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    Top Democrat calls for investigation into ‘chaotic’ Newark airport delays

    One of America’s most important airports continued to be hit by delays and cancellations on Monday as the Senate’s top Democrat called for an investigation into the chaotic crisis.The problems at Newark, a busy airport in New Jersey that acts as one of the main hubs for New York City and the surrounding region, have persisted since last week, causing serious issues for tens of thousands of travelers.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, called for an investigation into the “chaos” that the Federal Aviation Authority says has been sparked by an air traffic controller shortage and thick cloud cover.“To say that there is just minor turbulence at Newark airport and the FAA would be the understatement of the year. We’re here because the FAA is really a mess. This mess needs a real forensic look, a deep look into it,” Schumer said. “So today I am demanding a full inspector general investigation as to what went on.”Schumer added: “The chaos at Newark very well could be a harbinger if issues like these aren’t fixed, and if the FAA can’t get real solutions off the ground.”Other politicians joined in.New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, called the delays “completely and utterly unacceptable” in a post on X, and said he knows US transportation secretary Sean Duffy is “committed” to hiring more air traffic controllers.United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a letter to customers over the weekend that the technology used to manage planes at the New Jersey airport failed more than once in recent days.The flight delays, cancellations and diversions that the equipment problems caused were compounded when more than one-fifth of Newark’s traffic controllers “walked off the job”, Kirby said.Faulting the FAA’s alleged failure to address “long-simmering” challenges related to the air-traffic control system, United cut 35 daily flights from its Newark schedule starting on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuffy, the transportation secretary, last week announced a program to recruit new controllers and give existing ones incentives not to retire.The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a workers’ union, said at the time that those moves could help address staffing shortages, but it also said the system is “long overdue for technology and infrastructure upgrades”.Meanwhile, the US army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington DC airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington national airport following Thursday’s close calls, two Army officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday. The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.Thursday’s close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. More

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    ‘A ruthless agenda’: charting 100 days of Trump’s onslaught on the environment

    Donald Trump has never been mistaken for an environmentalist, having long called the climate crisis a “giant hoax” and repeatedly lauding the supposed virtues of fossil fuels.But the US president’s onslaught upon the natural world in this administration’s first 100 days has surprised even those who closely charted his first term, in which he rolled back environmental rules and tore the US from the Paris climate agreement.This time, the mantra “drill, baby, drill” has been used to justify a hyperactive series of actions to reverse rules designed to protect clean air and water, open up vast tracts of land, ocean and even the seabed to mining, fire federal scientists en masse and downgrade the federal response to the disasters that stem from a warming world.Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is attempting to roll back toxic regulations that were calculated to save an estimated 200,000 Americans’ lives in the years ahead, his Department of the Interior is looking to shrink national monuments and his scientific agencies are degrading the basic data collection required for climate assessments and even weather forecasts.This burst of activity faces a barrage of legal action, with the courts already taking a dim view of the administration’s attempts to skirt usual practice in its haste to deregulate. Even with a rightwing-dominated supreme court, many of these executive orders are expected to founder.However, the US must accelerate efforts to cut emissions if climate goals are to be met, half of Americans still have to endure unsafe air and endangered species and public lands face pressure from a changing climate. The next few years will see little remedy to these growing problems from the White House.“The pace of announcements may slow at some point but the pressure on our regulatory system and our democracy will not only continue, but ramp up,” said Michael Burger, a climate law expert at Columbia University.“The result will be fewer environmental protections and more people suffering the public health consequences of more pollution. It’s that straightforward.” Oliver MilmanHistoric rollbacks of environmental regulations What has the administration done:

    Taken more than 140 actions to roll back environmental rules and push for greater use of fossil fuels.

    Set about rewriting regulations that limit pollution from cars, trucks and power plants.

    Officially reconsidering whether greenhouse gases actually cause harm to public health.

    Legally targeted states that have their own laws on tackling the climate crisis.

    Speeded up environmental reviews of drilling projects, from years to just a few weeks.

    Winding back water efficiency standards for showers and toilets and halting a phase-out of plastic straws
    View image in fullscreenAnalysis and reaction: When campaigning for president, Donald Trump promised to torch environmental regulations if fossil fuel companies were able to donate enough money to propel him to the White House. He has set about fulfilling this pledge in dizzying fashion.By the Guardian’s count, Trump’s administration has taken more than 140 actions to weaken or rescind environmental rules and to escalate the use of fossil fuels in his first 100 days – more than all of the rollbacks of his entire first term.The drumbeat of this effort, largely via a blizzard of executive orders and agency memos, to eviscerate rules designed to protect Americans’ air, water and a livable climate, has been relentless. “What we’ve seen in this first 100 days is unprecedented – the deregulatory ambition of this administration is mind-blowing,” said Burger of Columbia University.In a single day in March, Trump’s EPA launched 31 different actions to refashion pollution laws for cars, trucks and power plants and even re-evaluate whether greenhouse gases harm public health – a key finding that underpins US climate laws. It was a “dagger to the heart of the climate religion”, according to Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator.Zeldin has repeatedly touted the EPA’s record during the first 100 days, with the agency publishing a list of 100 environmental actions, including the cleanup of toxic waste and the testing of chemicals.But the administration has also sought to ease restrictions upon coal plants dumping their toxic ash and mercury and to scale back a plan to prevent states from wafting their pollution to their neighbors. Consideration of the climate crisis has been removed from federal spending decisions and disaster recovery, pipeline safety standards are to be relaxed and environmental permit approvals speeded up from years to just weeks.Places of refuge for nature and carbon storage, such as oceans and national forests, will be opened up for the extraction of fish and timber while endangered species laws are set to be upended and, if the administration gets its way, essentially neutered.Not content with the reorientation of the federal government’s response to the climate crisis, Trump has ordered his Department of Justice to target states that have their own climate laws. He has also ordered the expiration of environment and energy regulations across 25 different laws, usually a responsibility of Congress.Trump has even used the power of his office to attend to his own fixations around shower water pressure, which he considers too weak, and paper straws, which he dislikes compared with the plastic alternative. “There doesn’t seem to be any strategy to this but I feel like I have policy whiplash,” said Gina McCarthy, who was Joe Biden’s top climate adviser.“We see an administration that doesn’t care about these things and is all about the whims of President Trump. Executive orders are not laws, though, and we spend a great deal of time focusing on them when most of them are highly illegal and won’t go anywhere.” Oliver MilmanTrump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ agendaWhat the administration has done:

