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      The ‘bizarre’ referral of the US housing finance agency chief to oust Lisa Cook

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      The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency embraced a highly unusual process to accuse Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, of committing mortgage fraud, former officials and experts have said. One former high-ranking official called the director’s involvement in a criminal referral “bizarre”.William Pulte, a businessman and major GOP donor whom Donald Trump appointed to head the powerful housing agency earlier this year, has accused Cook of committing mortgage fraud by misrepresenting her homes as a primary residence, potentially securing more favorable mortgage rates. The justice department formally opened a criminal investigation into whether Cook committed fraud and has issued subpoenas related to the transaction. Cook’s lawyers have called the discrepancies a “clerical error” and she has denied any wrongdoing.Trump has used those accusations as the basis to try to fire Cook, who has strongly denied the allegations and is contesting her firing in court. Pulte has also made similar referrals against New York attorney general Letitia James and California senator Adam Schiff, both political rivals of Trump.Investigations into mortgage fraud are usually handled by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s office of inspector general (OIG), an agency watchdog, staffed with lawyers and agents with an expertise in investigating crimes, including mortgage fraud. The OIG is then the office that typically makes a criminal referral.“It’s very bizarre for Pulte to be the one making a criminal referral himself and it’s not coming from the IG’s office,” said Janell Byrd-Chichester, a former chief of staff at FHFA. “If we thought there might be criminal activity, that would go to the IG for review and a determination and the IG would be making any referral, not the agency.”Three other former officials across the inspector general’s office and FHFA said Pulte’s involvement was unusual.After assuming his position earlier this year, Pulte started an FHFA hotline to report waste, fraud and abuse. The move seemed strange to some in the office of the inspector general, which already has its own hotline to report fraud, according to a person familiar with the matter.“It’s certainly unusual, if not unprecedented, for the director of FHFA to make a single request to the justice department that someone be investigated for alleged mortgage fraud,” said Guy Cecala, the executive chair of Inside Mortgage Finance, an information company and research firm that has covered the mortgage market for more than four decades. “Historically, we haven’t seen a lot of people prosecuted for mortgage fraud in terms of misrepresenting their occupancy on a house.”While the FHFA inspector general would take referrals from FHFA, their investigations were typically walled off from FHFA, former officials said. The separation helped protect the privacy of borrowers and their sensitive mortgage information. The inspector general’s office would typically only pursue cases that resulted in substantial losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that are regulated by FHFA.The extent of the FHFA inspector general’s involvement in Cook’s mortgage is unclear. Also uncertain is whether Pulte requested that officials at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac pull Cook’s loan documents – highly sensitive information – or whether the claims are based entirely on publicly available mortgage information. In Schiff’s case, the OIG appears to have at least requested documents about his home loans, according to the Los Angeles Times.“Your inquiry relates to public statements made by the Director of FHFA. I recommend that you reach out to FHFA’s media shop,” a spokesperson for the FHFA inspector general said in a statement. “FHFA OIG does not comment on the existence or non-existence of investigations conducted by this office.” FHFA did not return a request for comment.Pulte has refused to say why his agency started its inquiry into Cook. There is widespread belief that the decision was politically motivated because Trump wants to remove her from the Federal Reserve board in order to stack it with his appointees.Understanding the origins of Pulte’s inquiry is significant because misrepresenting occupancy on a mortgage application does not appear to be uncommon. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, a Republican, and at least three members of Trump’s cabinet have listed multiple places as their primary residence, but have not faced the kind of scrutiny Cook has.“Issues with Cook’s loan file weren’t caught in some routine audit or the like. No one ever goes back and examines loan applications on performing loans for occupancy fraud; that would entail expenses for no benefit,” Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University, wrote in a post on the blog Credit Slips. “Instead, the only way anyone would have noticed a problem with Cook’s loan application is that Pulte, as head of FHFA, directed Fannie or Freddie to pull her application. That is unheard of.”Furthermore, Pulte had referred Cook for a criminal inquiry without presenting bona fide evidence of a crime.“If Cook broke her promise about property use (and that isn’t clear), all that shows is a breach of contract,” Levitin wrote in a separate blog post in August. “For it to be fraud, she would have to have never intended to perform the promise in the first place. Pulte has no evidence whatsoever about Cook’s intent at the time she took out the mortgage. He hasn’t even shown a breach of contract, much less common law fraud, not to speak of a federal criminal law violation.”Observers have said it was also unusual for a loan to attract scrutiny if it was being paid. “This case is unusual because I’m not aware of any actual loss that’s occurred. I’m assuming neither of these mortgages are in default. I’m assuming neither of the mortgages in question are underwater,” Cecala said.After the financial crisis, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began conducting random sampling on performing mortgages to see if there were issues that could put them at risk. But in cases where they found issues, it was rare that they would seek criminal punishment for the borrowers.“Normally in those cases – and again this is just precedent – Fannie and Freddie don’t get involved in the prosecution or even referring it to the justice department,” Cecala said. “They’ll just say, we see a problem with this mortgage and they just require the lender who made the loan to buy the loans back out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities.” More

