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      Trump tours Texas flood damage as disaster tests vow to shutter Fema

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      During a trip on Friday to look at the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Donald Trump claimed that state and federal officials had done an “incredible job”, saying of the disaster that he had “never seen anything like this”.The trip comes as he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Trump administration has backed away from plans to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but administration officials continue to dodge questions about the agency’s future and many are still calling for serious reforms, potentially sending much of its work to the states.Since the 4 July disaster, which has killed at least 120 people, the president and his top aides have focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred and the human tragedy involved rather than the government-slashing crusade that has been popular with Trump’s core supporters.Speaking at a roundtable in Kerrville, Texas, Trump said that Fema deployed multiple emergency response units and he praised all the officials involved in what he said was an effective and swift response.“Every American should be inspired by what has taken place,” Trump said. He likened the flooding to “a giant, giant wave in the Pacific Ocean that the best surfers in the world would be afraid to surf”.Trump called a reporter a “bad person” for asking a question about families of the dead who are saying that their loved ones could have been saved had emergency warnings gone out before the flooding. Trump said: “I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible, the job you’ve all done.”In an NBC News interview on Thursday, Trump said: “Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming.” He added: “This is a once-in-every-200-years deal.” He has also suggested he would have been ready to visit Texas within hours but did not want to burden authorities still searching for the more than 170 people who are still missing.Trump’s shift in focus underscores how tragedy can complicate political calculations, even though the president has made slashing the federal workforce and charging ally turned antagonist Elon Musk with dramatically shrinking the size of government centerpieces of his administration’s opening months.The president traveled to Texas on Air Force One with Melania Trump, the first lady; Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary; Scott Turner, the housing secretary; the small business administrator, Kelly Loeffler; and senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, among others. Trump is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas.Before arriving at the Happy State Bank Expo Hall in Kerrville, where he delivered remarks, the president and his motorcade stopped at an area near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville next to an overturned tractor-trailer and downed trees. Damage appeared to be more extensive near the riverbank. Trump, his wife and the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, took a briefing about flooding there from local officials.Trump has used past disaster response efforts to launch political attacks. While still a candidate trying to win back the presidency, Trump made his own visit to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene last year and accused the Biden administration of blocking disaster aid to victims in Republican-heavy areas.During his first weekend back in the White House, Trump again visited North Carolina to survey Helene damage and toured the aftermath of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. But he also used those trips to sharply criticize the Biden administration and California officials.During Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Trump praised the federal flooding response. Turning to Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, which oversees Fema, he said: “You had people there as fast as anybody’s ever seen.”Noem described traveling to Texas and seeing heartbreaking scenes, including around Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 people were killed.“The parents that were looking for their children and picking up their daughter’s stuffed animals out of the mud and finding their daughter’s shoe that might be laying in the cabin,” she said.Noem said that “just hugging and comforting people matters a lot” and “this is a time for all of us in this country to remember that we were created to serve each other”.But the secretary is also co-chairing a Fema review council charged with submitting suggestions for how to overhaul the agency in coming months.“We as a federal government don’t manage these disasters. The state does,” Noem told Trump on Tuesday.She also referenced the administration’s government-reducing efforts, saying: ”We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old Fema. Streamlining it, much like your vision of how Fema should operate.”Pressed this week on whether the White House will continue to work to shutter Fema, Karoline Leavitt would not say.“The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,” the White House press secretary said. “Whether that assistance comes from states or the federal government, that is a policy discussion that will continue.”Before Trump left on Friday, Russell Vought, director of the office of management and budget, similarly dodged questions from reporters at the the White House about Fema’s future – instead noting that the agency had billions of dollars in its reserves “to continue to pay for necessary expenses” and that the president has promised Texas: “Anything it needs, it will get.”“We also want Fema to be reformed,” Vought added. “The president is going to continue to be asking tough questions of all of us agencies, no different than any other opportunity to have better government.” More

