data for now.A supreme court ruling in favor of the Trump administration in the Dellinger case would overturn decades of precedent, legal experts have said. Conservative Trump supporters have been pushing for the supreme court to overturn the 1935 supreme court ruling protecting Congress’s power to shield the heads of independent agencies from being fired by a president.“Since my arrival at OSC last year, I could not be more proud of all we have accomplished,” Dellinger said in a statement to Politico last week. “The agency’s work has earned praise from advocates for whistleblowers, veterans, and others. The effort to remove me has no factual nor legal basis – none – which means it is illegal.”The office of the special counsel is separate from justice department special counsels, who are appointed by the attorney general for specific investigations, such as Jack Smith.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      IRS reportedly preparing to give Musk’s Doge agency access to taxpayer data

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      The US federal tax collection agency is reportedly preparing to give a team member of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which has already gutted several federal agencies and sparked multiple lawsuits, access to personal taxpayer data.The New York Times and the Washington Post both reported early on Monday that the Internal Revenue Service had received a request for access to a classified system that contains sensitive personal financial records.The request, which is reportedly under review, would give Doge officials “broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets, including tax returns”.One of these, the integrated data retrieval system (IDRS), gives tax agency employees the ability to see IRS accounts and bank information, the Washington Post reported.“Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”Fields added that Musk’s controversial program “will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard-earned tax dollars on”.The Doge team member is reported to be software engineer Gavin Kliger, who is a staff member at the office of personnel management, which manages the US civil service.The New York Times reported that Kliger, 26, one six young programmers hand-selected by Musk, was working out of IRS headquarters on Thursday and would be assigned as a senior adviser to the acting IRS commissioner, Doug O’Donnell, giving him broad access to its systems.Kliger’s primary focus at the IRS is to provide engineering assistance and IT modernization consulting, the request to the agency said.Prior efforts by Doge members to access treasury department data have been pushed back. Nineteen state attorneys general have sued to block the Trump administration’s policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” to the access that department’s payment systems.Doge incursions into the US tax collection agency come as the agency is preparing to lay off thousands of workers hired by the previous Biden administration.Last week, Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, said last week he hoped to upgrade the technology at the IRS. Bessent told Fox Business he wanted to improve collections, privacy and customer service.“I don’t think there’s anyone, anyone in the country, who thinks that they – that the IRS has achieved its potential in either of those three,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Doge-led sweep through federal agencies, including USAid and the Department of Education, faces time constraints. Musk and his team have 120 days before they are required to make federal employment declarations.According to a draft of the IRS memorandum obtained by the Post, Kliger is set to work at the IRS for that period, though his employment can be renewed for the same duration.The memo said the agreement is for Kliger to keep any tax return information confidential, to keep it safe from unauthorized access and to delete it from his records after he finishes his term at the IRS, the outlet said.According to a Government Accountability Office report, the government spent around $90bn in 2019 on information technology, with most of that spent on operating and maintaining legacy systems that are in some cases half a century old and vulnerable to hackers.IRS systems are among the oldest – many were built using computer coding language from the 1960s – so overhauling the IT is broadly in line with the Doge team mandate to modernize and synchronize systems across departments. More

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      ‘It comes from racism’: immigrant workers on Trump’s deportation push

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      Donald Trump has ramped up anti-immigration fervor into his second presidency, promising mass deportations, pushing to increase arrests and bolstering public relations efforts to amplify arrests. The moves have sent a wave of terror through the undocumented worker community that underpins large parts of the US economy.“Every day I wake up and walk out the door, I go with the hope of going to work, but with the fear of not being able to come back,” said a construction worker and single parent in Texas who obtained immigration protection under the Biden administration. She requested to remain anonymous due to fears about her immigration status.“Every day I worry if something happens, who will take my kids,” she said. “I have only one child born in the US. They are the only one who might be able to return, but me and the other kids would not be able to come back.”She claimed that since Trump took office for his second term, there had been fewer opportunities to work construction jobs given the increased fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids at workplaces.Despite being in the US for 10 years and constantly trying to obtain documentation, she explained it took her experiencing weeks of wage theft to be able to get documentation through the deferred action program, which provides temporary status and work authorization to immigrants who have been victims of labor abuses.