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      ‘The people stood up’: how war turned Iran towards ‘everyday nationalism’

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      Amid the ruins of the building that was once the Tehran home of the Iranian nuclear scientist Ahmadreza Zolfaghari, workmen are underway demolishing the remains, damaged beyond repair by Israel’s surprise attempt to assassinate Iran’s political, military and nuclear elite.Zolfaghari had worked at the Faculty of Nuclear Engineering at Shahid Beheshti University, and was editor-in-chief of a nuclear energy journal, all of which was sufficient to make him an Israeli target. He was found dead in the rubble of his home, along with his wife and grownup son. The three adjoining buildings had also been blown apart, killing at least five others, including an 11-year-old child. A blue banner, draped down one of the damaged buildings, reads: “A piece of the body of Iran.”The group of workmen wielding sledgehammers are clambering across the remaining unstable floor struts to demolish what remains of the building. Loose masonry crashes to the ground, sending dust into the air. Their perilous task – the beams on which they stand creak as they hammer – seems a metaphor for a country still in shock, neither at peace nor at war, but in need of reconstruction.More than 1,000 Iranians died in the Israeli attack, and some professional sociologists – a broad term in Iran – argue a new nationalism has emerged into public view.View image in fullscreenThere is no doubt that, outwardly, Tehran is changing fast – and socially it is light years from western perceptions. The number of women not wearing the hijab in Tehran’s streets is about a third and it is not just young women, but sometimes whole families. A new punitive chastity law passed by the religious conservatives – still dominant inside parliament – was rejected by the consensual, but reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian on the pragmatic grounds that it would cause an uprising if it was enforced.The burial of the measure has emboldened women. The police, once keen to bundle the “unchaste” into the back of a van, now leave unscarfed women to their individual choice. The vibrant, albeit polluted, evening streets resemble Beirut as much as Kabul. The next step is to allow women to ride motorcycles. Observers say that Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish woman who collapsed in a police station in 2022, sparking the “women life freedom” protests, did not entirely die in vain.The cultural sociologist and Soas alumni Nematollah Fazeli claims a deep change may be afoot. What he describes as the emergence of an “everyday nationalism” is reflected in a return to epic poetry, popular podcasts about Iranian history, and thousands of ordinary conversations across the country about Iranian identity.View image in fullscreenFazeli explained: “Before the war, we loved Iran, but it was not a very conscious feeling. After the war, it became a central point of our discourse. Everywhere in cities and villages you observe that people are talking about their nation, their identity, their geography and their history. We just want to remind one another we are Iranian. The sense of oppression of Iran, our nation, our land, our culture, our feelings, by a world system and by foreigners was very important. It led to a desire to be together and to express the commonality of being Iranian.”But he adds: “The Islamic Republic ideology is not a nationalist ideology. The official ideology of the revolution is not keen or interested to represent ancient Iranian culture, and that culture cannot be seen in official education, TV or radio. The people’s reaction to the war was a shock and a kind of negative cohesion. Despite their frustration with the government, the people stood up against foreign aggression; not to defend the Islamic Republic, but to defend Iran. We believe we have been an organic nation for more than 5,000 years.”Mohammad Faze, a teacher, described how his students had put the Iranian flag on their social media profiles. Others point to the flourishing of podcasts about Iranian history and the declarations of love for Iran by popular singers including previous regime critics such as Homayoun Shajarian.View image in fullscreenSome in government have acknowledged the challenge posed by this outpouring for the homeland. Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh, the vice-president for rural affairs, told a gathering of journalists: “Iran is beautiful with all of us together, my closest friends are not Kurds, they are Persians, Turks, Kurds and Baloch. We have lived together, loved each other and cherished one another. We may not think alike, we may not share the same beliefs, but in Iran, there is no doubt about our friendship, patriotism and love for our homeland.”The issue under debate in Iran now is whether, and how, the government responds to the display of resilience shown by a population under fire, or what the foreign affairs spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaee, described as the blitz spirit.The experience of war, even short wars, can change nations. Aliakbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, argued: “the people have proven themselves, and now it is the turn of the officials. Outdated methods will no longer suffice for a society after the war.”View image in fullscreenBut turning these generalities into reality in a deeply polarised and political society is proving hard. Even Shajarian’s plan to hold a mass free open air concert in Tehran’s Azadi Square this weekend collapsed as a political row broke out as to whether the event was an innocent moment of relief or propaganda.The conservatives believe the social cohesion inadvertently forged by Benjamin Netanyahu’s misconceived attempt at regime change from 30,000ft confirms the popularity of the supreme leader and its ideological foreign policy.But for many reformists, it would be a mistake to read this