    Trump signed executive orders to ease restrictions on fossil fuel extraction and exports, pledging to “unleash American energy”.

    He tapped fossil fuel-supporting appointees to head up crucial federal agencies, including Chris Wright, a former fracking CEO, for energy secretary; Doug Burgum, former Republican governor of North Dakota – the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the country – to lead the interior department (DOI); and Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressperson to head the EPA.

    Trump offered the fossil fuel industry – which lavished record levels of donations on him and Congress – an exemption from the tariffs he presented in April (and which he placed on pause shortly thereafter).
    Analysis and reaction: Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led environmental justice group Sunrise Movement said: “Donald Trump’s actions on climate are part of a ruthless agenda to prop up big oil and reward the billionaires bankrolling his campaigns. Big oil’s bribe paid off.”Trump’s loyalty to the fossil fuel industry has not, however, shielded fossil fuel companies from the fallout of his erratic policymaking. The domestic oil industry is currently facing the some of the lowest prices for crude it has seen in years. The Dow Jones’s US Oil and Gas Index, which tracks 42 fossil fuel companies, plummeted by more than 15% since Trump announced the tariffs on 2 April, sinking to its lowest level since 2022, before a slow, partial rebound.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Trump’s tariffs have already begun driving up the costs of oil production, with new taxes on steel and aluminum inflating the costs of building fossil fuel infrastructure. And his calls to “drill, baby, drill” have raised concerns about oil demand, since an increase in supply could push down prices, thereby limiting profit.Though the oil industry has publicly praised Trump, they have quietly showed they are anxious about the economic implications of his policies. In a recent anonymized survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, for instance, fossil fuel executives brazenly criticized Trump. “The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets,” one oil boss said. “‘Drill, baby, drill’ is nothing short of a myth and populist rallying cry. Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”At a major Texas oil and gas conference in May, fossil fuel top brass echoed these criticisms.Though the Trump administration has not ended the chaos created by its policies, it has given big oil other gifts. In recent weeks, for instance, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws forcing polluting companies to pay for climate damages, and also targeting dozens of lawsuits that accuse big oil of intentionally covering up the climate risks of their products. Dharna NoorHollowing out agencies including Noaa, Fema and DOIWhat has the administration done

    Sweeping cuts to federal agencies on the forefront of the climate crisis, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), the DOI and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and widespread firings of climate scientists and regulation experts.

    Withdrawal from contracts and canceled grant funding; datasets pulled from public-facing websites; funding for regional climate centers suspended.

    National Climate Assessment contract canceled; hundreds of experts dismissed.

    Executive order to expedite deep-sea mining for minerals.

    Plans to dismantle a key Fema disaster preparedness program.

    Weather balloon launches stopped due to staff shortages.

    Censorship of climate-related words, flagged in studies, contracts and agency documents/websites.

    Plans to drain funding for climate, weather and ocean laboratories.
    Analysis and reaction: Trump wasted no time before he unleashed an all-out assault on environmental science, gutting the federal agencies positioned on the frontlines of the climate crisis, firing hundreds of researchers, staffers and forecasters and pulling public access to critical resources and data.Vital work to understand, prepare and respond to changes caused by global heating has slowed or stopped as teams try to navigate the chaos, while the threat of more severe budget cuts and political crackdowns lingers. The moves largely bypassed input or oversight from Congress as Trump used executive orders and actions undertaken by the billionaire Elon Musk-led “department of government efficiency”, even on budget issues typically governed by the legislative branch.View image in fullscreenThousands of federal workers were culled from the ranks across the country’s premier scientific agencies – including at Noaa and Nasa – and in roles across the government that typically facilitate regulatory process or research. Many of those fired were probationary employees, a classification applied to the first year, or sometimes two, in a position.The widespread firings were challenged in court, forcing the administration to rehire workers and put them on administrative leave, only to fire them again when legally in the clear. In the end, at least 121,000 federal workers were fired, leaving significant holes in their wake.Thousands more workers have opted to take offers of early retirement or voluntary separations. At Noaa alone, roughly 27,000 years of collective experience was lost, according to Craig McLean, the former director of Noaa research.“We lost our promising new talent in the probationary firings and now we’ve lost our institutional knowledge,” a Noaa employee said of the resignations, asking for anonymity out of fear of retribution.While the losses are expected to have a profound effect on the American public, the impact will be felt globally too.Among the hundreds of positions lost were workers who track El Niño-La Niña weather patterns around the world, people who model severe storm risks, and scientists contributing to global understanding of what could happen as the world warms.“I want to emphasize that this blunt smashing of federal agencies is limiting the ability of our nation to respond not only now, but in the future,” said Dr Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s dismantling the very infrastructure by which we collect data, foster expertise and collaboration, and have the people and processes in place to take action.”Already, the staff shortages have hampered data collection and field offices have had to stop deploying tools that gather essential intel.“The effects may not be obvious until there is a major tornado outbreak, or a hurricane landfall downwind, that doesn’t go so well,” said climate scientist Daniel Swain, who spoke about the gravity of this issue during a recent broadcast on YouTube. But, he said, the actions taken in the first 100 days were just the beginning.“What we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, noting recently leaked budget documents that outline the president’s plans to continue gutting climate science-focused federal work. If the administration has its way, he said, “it would probably spell the end of most publicly funded climate research in the United States”. Gabrielle CanonPublic lands targetedWhat has the administration done