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      Netanyahu flies home without a Gaza peace deal but still keeps Trump onside

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      Benjamin Netanyahu arrived back in Israel on Friday without a ceasefire in the Gaza war despite heady predictions from US and Israeli officials that this week could provide a breakthrough in negotiations. But he did not come home completely empty-handed.The Israeli PM’s visit was his third since Donald Trump’s inauguration, with several high-profile meetings at the White House, a nomination for Trump to receive the Nobel peace prize, and suggestions from Trump and the special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, that peace could be achieved in a week.But as Netanyahu’s trip ended, no clear results had been achieved. Witkoff postponed a trip to Doha on Tuesday as it became clear that the negotiations had not reached a point where they could produce a ceasefire agreement.While Netanyahu repeated a refrain that a ceasefire could be announced within days, a deal to bring peace to more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remained elusive.“I hope we can complete it in a few days,” Netanyahu said during an appearance on Newsmax, a conservative, pro-Trump news network on Wednesday. “We’ll probably have a 60-day ceasefire. Get the first batch [of hostages] out and then use the 60 days to try to negotiate an end to this.”By Thursday, when he attended a memorial service for two Israeli embassy staff killed in Washington, Netanyahu said Israel would not compromise on its demands for Hamas to disband. “I am promoting a move that will result in a significant liberation, but only on the conditions Israel demands: Hamas disarm, Gaza demilitarise,” he said. “If it is not achieved through diplomacy, it will be achieved by force.”Several officials suggested during the week that only a single sticking point remained between negotiators in Doha: the extent of a withdrawal by the Israel Defense Forces that would follow the release of some of the hostages being held by Hamas. The White House had pushed back against an initial map that would have left Israel with significant zones of control in Gaza, which Witkoff had compared to a “Smotrich plan”, referring to the hardline Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Israel reportedly redrew that map to make it more palatable to the US administration.But Hamas has said there were other disagreements, including negotiations over whether the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, an Israeli and US-backed logistics group, would be allowed to continue to deliver food to the territory (the UN said on Friday that 798 people had been killed trying to reach GHF sites since its introduction in May) and whether Israel would agree to a permanent truce, which it has said it would not. US mediators sought to bridge the gap by telling Qatari intermediaries they would guarantee the ceasefire’s continuation after 60 days as negotiations continued.The upshot is that while Netanyahu leaves the US without a ceasefire, he has managed his relationship with Trump through high-profile assurances that he is seeking a peace in Gaza, while maintaining a status quo that members of his rightwing coalition, including the ministers Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said is preferable to a peace deal.For Netanyahu, the trip produced images that reinforced Israeli claims there was “no daylight” between him and Trump, and came as the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced a decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, for urging the international criminal court to investigate Israeli officials and US companies over the Gaza war.Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu appeared to be boiling over a month ago as the US president sought to negotiate a truce between Iran and Israel, which had been trading airstrikes and missile barrages as Israel sought to dismantle the Iranian nuclear programme.“I’m not happy with Israel,” he said on the White House lawn. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”That recalled remarks by Robert Gates, a former US secretary of defence, about successive White House administrations’ difficulties in managing an ally in the region that also had considerable political influence in the US.“Every president I worked for, at some point in his presidency, would get so pissed off at the Israelis that he couldn’t speak,” Gates said.But a full breach with the US would have been disastrous for Netanyahu, who is managing his own difficult coalition and has been targeted in a graft investigation at home that was again delayed as a result of his international travel. And, after joint strikes against Iran, the Israeli PM was keen to show that the two men were in lockstep, while giving the Trump administration an opportunity to show it was working toward a Gaza peace.Elliott Abrams, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said the Trump administration had sought, as it did during the first short-lived ceasefire, to bring “pressure to bear on Israel directly” through discussions with Netanyahu and his chief lieutenant, Ron Dermer, and “trying to bring pressure on Hamas mostly through the Qataris, when there are these talks in Doha”.He added: “Whether that pressure is effective is unclear.” More

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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