everyday patriotism as an endorsement for the Islamic Republic, or the status quo. One reformist said: “How can we be so complacent when the currency has fallen 25% in the past week, poverty is everywhere, the official media is a lie and no one knows if another war is around the corner?”The reformists indeed hope there could be a breakthrough; what the former foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has described as a paradigm shift. In recent weeks, former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who has been under house arrest for 15 years and is now in hospital, issued an open letter demanding a new constitution, while the Reform Front – an umbrella group of moderate and reformist figures – called for the government to take the stepthe US had been demanding and voluntarily suspend domestic enrichment of uranium, in return for the lifting of sanctions.The former two-term president Hassan Rouhani has also weighed in, advocating for a “national strategy based on the will of the people. This crisis must create an agenda to correct the course and rebuild the foundations of governance.”He called for the creation of a grassroots intelligence agency, giving scientists a platform and opportunity to modernise Iran’s defences, diversification of the media by launching more private television channels and ending Iran’s abrasive relationship with the world, including reducing the hostility towards the US.Beyond politicians, 180 economists urged a reordering of “Iran’s economic and political paradigms”, including the removal of the army from business, while 78 former diplomats pressed for a foreign policy that “does not allow delay” in taking the steps necessary to lift sanctions.‘Give diplomacy a chance’But there is still resistance to change. The power held by the Iranian security apparatus has led to a crackdown involving road checks and as many as 20,000 arrests, according to Amnesty International.The conservatives rushed to pass a draconian law giving the authorities power to block online content. The head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, condemned the Reform Group’s statement criticising the move as “in line with the enemy’s wishes”, adding “it would be natural for the Tehran prosecutor to take an interest in such statements”, a remark designed to send a chill through the reformists.Faced by these perennial conflicting tides, Pezeshkian’s instinct is to avoid confrontation, sometimes to the frustration of the reformists thatgot him elected in a surprise result only a year ago. Pezeshkian is deeply aware of the limits of his power: that conservative forces are out to crush him, his dependence on the supreme leader and the ubiquity of a deep state protective of its privileges. The polarised tone of Iranian politics worries him as much as sanctions, he admitted last week.He has made consensus his watchword, so much so that Mohsen Asgari, the editor of the innovative multimedia outlet Haft Sobh, argues: “The risk is that he turns a method of government – the search for consensus – into an objective.”Fatemeh Mohajerani, a government spokesperson, educated at Heriott-Watt University, defends Pezeshkian’s commitment to persuasion and problem solving.Consensus building on complex social issues in a polarised society takes time, and separation of powers prevents him from calling for political prisoners to be released. She insists progress is underway, for instance to remove the filters placed on external social media sites such as Telegram, X and even Instagram. Only the intervention of the war prevented Telegram executives from visiting Iran to discuss the terms of their launch, she said. Asked if she thought the government needed to apologise for the deaths and injuries caused to women fighting for their freedom, she responded by saying the government will always apologise if necessary.Pezeshkian’s space to undertake the necessary economic reforms is restricted by the universal political anger caused by the 12-day war and now the threat of reimposed UN sanctions. For many Iranians, reformist or otherwise, the widespread view is that Europe is in effect endorsing Israel’s illegal bombing campaign by its move toward snapback sanctions.View image in fullscreenAnger that the US allowed or connived in the bombing while negotiations were underway, and Europe could not bring itself to condemn this, has left a deep distrust that plays into the hands of the anti-western factions.Reza Nasri, an international lawyer close to the reformist camp, said: “Before the war, there was concern that Trump might withdraw from any signed agreement, but now the worry is that he will bomb us. It is very difficult to make the case within domestic Iranian politics that negotiations are beneficial or will lead to a lifting of sanctions.“The perception is Trump has outsourced his Iran policy to Israel. People feel ‘we went to negotiate and we got bombs so why should we do that again?’ It would be so costly for any government to go back to negotiations. And if Europe wants that to happen, they have gone about it absolutely the wrong way. The most likely outcome of imposing snapback [sanctions] is that Iran will exclude Europe from all future negotiations altogether, and will exclude the UN weapons inspectors. The logical thing for Europe to do is to delay snapback and give diplomacy a chance.”Nasri added: “The issue of Iran’s right to enrich uranium domestically – supposedly the cause of the conflict – is not about building a bomb, deterrence or even about nuclear energy, it is all about retaining a symbol of dignity.”Speaking inside the courtyard of the Hemmat Tajrish mosque by the graves of some of those killed in the 12-day war, Mohammad Faze admits Iranian society has been living on the edge, but insists: “My nature is not to be 100% certain about anything, but if this war comes again we will be ready. We have learned from the 12-day war, and we are prepared. It is deep in the Iranian heart we will not surrender, and we will not be humiliated.” More