“Unfortunately, these next few years will be years of fear, years of silence,” she said. “I believe the anti-immigrant pushes are racist. People have been taken away without criminal records. We used to have the ability to pay fines before because we didn’t have criminal records, but I’ve heard from other immigrants, anyone being taken into custody by Ice, regardless of their situation, will be deported.”Trump has signed an executive order to allocate military resources at the US border with Mexico and opened Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba to the detention of undocumented immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security also rolled back a policy of restricting Ice arrests at sensitive locations such as hospitals, places of worship and schools and the agency is pushing to recruit IRS agents to assist in immigration enforcement. The administration is also reportedly planning to reopen family detention centers.View image in fullscreenThe changes come as Trump campaigned with misleading and false statements about immigrants, portraying them as criminals and taking away jobs, including making a baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.Despite this rhetoric fomenting xenophobic sentiments, an October 2024 report by the Economic Policy Institute on the benefits of immigration to the US cited the enabling of economic growth as the US-born workforce declines, and the payment of nearly $100bn annually in taxes, and noted mass deportations actually result in job losses for US-born workers due to reduced local demand output.Several industries rely heavily on immigrant workers. Nearly 2.9 million immigrants, the most in any occupation group, are employed in construction and extraction, comprising 34% of employment in these occupations in the US.The Guardian spoke with several immigrant workers in construction about their experiences and fears caused by Trump’s immigration policies and the anti-immigrant sentiments stoked by his rhetoric and policies.Another undocumented construction worker in Texas said there is a “constant fear” in going to work every day that his workplace will be raided by Ice or that he will return home to find his family, the majority of whom are undocumented, taken away.“It is a constant fear. It’s something we can’t take from our minds, every instance of the day,” they said. “My main worry is there will be one day where my family might be taken away from me and be sent back to Mexico.”Trying to acquire legal documentation has been “almost impossible”, they added. “The reason behind these policies, it comes from racism. The majority of immigrants aren’t criminals. Like myself, a lot of immigrants come to this country to be able to fulfill their dreams, to be able to work. We’re humans and we have rights. The things we go through when being held in immigration detention, unless you live them, you won’t be able to understand it.”Andres Surquia of Georgia currently has immigration protection through deferred action – a government policy that allows certain undocumented immigrants to work and avoid deportation for two-year periods.“I’m scared because Trump has said he wants to remove deferred-action protections, which took me so long to get,” he said. “As immigrants, we come into this country to work and we want to be respected and protected.”The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, which represents 140,000 workers in the US and Canada, pushed to secure deferred-action immigration protections for workers experiencing labor abuses in construction for the past several years under the Biden administration.“It was one of the main pillars we put forth as a union, in coalition with other unions, that really view immigration as a working-class issue,” said the IUPAT general president, Jimmy Williams. “Now, under the Trump administration it’s going to go back to all these workers having no recourse, and the employers continuing to be able to use their status as a way to keep them further and further from being able to speak out.”Immigration is a labor and economic issue, Williams said. The union views it as a responsibility to fight and defend these workers because they are their union members. But he expressed disappointment with Democrats whom he feels have so far failed to support these workers.“Where’s the resistance?” Williams asked. “When will the Democratic party really get it right on framing this as a working-class issue and put the target solely on where it belongs, which is on the employers that have abused this system for decades now, keeping workers’ rights down, keeping wages down? You’ve seen limited to no response from the opposition.”A construction worker in Texas who has been pursuing asylum said she had seen fewer people show up to work out of fear in recent weeks.“There’s not many people going to work any more, because of the fear. The only reason why I go to work is it’s a necessity to bring food home and pay bills,” she said. “They want to extract the people that are working in the farms, that are working in the fields, that are working in the restaurants that they eat in, and now they’re taking them without any explanation. It’s not fair.”Milton Velásquez is a construction worker in Maryland from El Salvador who currently has temporary protected status (TPS), provisional protection given to nationals of some countries in crisis. Trump has already revoked these protections for 350,000 Venezuelans and has incited fears he will revoke or limit protections for 1 million immigrants in the US from 17 nations granted protections under the Biden administration.“It scares me because if my TPS does get revoked, I will lose a lot of job opportunities without it and it would limit my income,” he said. “There is always fear of deportation. I try not to think about it, but what scares me the most is having to go back to El Salvador. I would have to work 10 times as much to get paid $10 a day.”Under the first Trump presidential term, Velásquez faced issues with trying to bring his son and daughter to the US from El Salvador through the Central American Minors program, which Trump shut down in 2017. He is still separated from his daughter.“I tried to get her a visa,” Velasquez added. “I’ve been longing to bring them here. That’s what I work for, to provide for my family, to get my family to come here.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of the Trump administration’s temporary protected status decision, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (929) 418-7175. More

