Subterms
US president suggests Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has not done enough to end warDonald Trump has said Ukraine needs “a new leader”, a day after making a deal with Vladimir Putin to buy large quantities of Russian diesel.The US president suggested Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not done enough to end the war with Russia and blamed him for high diesel prices in the US. Continue reading… More
Order for workers to remain standing to ‘reinforce professionalism’ draws rebuke amid plunging moraleUnion officials have launched a campaign to allow airport security staff to sit once more after the Trump administration unilaterally removed all the chairs for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staff at checkpoints.“People are pissed,” said Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) TSA council 100 and president of AFGE local 1040, which represents TSA workers in Dallas-Fort Worth. Continue reading… More
Are we really living through ‘end times fascism’? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor think so.In a new series from the Guardian, the pair speak to Radical Thinking with Aditya Chakrabortty in an extended interview. From Trump 2.0 and the rise of the tech billionaire to Gaza and the climate emergency, Klein and Taylor argue we are not just lurching from crisis to crisis but are in a new and dangerous moment in history. But they haven’t given up hope of a fightbackRadical Thinking will be published every Saturday in the Politics Weekly feedYou can watch the full interview with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor here.
Aditya’s suggested reading:Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s End Times Fascism is out now and available here. It began life as a special essay in the Guardian, which you can read here.A different take on whether Trump 2.0 is fascist comes from the economist Branko Milanović on his brilliant Substack.Elon Musk gives Donald Trump millions, and Trump gives Musk vast access to power. To read more, look at Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s Long Read for the Guardian and their recent book Muskism: a Guide for the Perplexed.For some sensational reporting on Trump’s second term, look at Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.How did the business class learn to love Trump and embrace chaos? Paul Heideman gives a lucid analysis in his recent book Rogue Elephant.If you want more on the new tech bros of Silicon Valley, here are four recommendations:- In their book, Klein and Taylor regularly cite Karen Hao’s Empire of AI.- There’s also The Nerd Reich, just out from Gil Durán. Continue reading… More
President complains about not winning prize in year he started war with Iran and says: ‘We will not forget, Norway’Donald Trump complained Friday about not winning the Nobel peace prize for 2026, a year in which he started a war with Iran.At what was supposed to be a rally for other Republican candidates in Syracuse, New York, the US president devoted a long portion of his speech airing his grievances with the Nobel committee. Continue reading… More
Zacharia will replace Karoline Leavitt, who left the role at the end of August after giving birth to her second childDonald Trump on Friday announced that he had picked Katie Zacharia to be the next White House press secretary, lining up a conservative commentator he called a “devoted fan” to be his most prominent spokesperson.Zacharia will replace Karoline Leavitt, who left the role at the end of August after the birth to her second child. Continue reading… More
Judge says justice department policy of checking state voter rolls against a federal immigration database is unlawfulA federal judge ruled on Friday that the US justice department’s policy of collecting states’ unredacted voter rolls to check them against a federal immigration database is unlawful.The ruling, by the US district judge Sparkle Sooknanan, was a setback for Donald Trump, who has pushed his administration to ramp up investigations into non-citizen voting ahead of the November midterm elections, with control of Congress at stake. Continue reading… More
It is odd for the US defense secretary to be laying the groundwork for an event that could be organized by TehranPete Hegseth’s plans to stage a public execution resemble a grotesque Iran-imitation game.Having failed over the past seven months to defeat the Tehran regime on the battlefield, the self-styled “secretary of war” now proposes to mirror its notorious practice of enforcing the death penalty as a grand public spectacle. Continue reading… More
The execution of a former US army psychiatrist by firing squad is to be livestreamed after Pete Hegseth said it would be a public event. Nidal Hasan was sentenced to death after killing 13 people at a military base in Texas in 2009. There has been widespread condemnation of the decision, including from the UN which said it would ‘amount to torture’. Lucy Hough speaks to US academic and capital punishment specialist Austin Sarat, the author of Life After Death: Surviving Execution Continue reading… More