    Rescinded protections for hundreds of millions of acres of federal waters.

    Initiated major changes to National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa) regulations that require federal projects consider environmental impacts and enable public oversight/comment, severely reducing the often years-long environmental impact process to 28 days.

    Ordered the end of American Climate Corps jobs that create climate and public lands-supporting positions.

    Plans to fast-track controversial deep-sea mining and accelerating approvals for mining, drilling, and fossil fuels extraction on public lands..

    Proposed rolling back protections in the Endangered Species Act.

    Plans to rescind Bureau of Land Management rules that protect millions of acres in Alaska and across the US west; planned repeal of BLM Public Lands Rule.

    Emergency situation determination issued by the USDA to open logging on more than 100m acres of national forests and an executive orders to increase and accelerate logging on federal lands. And revoked a Biden order that protected old-growth forests.

    Joint taskforce between DOI and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to examine federal lands for housing development as the administration pushes for the sell-off of public lands.
    Analysis and reaction: Trump may be one of the very few Americans who doesn’t cherish the country’s public lands. Voter support for these roughly 640m acres – forests and deserts, parks and monuments among them – is stalwart and one of the few issues bridged by an otherwise vast political divide.But even with broad popularity and a rapidly escalating interest in outdoor recreation that’s fueled both local economies and international tourism, the administration has made it a priority to shrink land management agencies, reduce protections once governed by them and possibly even diminish the holdings of lands under federal jurisdiction.View image in fullscreenThousands of employees were fired or took deals to leave, and agencies are struggling to hire seasonal employees who typically run operations during the busiest seasons. Still, more cuts are being planned as Trump seeks to reshape the federal government. Reports found the Department of Interior has plans to cull roughly 25% of its workforce, and employees at the US Forest Service are bracing for a broad reduction in force that has yet to be detailed. The National Park Service alone has suffered a 13% reduction in staff already.Sweeping firings left behind gaping holes in an already short-staffed workforce at parks and forests, leaving some departments with workforce levels typically seen during government shutdowns according to some experts.Toilets, trash and overgrown trails may become a common feature in highly trafficked areas, along with increasing risks of trampled conservation areas, a lack of capacity for the study of threatened plants and animals, and lost support that ensures safety measures are followed. Visitation has surged in recent years, adding new strains on ageing infrastructure and more opportunities for injuries and wildlife conflicts, as dangers from extreme conditions fueled by the climate crisis continue to mount.“Scientists who should be doing their job tracking the wildlife and the ecosystems in these parks, are being told they have to take restroom cleaning shifts,” said Aaron Weiss, the deputy director for the Center for Western Priorities. “That’s incredibly important in parks,” he added, “but we shouldn’t be assigning those jobs to scientists because Doge has fired all the custodial staff.”It’s not just about recreation, though. The administration has also made moves to open the country’s holdings of conservation areas, protected habitats and wilderness to extraction and development. There have been a series of orders from the administration that call for increased logging, fossil fuels leases, and mining as Trump pushes for expanding industry access.Ben Vizzachero, a federal worker who initially lost his job during the federal firing spree but who was later brought into his position said the outlook still remained bleak for US public lands. “The Trump administration is waging a campaign of bullying and harassment, trying to shrink the federal workforce by any means,” he said, noting that removing regulators and regulations will “open lands for mining, logging, drilling, and other destruction”.These sweeping changes and the threats to public lands come as they continue to be widely supported and cherished by the American people. “The fight to protect our public lands is embedded within the fight for our democracy itself.” Gabrielle CanonCancelling environmental justice schemes, and hitting US farmers What has the administration done

    Trump immediately rescinded a slew of executive orders that directed federal agencies to prioritize tackling environmental racism and other injustices – including one dating back more than 30 years.

    A separate executive order focused on ending government-sponsored diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and so-called “illegal DEI” efforts in the private sector also targeted environmental justice by wrongly conflating the two. This called for the closures of all environmental justice offices and positions in the federal government – including the office of environmental justice and external civil rights which was created to support EPA efforts to help improve access to clean water, air and land in communities disproportionately affected by environmental pollution, as well as enforce federal civil rights laws.

    Mass layoffs in the EPA, USDA and health and human services department which will disproportionately hit access to adequate, clean and affordable food, water, air and energy for low-income and rural communities.

    Freezing the Biden-era Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – more than $20bn of competitive grants available to states, cities, tribes and other eligible groups to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, particularly in areas most affected by climate crisis and excluded from mainstream finance.