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      Donald Trump maelstrom likely to leave US economic model unrecognisable | Heather Stewart

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      Donald Trump observed blithely last week that if his cherished tariff regime is struck down by the US supreme court, he may need to “unwind” some of the trade deals struck since he declared “liberation day” in April.It was a reminder, as if it were needed, that nothing about Trump’s economic policy is set in stone. Not only does the ageing president alter his demands on a whim, but it is unclear to what extent he has the power to make them stick.Yet even if the “reciprocal” tariffs first announced on 2 April are rolled back, they are only one aspect of a much wider assault on the last vestiges of what was once known as the “Washington consensus”.To name just a few of Trump’s recent interventions, he has taken a 10% government stake in the US tech company Intel, demanded 15% of the revenue of Nvidia’s chip sales to China and suggested the chief executive of Goldman Sachs should go.This at the same as taking a sledgehammer to Federal Reserve independence by lobbing insults at the chair, Jerome Powell, and trying to sack Lisa Cook from the central bank’s board.The head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was removed by Trump after a run of poor jobs data; the chief of the National Labor Relations Board, Jennifer Abruzzo, was fired, too.The tech bros who back Trump loathe the NLRB for its role in upholding workers’ rights – mandating unionisation ballots at Amazon warehouses, for example.Trump’s approach is simultaneously systematic, in its determination to smash existing norms, and utterly chaotic. It is hard to categorise: corporate America is being unleashed – through the wilful destruction of environmental and labour standards, for example – and brought to heel.The leftwing senator Bernie Sanders welcomed Trump’s efforts to take a stake in Intel in exchange for government grants, for example – something he advocated in the Guardian back in 2022 – while some Republicans have condemned the approach as (heaven forbid) “socialism”.Partly because it coincides with the AI-fuelled stock boom that has propelled the value of tech companies into the stratosphere, the market response to this torching of the status quo has so far been modest.Whatever emerges from another three and a half years of this maelstrom is likely to be unrecognisable as the US economic model of recent decades.Its destruction has not happened overnight. The days were already long gone when the US, as the world’s undisputed economic superpower, could export free market, financialised capitalism worldwide.After the 2008 crash, the conditions for which were created in Wall Street boardrooms, any moral or practical claim the US had to offer an economic example to other nations evaporated.As the turmoil rippled out through the global economy, and the US government responded by bailing out large chunks of its financial sector, the lie of laissez-faire was laid bare.The crisis exposed the risks of turbocharged capitalism to countries outside the US, too – not least in the former Soviet bloc – that had been advised to adopt the model wholesale.As Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes put it in their compelling polemic The Light that Failed, “confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they didn’t.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBack home in the US, meanwhile – as in the UK – the perception that banks had been bailed out, while the galaxy brains behind the crisis got off scot-free, sowed the seeds of a corrosive sense of injustice.Similarly, even before the crash, the idea that ever-expanding free trade brings economic benefits was bumping up against the fact that even if that is true in aggregate, for workers across the US rust belt, just as in the UK’s former manufacturing heartlands, it brought deindustrialisation and unemployment.This was fertile ground for Trump’s populist economic message. His first-term China tariffs were, with hindsight, a relatively modest stab at, as he saw it, tilting the playing field back towards the US.Joe Biden did not unwind those tariffs, which went with the grain of geopolitics, as any hopes that economic liberalisation would bring China into the fold of democracies were sadly dashed, and President Xi’s regime took on an increasingly authoritarian bent.Biden also took a muscular approach to the state’s role in the economy, with the billions in grants and loans distributed under the Inflation Reduction Act linked to national priorities of cutting carbon emissions and creating jobs.So the idea that before Trump arrived on the scene, free market US capitalism was motoring along unchallenged is misleading, but the pace at which he is crushing its remaining norms is extraordinary.There is ample ground for legitimate disagreement here: taxpayer stakes in strategic companies are much more common in European economies, for example. Trump may be laying down tracks that future US governments with different priorities could follow.Given that it is so unclear even what kind of economy he is groping towards, the overriding sense for the moment is of radical uncertainty. Friday’s weak US payrolls data, with the unemployment rate close to a four-year high, suggested companies may be responding with caution.Investors appear to have decided to avert their eyes for now, buoyed up by the prospect of Fed rate cuts, and the mega returns of the tech companies. However, with every chaotic week that passes, the risks must increase – and as the UK has learned in the wake of the Liz Truss debacle, economic credibility is quicker to lose than to rebuild. More