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      ‘This is a coup’: Trump and Musk’s purge is cutting more than costs, say experts

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      Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s radical drive to slash billions of dollars in annual federal spending with huge job and regulatory cuts is spurring charges that they have made illegal moves while undercutting congressional and judicial powers, say legal experts, Democrats and state attorneys general.Trump’s fusillade of executive orders expanding his powers in some extreme ways in his cost-cutting fervor, coupled with unprecedented drives by the Musk-led so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to slash many agency workforces and regulations, have created chaos across the US government and raised fears of a threat to US democracy.Trump and Musk have also attacked judges who have made rulings opposing several of their moves after they ended up in court, threatening at least one with impeachment and accusing him of improper interference.“In the US, we appeal rulings we disagree with – we don’t ignore court orders or threaten judges with impeachment just because we don’t like the decision. This is a coup, plain and simple,” Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, said.Trump and Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s largest single donor, now face multiple rebukes from judges and legal experts to the regulatory and staff cuts they have engineered at the treasury department, the US Agency for International Development and several other agencies.Incongruously, as Trump has touted Musk’s cost-cutting work as vital to curbing spending abuses, one of Trump’s first moves in office last month was to fire 17 veteran agency watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose jobs have long been to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse in federal departments.Those firings were done without giving Congress the legally required 30 days’ notice and specific justifications for each one, prompting mostly Democratic outrage at Trump’s move, which he defended as due to “changing priorities”, and falsely claimed was “standard”.In response to the firings, eight of those inspectors general filed a lawsuit against Trump and their department heads on Wednesday arguing their terminations violated federal laws designed to protect them from interference with their jobs and seeking reinstatement.The IGs who sued included ones from the Departments of Defense, Education and Health and Human Services.View image in fullscreenDemocratic critics and legal experts see Trump’s IG firings and Musk’s Doge operation as blatant examples of executive power plays at the expense of Congress and transparency.“I think their claims that they’re going after waste, fraud and abuse is a complete smokescreen for their real intentions,” said Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.Likening Trump’s firing of the IGs to “firing cops before you rob the bank”, Whitehouse stressed: “It’s pretty clear that what’s going on here is a very deliberate effort to create as much wreckage in the government as they can manage with a view to helping out the big Trump donors and special interests who find government obnoxious in various ways.”On another legal track opposing Trump and Musk’s actions, many of the nation’s 23 Democratic state attorneys general have escalated legal battles against Doge’s actions and sweeping cost cutting at treasury, USAid and other agencies.For instance, 19 Democratic AGs sued Trump and the treasury secretary in February to halt Doge from accessing sensitive documents with details about tens of millions of Americans who get social security checks, tax refunds and other payments, arguing that Doge was violating the Administrative Procedures Act. The lawsuit prompted a New York judge on 7 February to issue a temporary order halting Doge from accessing the treasury payments system.In response, Musk and Trump lashed out by charging judicial interference. Musk on his social media platform Twitter/X where he has more than 200 million followers charged that the judge was “corrupt” and that he “needs to be impeached NOW”.Trump, with Musk nearby in the Oval Office on Tuesday, echoed his Doge chief saying: “It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that,’ so maybe we have to look at the judges because I think that’s a very serious violation.”Legal experts, AGs and top congressional Democrats say that Trump’s and Musk’s charges of improper judicial interference and some of their actions pose dangers to the rule of law and the US constitution.View image in fullscreen“The president is openly violating the US constitution by taking power from Congress and handing it to an unelected billionaire – while Elon Musk goes after judges who uphold the law and rule against them,” said Mayes.Ex-federal prosecutors echo some of Mayes’s arguments.“The suggestions by Trump, Musk and Vance that courts are impermissibly interfering with Trump’s mandate to lead is absurd,” said the former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, who now teaches law at the University of Michigan.