    Terminating climate and conservation grants to US farmers including the Biden-era five-year $3.2bn real-life study into the effectiveness of conservation practices such as cover cropping for commodity farms.
    View image in fullscreenAnalysis and reaction: From day one of Trump 2.0, the president has revealed his intention to willfully conflate environmental justice – efforts to acknowledge and correct decades of harm caused by placing polluting factories, landfills, fossil fuel infrastructure and highways in low-income and Indigenous people and communities of color – with what he and his allies believe to be woke, anti-white DEI policies that proliferated in response to the BLM movement.Citing Trump’s crusade against DEI, the justice department terminated a two-year investigation into a petrochemical plant in LePlace, Louisiana, accused of emitting extraordinarily high levels of the cancer-causing chemical chloroprene into the majority Black community. Then, in an unprecedented move, his justice department terminated a 2023 landmark settlement with the state of Alabama requiring health authorities to provide the majority-Black Lowndes county with basic sewage and sanitation services – which an earlier investigation found had been denied for decades due to environmental racism. Several other consent decrees involving egregious polluters are feared to be under threat.Not to be outdone, Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), dismantled the office and fired the entire staff at the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap). States were still waiting for about $380m to be disbursed this year, when the bipartisan program that helps low-income Americans struggling to pay energy bills so they don’t die from the extreme heat or cold was disbanded. In a leaked HHS budget for 2026 seen by the Guardian, Liheap was terminated – which unless revived will increase heat and cold deaths in the richest country in the world.The $20bn Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, and the portal, has been frozen on and off since February, causing chaos and uncertainty for recipients as this makes its way through the courts. The money was appropriated by Congress through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and finalized before the election, and it is widely agreed (outside Trump world) that the fund cannot legally be cancelled without legislation. The fear is that the Republican-majority Congress will succeed in pushing this through in the continuing resolution for the 2025 budget, which should be passed in May.“The administration is trying to make it so difficult that people will give up, but our quest for environmental justice [has been waged] for 40 years and we will not stop now,” said one veteran environmental justice leader who asked not to be named in fear that his organization, a recipient of the fund, would be targeted. “The climate crisis is real; environmental racism is real. Those are the facts.” Nina LakhaniTearing up US global climate pledgesWhat has the administration done

    Pulled out of the 2015 Paris accords, which the Biden administration rejoined in 2021 – four years after Trump first withdrew the US from the global climate mitigation pact.

    Withdrew the US from the loss and damage fund – a global agreement under which the developed countries most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.

    The EPA missed the annual 15 April deadline to submit data on US greenhouse gas emissions to the United Nations – the first time in 30 years.
    Analysis and reaction: The US is currently the second biggest greenhouse gas emitter, so withdrawing from the Paris agreement and its legally binding commitment to reduce emissions will further weaken global efforts to slow global heating – with catastrophic consequences for communities vulnerable to climate shocks in the US and globally. It takes a year for the withdrawal to go into effect, but missing the 15 April emissions reporting deadline, which never happened even during Trump’s first term, has raised suspicion that this administration is willing to violate international rules and could be preparing to exit from the entire UNFCCC.View image in fullscreenAnother major concern is climate finance. As the world’s biggest economy (and worst historical polluter), the US has been a major, albeit inadequate, contributor to global climate funds to help developing countries that are not responsible for global heating in their climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. It has already pulled out of the loss and damage fund, adopted at the Cop28 UN summit in 2023 after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy – and despite US efforts to block it. The US has long obstructed progress on global climate action and had pledged a measly $17.5m (£13.5m) to the fund; the cynical move to withdraw from loss and damage efforts – while bolstering fossil fuel production – was widely condemned by the global south.Harjeet Singh, a climate activist and founding director of the India-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said: “As the largest historical emitter, the United States bears a significant share of the blame for the climate adversities affecting vulnerable populations worldwide. The decision by the Trump administration exemplifies a longstanding pattern of obstruction by the US government in securing necessary finance for addressing climate impacts, [and] undermines global efforts to deliver climate justice.” Nina Lakhani More

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    If leaders stay silent, the US won’t survive Trump’s next 100 days | Robert Reich