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      Peter Mandelson lauds Trump as ‘risk-taker’ in call for US-UK tech alliance

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      Donald Trump is a risk-taker sounding a necessary wake-up call to a stale status quo, Peter Mandelson has told the Ditchley Foundation in a speech before Trump’s second state visit to the UK this month.The UK’s ambassador to Washington portrayed Trump as a harbinger of a new force in politics at a time when business as usual no longer works for fed-up voters.The bulk of the speech was focused on a call for a US-UK technology partnership covering AI, quantum computing and rare-earth minerals as part of efforts to win a competition with China that Lord Mandelson said would shape this century.He said that such a partnership with the US had the potential to be as important as the security relationship the US and UK forged in the second world war, adding: “If China wins the race for technological dominance in the coming decades, every facet of our lives is going to be affected.”The first steps to that partnership are likely to be unveiled during Trump’s state visit, including new commitments for cheap nuclear energy to power the AI revolution.Mandelson, although a fierce pro-European, also said Brexit had not made the UK less relevant to the US, but by freeing the UK from European regulatory burdens had made Britain a more attractive site for US investors.Critics of Mandelson’s interpretation of Trump’s populism will argue that it assumes a set of common values between Trump’s Maga movement and European liberal democracy that is fading.In his pitch for a close US-UK alliance, he made no mention of key points of difference including Gaza, the international rule of law, Trump’s inability to see that Vladimir Putin is stalling in Ukraine, or Trump’s creeping domestic authoritarianism.Insisting he was not cast in the role of Trump’s “explainer-in-chief” and denying there was any need to be sycophantic with the Trump team, he praised the US president for identifying the anxieties gripping millions of impatient voters deprived of meaningful work.He accused those arguing for a pivot away from Trump’s America of “lazy thinking”, arguing that the America First credo on the climate crisis, US aid cuts and trade did not preclude a close partnership.He said: “The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk-taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.“Indeed, he seems to have an ironclad stomach for political risk, both at home and abroad – convening other nations and intervening in conflicts that other presidents would have thought endlessly about before descending into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism.“Yet – and this is not well understood – although the Trumpian national security strategy is called ‘America First’, it does not actually mean ‘America Alone’.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We see him leverage America’s heft to put the right people in the room and hammer out compromises in order to grind out concessions.“I am not just thinking of Ukraine where the president has brought fresh energy to efforts to end Putin’s brutal invasion and bring peace to that region. If the president were so indifferent to the rest of the world, if he was so in love with America alone, he would not have intervened in multiple spheres of conflict over the last seven months.“Furthermore, the ‘international order’ people claim he has disrupted and the calm he has allegedly shattered was already at breaking point. So, I would argue that Trump is more consequence than cause of the upheaval we are experiencing.”He continued: “He will not always get everything right but with his Sharpie pen and freewheeling Oval Office media sprays he has sounded a deafening wake-up call to the international old guard.“And the president is right about the status quo failing from America’s point of view. The world has rested on the willingness of the US to act as sheriff, to form a posse whenever anything went wrong, a world in which America’s allies could fall in behind – not always that close behind either – and then allow the US to do most of the heavy lifting.”Going further than the UK’s official line, he praised Trump’s military attack on Iran, saying: “Trump understands the positive coercive power of traditional American deterrence, deterring adversaries through a blend of strength and strategic unpredictability, as we saw in his decisive action on Iran’s nuclear programme. Well beyond their military impact, these strikes gave a swathe of malign foreign regimes pause for thought.” More

