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    Trump 100 days: White House action plan makes Project 2025 look mild

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    When Donald Trump chose a Project 2025 author to lead a key federal agency that would carry out the underpinnings of the conservative manifesto’s aims, he solidified the project’s role in his second term.Shortly after he won re-election, the US president nominated Russ Vought to lead the office of management and budget. Vought wrote a chapter for Project 2025 about consolidating power in the executive branch and advances a theory that allows the president to withhold funds from agencies, even if Congress has allocated them. Consolidating power, in part through firing a supposed “deep state” and hiring loyalists, is a major plank of the project – and of Trump’s first 100 days.Trump tried, repeatedly, to distance himself from the project, led by the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, on the campaign trail after the left used it as shorthand for the dismantling of government that would take place if he won. Since he’s taken office, the illusion that his ideas were drastically different from the project has fallen.“The whole distancing themselves from Project 2025 may have pulled some voters,” said Manisha Sinha, a history professor at the University of Connecticut, but “my sense is that they’re going to try and push all the items within Project 2025 as much as they can.”Many of Trump’s moves in his first 100 days come directly from Project 2025, which involved more than 100 conservative organizations and represented a sort of consensus among the Trumpist right about what he should do in a second term. In some instances, he has gone beyond the project’s suggestions. And in other cases, because the project was written in 2023, subsequent policy ideas from the Heritage Foundation have shaped his actions and goals.For instance, the project predated Elon Musk’s outsized role in the election and then in the Trump administration, but the goal to slash government programs using the so-called “department of government efficiency” fits the spirit of the project. It also predates the war in Gaza and the crackdown on speech in the US in the name of antisemitism, but Heritage’s Project Esther laid out a strategy to crack down on civil society groups that support Palestinian rights.Trump’s campaign once said people associated with the project wouldn’t get jobs in his administration. Instead, several hold prominent roles, in some cases now carrying out the plans they wrote about in the project.He chose Peter Navarro as a trade adviser; Navarro wrote a chapter for the project that advocates for increased tariffs and a restructuring of US trade, which Trump is now working on. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared in training videos for Project 2025. Brendan Carr, Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Communications Commission, wrote the chapter on the FCC.The former director of the project, Paul Dans, stepped down from his role amid concerns that the project was derailing Trump’s re-election effort. Dans told Politico in March that Trump’s second term was “actually way beyond my wildest dreams”.“What we had hoped would happen has happened. So I can’t imagine how anything could end really any better,” Dans said.Will Dobbs-Allsopp, policy director of Governing for Impact, and James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, have publicly tracked the executive actions suggested for 20 different agencies in Project 2025 as Trump has carried some of them out. Of the 532 proposals in the project that fall under these actions, Trump has already proposed, attempted or completed 153 of them – about 29%.The belief that Trump was not fully prepared, and the broader conservative ecosystem was not aligned completely with his agenda, underpinned his first term. For his second term, conservative donors put major money into efforts to get the right on the same page and to come up with plans and personnel who would stand ready to implement these plans immediately if Trump won.While thinktanks often seek to influence policymakers, the project stands out for its focus on Trump.“Really, it was written for Trump or Trumpism,” Goodwin said. “There really was an audience of one in mind … Trump had as much gravitational pull on Project 2025 as Project 2025 hopes to have on Trump. It’s just a very unusual thinktank-policymaker relationship.”Where Trump has used the projectThe threads of Project 2025 are visible across the federal government in Trump’s second term.He is in the process of firing people disloyal to the Trump agenda, a first step in creating a government more beholden to him. An executive order signed in April called for tens of thousands more roles being listed as political appointments rather than career civil servants, a move Project 2025 promoted as a way to drive out the kinds of people who stood in the way of success in his first term.Project 2025 called for dismantling the Department of Education, which would require congressional action. Trump signed an executive order calling on the education secretary to start the dismantling process by shutting down major parts of the department’s work.The project wanted to scale back the US Agency for International Development. Trump axed it.“Libs are realizing that Project 2025 was the watered down version of this White House action plan,” Tyler Bowyer, a leader with conservative youth group Turning Point, said on X in early February.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe project said that programs related to climate change should be ended; Trump has ended a host of climate programs and has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement.The Department of Justice should be reconfigured, ending a host of policies and enforcement that came during the Biden years, the project says. Trump has weaponized the department to achieve his goals and to go after his enemies.In nearly all agency recommendations, the project suggested scrapping any diversity efforts. Trump ended diversity, equity and inclusion programs government-wide. He has taken actions to prohibit transgender people in sports and in the military and limited access to gender-affirming care, which aligns with ideas in the project that seek to reinforce binary genders.The project recommended a host of ways to deport undocumented immigrants, end visa programs for people to come to the US legally, and restrict border crossings – a key part of Trump’s first 100 days, though the project didn’t suggest using the Alien Enemies Act, as Trump has, or going after birthright citizenship.Trump signed an executive order that would make states carry more of a burden for disaster relief, another idea suggested by Project 2025, which also said withholding disaster funds was one way to enforce immigration laws.The FCC, now led by a Project 2025 author appointed by Trump, is investigating National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System and will potentially defund them, which Carr wrote about in the project.What could happen nextThe first wave of Project 2025-aligned actions has been conducted largely by executive orders. A second wave of recommendations requires the rulemaking process at agencies and others would require congressional action.“They’re only just now starting their kind of policy, deregulatory effort, rescinding regulations in earnest. They haven’t even really gotten there yet. They’ve been so focused on agency operations and personnel for the past few months,” Dobbs-Allsopp said. “We would expect that at six months or a year, they will be even further along.”Sinha predicted that the full-scale dismantling of the administrative state, if successful, could bring the US “back to the era of tainted meat and lead in hot water”.Project 2025 represented the extreme version of what the Republican party has been selling since the Nixon and Reagan years, she said. It mixes the anti-government rhetoric with demonizing immigrants, poor people and people of color. “The Republicans have trafficked on this for a very long time,” she said.“The people who hate government basically are running government,” she said. More