    We have witnessed the first 100 days of the odious Trump regime.The US constitution is in peril. Civil and human rights are being trampled upon. The economy is in disarray.At this rate, we will not make it through the second 100 days.Federal judges in more than 120 cases so far have sought to stop Trump – judges appointed by Republicans as well as Democrats, some appointed by Trump himself – but the regime is either ignoring or appealing their orders. It has even arrested a municipal judge in Milwaukee amid a case involving an undocumented defendant.Recently, Judge J Harvie Wilkinson III of the court of appeals for the fourth circuit – an eminent conservative Reagan appointee who is revered by the Federalist Society – issued a scathing rebuke to the Trump regime. In response to its assertion that it can abduct residents of the US and put them into foreign prisons without due process, Wilkinson wrote:
    If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning.
    Wilkinson’s fears are already being realized. Ice recently deported three US citizens – aged two, four and seven – when their mothers were deported to Honduras. One of the children, who has stage 4 cancer, was sent out of the US without medication or consultation with doctors.Meanwhile, the regime continues to attack all the independent institutions in this country that have traditionally served as buffers against tyranny – universities, non-profits, lawyers and law firms, the media, science and researchers, libraries and museums, the civil service and independent agencies – threatening them with extermination or loss of funding if they do not submit to its oversight and demands.Trump has even instructed the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support.Meanwhile, Trump is actively destroying the economy. His proposed tariffs are already raising prices. His attacks on the Fed chief, Jerome Powell, are causing tremors around the world.Trump wants total power, even at the cost of our democracy and economy.His polls are plummeting yet many Americans are still in denial. “He’s getting things done!” some say. “He’s tough and strong!”Every American with any shred of authority must loudly and boldly explain the danger we are in.A few Democratic members and progressives in Congress (Bernie Sanders, AOC, Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy) have expressed outrage, but most seem oddly quiet. Granted, they have no direct power to stop what is occurring but they cannot and must not appear to acquiesce. They need to be heard, every day – protesting, demanding, resisting, refusing.Barack Obama has spoken up at least once, to his credit, but where is my old boss, Bill Clinton? Where is George W Bush? Where are their former vice-presidents – Al Gore and Dick Cheney? Where are their former cabinet members? They all must be heard, too.What about Republican members of Congress? Are none willing to stand up against what is occurring? And what of Republican governors and state legislators? If there were ever a time for courage and integrity, it is now. Their silence is inexcusable.Over 400 university presidents have finally issued a letter opposing “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education”. Good. Now they must speak out against the overreach endangering all of American democracy.Hundreds of law firms have joined a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the law firm Perkins Coie’s appeal of the regime’s demands. Fine. Now, they along with the American Bar Association and every major law school must sound the alarm about Trump’s vindictive and abusive use of the justice department.America’s religious leaders have a moral obligation to speak out. They have a spiritual duty to their congregations and to themselves to make their voices heard.The leaders of American business – starting with Jamie Dimon, the chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who in normal times has assumed the role of spokesperson for American business – have been conspicuously silent. Of course they fear Trump’s retribution. Of course they hope for a huge tax cut. But these hardly excuse their seeming assent to the destruction of American democracy.We have witnessed what can happen in just the first 100 days. I’m not at all sure we can wait until the 2026 midterm elections and hope that Democrats take back at least one chamber of Congress. At the rate this regime is wreaking havoc, too much damage will have been done by then.The nation is tottering on the edge of dictatorship.We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the regime or we are complicit in its tyranny. There is no middle ground.Soon, I fear, the regime will openly defy the supreme court. Americans must be mobilized into such a huge wave of anger and disgust that members of the House are compelled to impeach Trump (for the third time) and enough senators are moved to finally convict him.Then this shameful chapter of American history will end.

    Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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    Senate Democrats to mark Trump’s ‘100 days from hell’ with marathon speeches

    Democratic senators will on Tuesday mark Donald Trump’s 100th day in office with marathon floor speeches intended to highlight his administration’s failures, seizing on his divisive tariff policy and attacks on the judiciary to argue he was not joking when he mulled governing as “a dictator”.Republicans, meanwhile, praised the president’s actions over the first 100 days, though the House speaker, Mike Johnson, acknowledged “some bumps along the road” he described as the necessary byproduct of the radical changes Trump campaigned on.The 100-day milestone has given Trump’s allies and enemies alike in Congress an opportunity to reflect on his presidency, which Democrats, confined to the minority in both the Senate and House of Representatives at least through next year, argue has accomplished little besides haphazardly dismantling important federal agencies and rendering precarious a previously robust economy.“Donald Trump’s first 100 days have been 100 days from hell,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader.“Donald Trump is not governing like a president of a democratic republic. He’s acting like a king, a despot, a wannabe dictator. Remember that during the campaign, he indicated that he’d be a dictator just on day one. But everything we’ve seen so far shows he wants to be a dictator for much, much longer.”Democrats are looking to regain their popular support after underperforming in November, when voters nationwide sent Trump back to the White House with Republicans in full control of Congress.Earlier this month, New Jersey’s Cory Booker spent 25 hours on the Senate floor condemning Trump in a record-breaking speech, while on Sunday, Booker and the top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, were out for more than 12 hours on the Capitol steps, condemning the GOP’s plans for a huge bill that will extend tax cuts and pay for mass deportations, potentially by cutting social safety net programs.The tactics have been compared to those of the civil rights and other protest movements, and on Tuesday, Schumer said Democrats would hold the Senate floor “until late tonight to mark these dismal 100 days by speaking the truth”.“What is the truth? The truth is this: no president in modern history has promised more on day one and delivered less by day 100 than Donald Trump. In record time, the president has turned a golden promise into an economic ticking timebomb. It’s getting worse every day, and he calls it progress.”Republicans have taken the opposite view of Trump’s record, promoting his moves to ban diversity initiatives in the government and elsewhere, crack down on transgender rights, block immigrants from crossing the border and attempt to step up deportations as “promises made, promises kept”.“We’re just getting started, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re so excited,” Johnson told reporters.But opinion surveys have found that Trump’s approval rating has sunk into the negative at a point earlier than his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, whose presidency wound up mired in public discontent. The plunge in popularity for a president who just over five months ago became the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades is viewed as a consequence of his disruptive approach to implementing tariffs, and his administration’s attacks on a judiciary that has sought to temper some of his policies.“There’s some bumps along the road. I mean, we’re changing everything,” Johnson replied, when asked about the president’s approval ratings.“The last four years was an absolute unmitigated disaster, and we got to fix it all. So when you’re doing that, it’s disruptive in a way.” More

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    Why is the US sleeping as autocracy approaches? | Governor Jay Inslee