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      One by one, leaders learn that grovelling to Trump leads to disaster. When will it dawn on Starmer? | Simon Tisdall

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      Sucking up to Donald Trump never works for long. Narendra Modi is the latest world leader to learn this lesson the hard way. Wooing his “true friend” in the White House, India’s authoritarian prime minister thought he’d conquered Trump’s inconstant heart. The two men hit peak pals in 2019, holding hands at a “Howdy Modi” rally in Texas. But it’s all gone pear-shaped thanks to Trump’s tariffs and dalliance with Pakistan. Like a jilted lover on the rebound, Modi shamelessly threw himself at Vladimir Putin in China last week. Don and Narendra! It’s over! Although, to be honest, it always felt a little shallow.Other suitors for Trump’s slippery hand have suffered similar heartbreak. France’s Emmanuel Macron turned on the charm, feting him at the grand reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral. But Trump cruelly dumped him after they argued over Gaza, calling him a publicity-seeker who “always gets it wrong”. The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, desperate for a tete-a-tete, flew to Trump’s Scottish golf course to pay court. Result: perhaps the most humiliating, lopsided trade deal since imperial Britain’s 19th-century “unequal treaties” with Peking’s dragon throne.The list of broken pledges and dashed hopes is lengthy. Relationships between states normally pivot on power, policy and strategic interests. But with faithless, fickle Trump, it’s always personal – and impermanent. Disconcertingly, he told Mexico’s impressive president, Claudia Sheinbaum, that he “likes her very much” – then threatened to invade her country, ostensibly in pursuit of drug cartels. Leaders from Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and South Africa have all attempted to ingratiate themselves, to varying degrees. They still haven’t fared well.All this should set red lights flashing for Britain’s Keir Starmer ahead of Trump’s state visit in 10 days’ time. The prime minister’s unedifying Trump-whisperer act has produced little benefit to date, at high reputational cost. Starmer apparently believes his handling of the US relationship is a highlight of his first year in office. Yet Trump ignores his Gaza ceasefire pleas and opposes UK recognition of a Palestinian state. He hugely boosted Putin, Britain’s nemesis, with his half-baked Alaska summit. US security guarantees for postwar Ukraine are more mirage than reality. His steel tariffs and protectionist policies continue to hurt UK workers.His second state visit is an appalling prospect. The honour is utterly undeserved. It’s obvious what Trump will gain: a royal endorsement, a chance to play at being King Donald, a privileged platform from which to deliver his corrosive, divisive populist-nationalist diatribes at a moment of considerable social fragility in the US and UK. Polls suggest many Britons strongly oppose the visit; and most don’t trust the US. So what Starmer thinks he will gain is a mystery. The fleeting goodwill of a would-be dictator who is dismantling US democracy and wrecking the global laws-based order championed by the UK is a poor return.View image in fullscreenAs he demands homage from abject subjects, this spectacle will confirm the UK in the eyes of the world as a lackey state, afraid to stand up for its values. Starmer’s government is now so morally confused that it refuses to acknowledge that Israel, fully backed by Trump, is committing genocide in Gaza, while at the same time making the wearing of a pro-Palestine T-shirt a terrorist act. The Trump travesty will be an embarrassment, signalling a further descent into colonial subservience. As next year’s 250th anniversary of US independence approaches, the chronically unhealthy “special relationship” has finally come full circle.Not everyone is genuflecting to Trump – and evidence mounts that resistance, not grovelling, is by far the best way to handle this schoolyard bully. Modi’s geopolitical fling in China showed he’s learned that when dealing with Trump, firm resolve, supported by alternative options, is the better policy. Last week’s defiant speech by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, reflected a similar realisation. Both he and Putin have discovered that when they dig their heels in, whether the issue is Ukraine, trade or sanctions, Trump backs off. Xi has adopted an uncompromising stance from the start. Putin uses flattery, skilfully manipulating Trump’s frail ego. The result is the same. Like cowards the world over, Trump respects strength because he’s weak. So he caves.The bigger the wolf, the more sheepishly Trump responds. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, like Putin, an indicted war criminal, has shown that by sticking to his guns (literally, in his case), he can face down Trump. More than that, Trump can be co-opted. After Netanyahu attacked Iran in June, against initial US advice, he induced the White House to join in – although, contemptibly, Trump only did so once he was certain who was winning. Then, typically, he claimed credit for a bogus world-changing victory. North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un, similarly bamboozled Trump during his first term. Having learned nothing, and nursing his implausible Nobel peace prize ambitions, Trump is again raising the prospect of unconditional engagement with Kim.Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has the right idea. The more Trump tries to bully him with 50% tariffs and a barrage of criticism, the more he resists. Trump is particularly exercised over the fate of Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s hard-right predecessor, who, like Trump, mounted a failed electoral coup. But Lula is not having any of it. “If the United States doesn’t want to buy [from us], we will find new partners,” he said. “The world is big, and it’s eager to do business with Brazil.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat’s the spirit! And guess what? Lula’s poll ratings are soaring. Wake up, Keir Starmer – and dump Trump.

      Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

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      Trump news at a glance: Anxiety in Chicago as Trump plans to send troops; postal traffic into US drops 80%

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      At least three events connected to Mexican Independence Day have been canceled or postponed in Chicago, amid reports that Donald Trump plans to send troops and immigration agents as part of plans to launch mass deportations.Organizers decided to cancel El Grito Chicago, an event that drew 24,000 people last year and was scheduled for 13-14 September.“It was a painful decision, but holding El Grito Chicago at this time puts the safety of our community at stake – and that’s a risk we are unwilling to take,” the event’s website stated. “While we’re torn by this decision, when we brought this celebration back, our aim was to create a safe, affordable, family-friendly, community festival for all.”The anxiety in the country’s third-largest city comes after Trump deployed national guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington DC. Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was concerned about Ice agents targeting people at the Mexican Independence Day events.Here’s the day’s Trump administration news at a glance.Mexican festivals in Chicago canceled amid Trump plans to deploy troopsDonald Trump’s plan to deploy national guard troops and federal immigration agents to Chicago is already having an impact on the city’s Mexican community.Organizers have canceled several local events tied to Mexican Independence Day, which occurs on 16 September.Read the full storyTrump claims Chicago is ‘world’s most dangerous city’. The most violent ones are in red statesAs Donald Trump threatens to deploy national guard units to cities ostensibly to quell violence, he repeatedly targets Democratic run-cities.But an analysis of crime trends over the last four years shows two things. First, violent crime rates in America’s big cities have been falling over the last two years, and at an even greater rate over the last six months. The decrease in violence in America is unprecedented.Second, crime in large cities in the aggregate is lower in states with Democratic leadership. But the president focuses his ire almost exclusively on large blue cities in blue states, sidestepping political conflict with red Republican governors.Read the full storyPostal traffic into US plunges by more than 80% after Trump ends exemptionPostal traffic into the US plunged by more than 80% after the Trump administration ended a tariff exemption for low-cost imports, the United Nations postal agency said Saturday.Read the full storyRightwing conference reveals muddled lines between Trump and far rightA rightwing conference recently saw theocratic Christian nationalists, far-right publishers and members of men-only secret societies speaking alongside the Missouri senator Eric Schmitt, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and other senior Republican figures.The speaker list at the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC raises questions over what distinctions exist between the nationalist hard right in the US and members of the Trump administration and the Republican party.Read the full storyTrump’s former surgeon general urges president to fire RFK JrThe surgeon general from the first Trump administration on Saturday said that the US president should “absolutely” fire health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his “dangerous” policies on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Read the full storyTrump administration begins new Ice operation in MassachusettsThe Trump administration has targeted Massachusetts as its next location to begin arresting and deporting immigrants, a Department of Homeland Security official confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      US supreme court rulings are “not just an opinion poll” of its nine judges’ beliefs, conservative Amy Coney Barrett has said, as she and her colleagues weigh a request to overturn the legalization of same-sex marriage.

      US Open broadcasters have been asked not to air any booing of Donald Trump at Sunday’s men’s final.