“Under our constitutional separation of powers system, each co-equal branch serves as a check on the others. The role of the courts is to strike down abuses of executive power when it violates the law. Comments disparaging the courts seems like a dangerous effort to undermine public confidence in the judiciary. If people do not respect the courts, they will be less inclined to obey their orders.”Likewise, some former judges worry that certain judges could face violence sparked by the threats Musk and Trump have publicly made.“While federal judges expect people to disagree with their opinions, I have long feared that personal attacks like those from Trump and Musk against at least one New York judge would expose them to harm and even death,” said the former federal judge and Dickinson College president, John Jones.“Worse, judges are essentially defenseless when it comes to fighting the false narratives that are being promulgated because their code of conduct prevents them from engaging with the irresponsible people who make these statements.”Legal experts too are increasingly alarmed about how Musk and Trump are exceeding their power at the expense of Congress, including some of the retaliatory firings by Trump against critics or perceived political foes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn one egregious case the IG for USAid, Paul Martin, on Tuesday was abruptly fired almost immediately after he issued a highly critical report warning of serious economic repercussions from the sweeping job cuts that Doge was making as it gutted agency staff.Musk has blasted USAid, which doled out over $40bn in congressionally authorized aid in 2023 and consummated $86bn in private sector deals, as a “criminal organization” and an “arm of the criminal left globalists”. The agency’s mission is to provide humanitarian aid and fund development assistance and tech projects in developing countries.“The firing of IG Paul Martin, a highly respected and experienced inspector general, on the day after his office released a critical report, risks sending a chilling message that is antithetical to IGs’ ability to conduct impactful independent oversight on behalf of the American taxpayer,” said the ex-defense department IG Robert Storch.Storch, one of the 17 IGs Trump fired abruptly last month who has joined the lawsuit against the Trump administration, stressed more broadly that “IGs play an essential role in leading offices comprised of oversight professionals across the federal government to detect and deter waste, fraud, abuse and corruption.”A former IG, who requested anonymity to speak freely, warned bluntly: “Trump and Musk are gaslighting the American people. No one should believe Musk and his troops have actually discovered billions of dollars of waste, fraud, abuse and ‘corruption’. If they had, we would know the specifics. They can’t provide them and they won’t. At most, they have seen things that may need to be explained, but they haven’t bothered to seek the explanation from anyone with relevant knowledge.”Despite rising concerns about the powers assumed by Musk, Trump unveiled a new executive order in the Oval Office on Tuesday expanding Musk’s authority and mandate.Trump’s new order requires federal agencies to “coordinate and consult” with Doge to slash jobs and curb hiring, according to a White House summary.All agencies were instructed to “undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force” and limit new hires to only “essential positions”, according to the summary.View image in fullscreenDuring the Oval Office meeting on Tuesday Musk spoke in grandiose terms about his mission with a few dubious and broad claims about frauds that it had uncovered, while declaring without evidence that it was what “the people want”.Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, which have received billions of dollars in federal contracts in recent years, is wielding his new federal authority as a “special government employee” without giving up his private-sector jobs. Musk’s post is a temporary one that bypasses some of the disclosure requirements for full-time federal employees.As Musk’s powers have expanded and Doge has done work in more than a dozen agencies, 14 state AGs filed a lawsuit in federal court in DC on Thursday broadly challenging Musk and Doge’s authority to obtain access to sensitive government data and wield “virtually unchecked power”.The lawsuit argues that Trump violated the constitution’s appointments clause by establishing a federal agency without Congress’s approval.At bottom, some legal experts and watchdogs say the threats posed by Musk’s cost-cutting drive that Trump has blessed, are linked to the record sums that Musk gave Trump’s campaign.“After Musk reportedly spent close to $300m to help Trump get elected, Trump has been giving Musk what appears to be unprecedented access to the inner levers of government, including private and confidential information about individuals,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission who now teaches law at American University.“Musk and his followers can use that access to help Trump kill or neutralize congressionally created agencies and rules that serve and protect the public interest, while ensuring the government protects and serves the ability of the wealthy to grow their fortunes.”Other legal watchdogs fear more dangerous fallout to the rule of law from Trump’s greenlighting Musk’s Doge operation and agenda.“President Trump has not only afforded Elon Musk and Doge extraordinary power over federal agency operations with little public oversight and accountability, but he has also done so at the expense of Congress and its constitutionally mandated power,” said Donald Sherman, the chief counsel at the liberal-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.“Trump enabled Musk’s capture of the federal government after illegally firing more than a dozen inspectors general despite Congress strengthening the laws protecting IGs less than three years ago … ”Sherman noted that “what’s even more troubling is that congressional Republicans have been more than willing to cede their constitutional powers in service of President Trump and Elon Musk’s political agenda.” More