    When a woman asked me a couple of weeks ago why leaders were not standing up to Donald Trump, my thoughts went immediately to political leaders. When I started to answer, she corrected me and said: “No, no, I’m talking about college presidents and law firms. Where the heck are they?”Where indeed? From all observations, most have been asleep as the US president dismantles democracy piece by jeweled piece. They are either cutting sweet little deals on their knees, or just remaining silent as the fruits of 250 years of national labor and life are strangled by Trump’s tentacles. From the cowering of major media companies to the shameful capitulation of some law firms, and oppressive silence from virtually all of them, the nation is sleepwalking into a slow but ever encroaching totalitarian state.As the woman continued her outpouring of anger and grief, I thought of John F Kennedy’s Pulitzer prize-winning book, Why England Slept, his brilliant exposition of why a proud and resilient nation ignored Germany’s mounting threat to their democracy when it was so obvious and imminent. Kennedy recognized the centrality of moments we now face, writing: “Any system of government will work when everything is going well. It’s the system that functions in the pinches that survives.” We are now being pinched by an autocrat who eats laws for breakfast and will not be stopped by any internal restraint.Whether our democracy survives to preserve the rule of law depends on so much more than senators and representatives. In a way, they are merely personal reflections of the public’s will. Depending exclusively on their personal commitment to the constitution is a good bet for the party now in the minority, but a sore loser for the majority party, or more accurately, the majority cult. The moment demands so much more than eloquence on the floor of the House and the Senate – it demands full-throated, continuous and united rebellion against the perverse oppression and malignant illegality of this authoritarian in the White House.Unfortunately, we are not seeing the necessary courage, not in the east, not in the west, not in large law firms, not in boardrooms, not in school district superintendents, not in chambers of commerce. The silence is deafening.Where was the united voice of major law firms when Trump maliciously began to target several of them? They were hiding. Where are the concerted voices of college presidents as their colleagues are being hung out to dry? Do they not teach history at these colleges, where any freshman could tell you that the Trump plan is right out of every autocrat’s playbook? First you tame the press, then you tame the colleges, then you tame the law firms so that no one can even get to court, then you eventually ignore the orders of the supreme court.We are well on our way to that final death knell of democracy, as we advance through the first three steps.My motivation to rally for our country is not driven solely by my love for democracy. Like millions of Americans, I see my own family being jeopardized by Trump’s callousness. I have seen first-hand the power of special education teachers to raise the prospects of special needs kids in my clan. I rebel at the Musk-Trump administration’s chainsaw attack eliminating the one agency that safeguards our kids’ access to special education investments, the US Department of Education. To Elon Musk, the department may be just a bureaucracy – to our family, it is a guardian angel.Is this passivity and lack of resistance understandable? Of course it is. That’s why the old saw “first they come for the … then they come for you” was invented.But we should call upon our college presidents, law firms, leaders of civil society, to get in touch with their responsibility to democracy itself, as well as their own institutions, which surely will end up on the firing line someday if Trump continues to be emboldened by his victims’ servility.Perhaps it is too strong to refer to these organizations as collaborators. Perhaps. But this wholesale timidity and collapse must be considered rank appeasement at best, modest complicity at worst.Kudos to Harvard University, Perkins Coie and others who have stood up, but some of the finest higher educational institutions in world history are now ignoring the well-trod path of autocracy in world history. Some of the best and brightest law firms in the nation are now providing free legal services to the very administration that has broken laws beyond counting the very legal codes the law firms purport to defend.Certainly, these silent aiders and abettors can explain their individual decision making, but their cumulative damage to the very fabric of democracy calls us to heed Benjamin Franklin when he said we must “all hang together, or all hang separately”. Is it asking too much for the college presidents of the US to band together and say this choking of research funds is unacceptable? Are the law firms just too busy to all say they are not going to yield to Trump’s perverse bullying and say what any good lawyer ought to say: “We’ll see you in court”?In fighting Trump’s assaults on democracy, I speak from experience. As the first governor to come out against his Muslim ban, one of the most vocal in speaking out against his Covid negligence, and telling him to his face to stop tweeting and start protecting our children, earning me the honor of being called a “snake”, I know standing up brings the heat. So be it.But my more important experience is decades watching a courageous citizenry force its federal government to change course. In the 50s and 60s, the government was forced to change, thanks in large part to a woman refusing to sit in the back of the bus. In the 70s, the Vietnam war ended only because thousands marched, including myself, proving the ability of committed people, though unelected, to compel change. In the 80s it was private citizens who forced the federal government to start treating HIV patients like humans.In each of these decades, small acts of defiance led to national change as courage rippled outwards. The benefit of having lived these decades during the American experiment is learning that leaders in civil society who resist should be exalted, joined, and followed.Those who believe that this call to action is an overstatement of the threat understand neither the nature of the tyrant-in-chief nor the slow but inexorable nature of how democracies are lost. I witnessed Trump’s cruelty and lack of empathy as I dealt with him during the Covid pandemic, as he willfully withheld help and then consciously spread misinformation that caused so many needless deaths. Anyone who saw this up close would make the call for resistance I am making today. How can anyone not understand that the refusal to follow the law on January 6 continues in full force today? Why would it stop unless it is made to stop?More importantly, we should listen to the late Justice William O Douglas, who said: “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” It is past time for all our leaders in civil society to wake up, stand up and speak up. We are right in calling them to do so. Hiding is no longer acceptable.