      The West Point Association of Graduates has reportedly canceled a ceremony to honor Tom Hanks just weeks before it was to take place.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on Friday 5 September. More

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      Trump administration begins new Ice operation in Massachusetts

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      The Trump administration has targeted Massachusetts as its next location to begin arresting and deporting immigrants, a Department of Homeland Security official confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.DHS and its US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm are calling the operation Patriot 2.0, modifying the name of a May deportation surge that led to the arrest of 1,500 people in the state, according to the reports.A spokesperson for DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The operation is expected to last several weeks, the New York Times said, quoting unnamed sources with knowledge of the matter. One of the sources told the Times that Patriot 2.0 was focused on targeting immigrants who had been released from custody despite Ice agents attempting to pick them up from local jails.It was not immediately clear how many federal officers were involved in the crackdown, which comes as Chicago braces for a Trump administration ramp-up of deportations in the third-largest US city.NBC10 Boston quoted a statement from a DHS spokesperson as deriding the Boston mayor Michelle Wu’s so-called sanctuary policies.“Sanctuary policies like those pushed by Mayor Wu not only attract and harbor criminals but also place these public safety threats above the interests of law-abiding American citizens. ICE is arresting sex offenders, pedophiles, murderers, drug dealers, and gang members released by local authorities,” the statement reported by NBC10 said.Tensions between Wu and the Trump administration have been steadily building since March when Wu testified before Congress alongside three other Democratic mayors to defend their cities’ immigration policies – specifically so-called sanctuary city laws that limit state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Critics of these policies claim that sanctuary laws undermine federal law enforcement’s ability to arrest and deport individuals with criminal records.As part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, it has pushed for mass deportations and targeted “sanctuary cities” in particular.Wu has defended her city’s policies in a letter to US attorney general Pam Bondi: “The City of Boston is the safest major city in America,” she wrote. “Our progress is the result of decades of community policing and partnership between local law enforcement and community leaders, who share a commitment to making Boston a safe and welcoming home for everyone.”In response, the acting Ice director, Todd Lyons, said that the agency intended to “flood the zone, especially in sanctuary jurisdictions”.As the threat of federal actions looms, Wu said last week that her administration was actively preparing for the possibility of a federal national guard deployment.Wu also said her administration was reviewing relevant legal precedents and working “very closely” with community members “to ensure people know what’s happening and that this is not something that is needed or wanted or legally sound”.Anna Betts contributed reporting More

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      Postal traffic into US plunges by more than 80% after Trump ends exemption

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      Postal traffic into the United States plunged by more than 80% after the Trump administration ended a tariff exemption for low-cost imports, the United Nations postal agency said Saturday.The Universal Postal Union says it has started rolling out new measures that can help postal operators around the world calculate and collect duties, or taxes, after the US eliminated the so-called “de minimis exemption” for lower-value parcels.Eighty-eight postal operators have told the UPU that they have suspended some or all postal service to the United States until a solution is implemented with regard to US-bound parcels valued at $800 or less, which had been the cutoff for imported goods to escape customs charges.“The global network saw postal traffic to the US come to a near-halt after the implementation of the new rules on Aug 29, 2025, which for the first time placed the burden of customs duty collection and remittance on transportation carriers or US Customs and Border Protection agency-approved qualified parties,” the UPU said in a statement.The UPU said information exchanged among postal operators through its electronic network showed traffic from its 192 member countries – nearly all the world countries – had fallen 81% on 29 August, compared with a week earlier.The agency, based in Bern, Switzerland, said the “major operational disruptions” have occurred because airlines and other carriers indicated they weren’t willing or able to collect such duties, and foreign postal operators had not established a link to CBP-qualified companies.Before the measure took effect, the postal union sent a letter to the US secretary of state Marco Rubio to express concerns about its impact.The de minimis exemption has existed in some form since 1938, and the administration says it has become a loophole that foreign businesses exploit to evade tariffs and that criminals use to get drugs into the US.Purchases that previously entered the US without needing to clear customs now require vetting and are subject to their origin country’s applicable tariff rate, which can range from 10% to 50%.While the change applies to the products of every country, US residents will not have to pay duties on incoming gifts valued at up to $100, or on up to $200 worth of personal souvenirs from trips abroad, according to the White House.The UPU said its members had not been given enough time or guidance to comply with the procedures outlined in the executive order Donald Trump signed on 30 July to eliminate the duty-free eligibility of low-value goods. More