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      in US Politics

      UK marketplace sellers face ‘second Brexit’ hit from Trump’s US import rules

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      Many UK-based independent sellers on marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon could suffer a significant hit to US sales from planned changes to import rules under Donald Trump, with experts comparing the impact to a second Brexit.The new rules, which mean all parcels originating or made in China and being sold into the US must pay import duty – of as much as 15% on fashion items – and an additional 10% tariff, are also expected to impact bigger online clothing retailers such as Asos and Boohoo.The changes were introduced at the start of February in an attempt to protect US retailers from a surge in competition from the likes of Chinese online marketplaces Shein and Temu, but were indefinitely paused after the US customs service struggled to cope with the massive increase in parcels requiring checks last week.However, they are expected to be implemented within the coming months, potentially driving up prices for US consumers and hitting sales for online retailers.Before the change, parcels with a value of less than $800 (£635) shipped to individuals in the US were exempt from import tax and did not pass through the usual customs checks. That scheme, originally designed to help smooth online shopping, is being revoked after it emerged that the number of shipments under the “de minimis” rules had ballooned to more than 1bn, valued at $54.5bn by 2023 – most of them from China or Hong Kong via firms including Shein and Temu.“You are looking at an increase of $30 to $50 per consignment [group of parcels],” said Brad Ashton at the advisory firm RSM. “It is creating a perfect storm for online retailers putting goods into the US market. It has a lot of the hallmarks of Brexit in terms of its potential impact on small traders.“Businesses will see their margins eroded because costs will increase. We may get to a point where the changes make a UK business uncompetitive in selling to the US.”The widespread use of Chinese factories for many British brands, particularly in fashion, means businesses such as Asos and Boohoo will be drawn in, as well as many UK independent marketplace sellers.It will not just affect goods made in China and then sent from the UK, but potentially a much wider array, as any package containing even one product made in China may have to pay import tax and pass through customs checks, further increasing costs, according to experts.There is also an expectation that the de minimis rules will eventually be scrapped for all imports, no matter their origin.About $5bn worth of parcels were exported to the US from the UK under de minimis rules in 2021, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis of data from US Customs and Border Protection. About 80% of that was estimated to be related to online retail, with fashion likely to be a large proportion of it.Chris White, at the logistics company Fulfilmentcrowd, said that during the brief period when the rules were in place in early February, one-third of the parcels it shipped to the US from the UK were found to be of Chinese origin and subject to the new taxes.Fast-fashion specialists Asos and Boohoo sell about £300m of clothing a year to the US. Both are already struggling to compete with the rise of Shein and high street retailers, which have revived after the Covid pandemic. John Stevenson, a retail analyst at Peel Hunt, said Asos and Boohoo would have to “adjust prices or take a view on [the] profitability of operating in the US”.As well as the higher tax charges, customs checks required after the rule change will add as much as two days to the processing of orders, making UK retailers less competitive with US-based operators on the speed of delivery.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStevenson said the hit to Asos and Boohoo was “not business-critical” in the way it could be for Shein or Temu, which he believed were heavily reliant on the tax benefit, but that it would have an impact.In the short term, online sellers will probably have lower sales because of uncertainty among US shoppers over possible taxes. White said that during the period when the new rules were in place, similar parcels were loaded with different levels of duty as local customs officers made different decisions.He said a further element of the rule change might be to expose brands that were “trading on an image of being British or European” as being “made in China and not Savile Row”, potentially damaging their appeal.There would be “lots of crossed fingers and puzzled faces” over the changes in legislation, with retailers potentially opening more US warehousing or, longer term, to switch sources of supply, White added.Boohoo closed its US warehouse earlier this year, and Asos is scheduled to close its facility there in November. However, a reversal could be on the cards if the de minimis rules are confirmed. Many fast-fashion companies have already diversified their supply chains – making more in India, Bangladesh or Turkey. Trump’s tax changes could accelerate this further.Shein is reportedly incentivising Chinese suppliers to set up in Vietnam, according to a report by Bloomberg.It is not clear when the new rules might be implemented as the US tries to put the technology and workforce in place to handle the new system. Experts say it could take weeks or months.While there is a chance that Trump will change his mind, as he has done on tariffs with Canada and Mexico, no business can bet on which way the US might jump. More