    Jay Inslee served as the governor of Washington from 2013-2025 More

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    Democrats in Congress warn cuts at top US labor watchdog will be ‘catastrophic’

    Democrats have warned that cuts to the US’s top labor watchdog threaten to render the organization “basically ineffectual” and will be “catastrophic” for workers’ rights.The so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has targeted the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for cuts and ended its leases in several states.Representatives Bobby Scott, Mark DeSaulnier and Greg Casar have written to NLRB’s chair, Marvin Kaplan, and the acting general counsel, William Cowen, requesting answers on the cuts.“If the NLRB reduces its workforce and closes a number of regional offices, it will render the NLRB’s enforcement mechanism basically ineffectual, thereby chilling workers from exercising their rights to engage in union organizing and protected concerted activities,” they wrote.The letter noted the NLRB has already been suffering from drastic understaffing and budget constraints, while caseloads have increased. NLRB field staffing has declined by one-third in the last decade, while case intake per employee at the agency grew by 46%.“The harm to America’s workers by potential directives to reduce this independent agency’s workforce cannot be overstated,” the letter added. “Any NLRB reduction in force (RIF) or office closures would be catastrophic for workers’ rights.”The representatives also requested all information related to Doge’s role at the NLRB, including all communications Doge had with employees at the NLRB or regarding the NLRB with other agencies.Doge is led by billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. Musk’s SpaceX has challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB. A whistleblower at the NLRB told NPR earlier this month that Doge accessed sensitive data at the agency and took steps to cover their tracks in doing so.The National Labor Relations Board Union, representing workers at the agency, reported last week that Doge cancelled the NLRB regional office’s lease a year early in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ending it in August 2025.In March 2025, Doge terminated the lease for the NLRB regional office in Memphis, Tennessee. In February 2025, Doge terminated the leases for NLRB offices in Buffalo, New York; Puerto Rico; Los Angeles, California; Overland Park, Kansas; and Birmingham, Alabama.“The NLRB is an agency that has been starved of funding and resources for over a decade. We have seen massive staffing cuts simply from attrition. There is no need for any austerity measures with our operations; Congress has already done that to us.” the NLRB Union stated on social media.The NLRB declined to comment. More

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    Trump administration’s budget cuts endanger Meals on Wheels: ‘Life and death implications’

    The Trump administration’s slashes to the Department of Health and Human Services is threatening Meals on Wheels, the popular program dedicated to combatting senior hunger and isolation. Despite decades of bipartisan support, Meals on Wheels now faces attacks from Republicans whose budget blueprint paves the way for deep cuts to nutrition and other social safety-net programs as a way to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.It’s a move anti-hunger advocates and policy experts warn could have disastrous ramifications for the millions of older Americans who rely on the program to eat each day.“It’s not hyperbolic to say that we’re going to be leaving people hungry and that this literally has life and death implications,” said Nicole Jorwic, the chief of advocacy and campaigns at Caring Across Generations, a non-profit that advocates for ageing Americans, disabled people and their caregivers. “This is not just about a nice-to-have program. These programs are necessities in the lives of seniors all over this country.”While it is still unknown exactly what will be slashed, the blueprint sets the stage for the potential elimination of the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), a key source of funding for local Meals on Wheels programs in 37 states, and serious cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) and Medicaid, which would increase food insecurity and hardship and steeply increase demand for Meals on Wheels services. The entire staff who oversaw SSBG have already been fired, according to reports.If Congress takes away SSBG funding and weakens other programs, seniors who rely on in-home deliveries or meals in community and senior centers to survive would receive less help as Meals on Wheels community providers would be forced to reduce services, add people to waitlists or turn seniors facing hunger away altogether. Some program operators who are already making tough choices about who to serve due to strained budgets and rising need have said it feels as though they are “playing God”.“We’re talking about lives here so it’s worrisome to me,” said Ellie Hollander, the president and CEO of Meals on Wheels America. “Some of our programs are already operating on razor-thin budgets and are pulling from their reserves. [If funding goes away], it could result in some programs having to close their doors.”In the US one in four Americans is over the age of 60 and nearly 13 million seniors are threatened by or experience hunger. Meals on Wheels America, a network of 5,000 community-based programs that feeds more than 2 million older Americans each year, has been a successful public-private partnership for more than 50 years. The Urban Institute estimates that the number of seniors in the US will more than double over the next 40 years.The Older Americans Act (OAA) nutrition program, which supports the health and wellbeing of seniors through nutrition services, is the network’s primary source of federal funding, covering 37% of what it takes to serve more than 250m meals each year. The exact mix of local, state, federal and private funding of Meals on Wheels’ thousands of on-the-ground community programs varies from provider to provider.Under the orders of the Elon Musk-led unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, 20,000 people at HHS have lost their jobs in recent weeks, including at least 40% of the staff at the Administration for Community Living, which coordinates federal policy on ageing and disability. Since many of those staffers helped fulfill critical functions to serving older Americans through the OAA, some Meals on Wheels programs are worried about funding disbursements, reporting data and the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise.HHS has said it will reorganize the ACL into other HHS agencies, although how that would happen is unclear. The co-chairs of the Disability and Aging Collaborative, composed of 62 member organizations that focus in part on ageing and disability, said in a recent statement: “This disruptive change threatens to increase rates of institutionalization, homelessness and long-lasting economic hardships.”Since experiencing multiple strokes that left her cognitively impaired and at risk for falls, Dierdre Mayes has relied on Meals on Wheels Yolo County to deliver meals that are the 64-year-old’s primary source of nutrition. “I’m really thriving off of the meals I get,” said Mayes, a Woodland, California, resident who also receives $20 a month in food stamps, which she uses to purchase cases of water. “The best part about it is I don’t have to go anywhere to get them.” For Mayes and other homebound older Americans, the program is a lifeline.The uncertainty around Meals on Wheels’ future is causing stress for seniors who are worried about how federal cuts, layoffs and tariffs will impact their daily deliveries. The non-profit FeedMore WNY, which serves homebound older adults in New York’s Erie and Niagara counties, said they’ve been hearing from fearful older clients as word of other recent cuts circulated in the news.Catherine Shick, the public relations manager for FeedMore WNY, said they served 4,775 unique Meals on Wheels clients last year and that demand for their feeding programs increased by 16% from 2023 to 2024, a trend they expect to continue. “Any cut to any funding has a direct impact on the individuals who rely on us for food assistance and any cuts are coming at a time when we know that food insecurity is on the rise,” she said. “We need the continued support of all levels of government, as well as the community, to be able to fulfill our mission.”In addition to delivering healthy, nutritious food, Meals on Wheels drivers, who are primarily volunteers, provide a host of other valuable services: they can look for signs of cognitive or other health changes. They can also address safety hazards in the home or provide pet support services, as well as offer crucial social connections since drivers are often the only person a senior may see in a given day or week.Deliveries have been shown to help keep seniors healthy and in their own homes and communities and out of costly institutional settings. Republicans in the House and Senate have said their goal is to reduce federal spending, but experts say cutting programs that help fund organizations such as Meals on Wheels would instead increase federal spending for healthcare and long-term care expenses for older Americans.“If people can’t stay in their own homes, they’re going to be ‘high flyers’ in hospitals and admitted prematurely into nursing homes,” said Hollander, “all of which cost taxpayers billions of dollars annually versus providing Meals on Wheels for one year to a senior for the same cost of being in the hospital for one day or 10 days in a nursing home.”Experts agree that even before the cuts, Meals on Wheels has been underfunded. Advocates and researchers say OAA hasn’t kept up with the rapid growth of the senior population, rising food costs or inflation. One in three local programs already have waiting lists with many programs already feeling stretched to their limits. For more than 60% of Meals on Wheels providers across the country, federal funding represents half or more of their total revenue, underscoring the serious damage that could be done if cuts or policy changes are made in any capacity.“It feels like a continuous slew of attacks on the programs that seniors rely on to be safe, independent and healthy in their own homes,” said Jorwic of Caring Across Generations. “Everything from cuts to Meals on Wheels to cuts to Medicaid, all these things that are being proposed and actively worked on being implemented, are a real threat to the security of aging Americans.” More

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    Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker livestream sit-in against GOP funding plan

    House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and New Jersey senator Cory Booker were holding a sit-in protest and discussion on Sunday on the steps of the US Capitol in opposition to Republicans’ proposed budget plan.Billed as an “Urgent Conversation with the American People”, the livestreamed discussion comes before Congress’s return to session on Monday, where Democrats hope to stall Republicans’ economic legislative agenda. Throughout the day, they were joined by other Democratic lawmakers, including the senator Raphael Warnock, who spoke as the sit-in passed the 10-hour mark.The proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year, the New York Times reported on Friday, includes cuts to programs that support childcare, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly.“Republican leaders have made clear their intention to use the coming weeks to advance a reckless budget scheme to President Trump’s desk that seeks to gut Medicaid, food assistance and basic needs programs that help people, all to give tax breaks to billionaires,” Booker and Jeffries aid in a statement.“Given what’s at stake, these could be some of the most consequential weeks for seniors, kids and families in generations,” they added.Booker wrote separately on X: “This is a moral moment in America. Sitting on the Capitol steps with Leader Hakeem Jeffries this morning to discuss what’s at stake with Trump’s budget and affirm the need for action to protect Medicaid, food assistance, and other safety net programs.”Booker and Jeffries started their sit-in around 6am and were joined by lawmakers including Democratic senators Chris Coons and Angela Alsobrooks and representatives Gil Cisneros and Gabe Amo, among others.Reverend Dr William J Barber II and the National Education Association president, Becky Pringle, also joined. Pringle said the Trump administration was perpetuating “the greatest assault on public education that we’ve ever seen in this country”.Democrats and independents have added a new degree of physicality to their opposition to the Trump agenda. Earlier this month, Booker set a new record for the chamber’s longest speech when he held the floor, without a bathroom break, for more than 25 hours.Booker said he was doing so with the “intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States senate for as long as I am physically able” in order to protest the actions of Trump and his administration.The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, and the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been on a “Fighting Oligarchy” nationwide tour of the US to protest the “oligarchs and corporate interests that have so much power and influence in this country”.On Sunday, Sanders, who has accused Democrats of significantly ignoring working-class priorities, said that the party does not have “a vision for the future”.“You have Democrats appropriately, and I’m working with them, talking about Trump’s movement toward authoritarianism, vigorously opposing the so-called reconciliation bill to give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the 1% and make massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition and housing, opposing what Musk is doing to dismember the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Administration, making it hard for our veterans to get decent healthcare or benefits on time,” Sanders told NBC’s Meet the Press.Throughout Sunday’s livestreamed sit-in, groups of curious passersby also found themselves sitting on the Capitol steps listening and weighing in on the discussion. More