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      Move fast and destroy things: 100 chaotic days of Elon Musk in the White House

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      One hundred days after Elon Musk entered the White House as Donald Trump’s senior adviser and the de facto leader of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the Tesla CEO has left little of the federal government unscathed. Over the course of just a few months, he has gutted agencies and public services that took decades to build while accumulating immense political power.Musk’s role in the Trump administration is without modern precedent. Never before has the world’s richest person been deputized by the US president to cull the very agencies that oversee his businesses. Musk’s attempts to radically dismantle government bureaus have won him sprawling influence. His team has embedded its members in key roles across federal agencies, gained access to personal data on millions of Americans and fired tens of thousands of workers. SpaceX, where he is CEO, is now poised to take over potential government contracts worth billions. He has left a trail of chaos while seeding the government with his allies, who will likely help him profit and preserve his newfound power.The billionaire’s newfound sway has not come without pushback and a cost. Doge’s blitz through the government has sparked furious nationwide backlash, as well as dozens of lawsuits challenging Musk’s mass firings and accusing his task force of violating numerous laws. Musk’s personal popularity has sunk to record lows, and Tesla’s profits have tanked.A look back at the first 100 days of the Trump administration shows the extent to which Musk’s efforts have changed the US government. It also shows that what Musk framed as a cost-cutting task initiative is failing to meet its ostensible goal of finding $1tn in fraud or waste, but it is succeeding in reshaping federal agencies along ideological grounds, paving the way for private companies to fill the resulting vacuum of public services.Musk has recently stopped physically working from the White House and stated he plans to pivot away from his government position soon, but has entrenched himself as one of the world’s most divisive political figures and gives no sign he is willing to fully give up his influence. Instead, the first 100 days of Doge shows that the scope of Musk’s ambition extends to remaking how the government deals with everything from humanitarian aid to the rule of law.Doge sweeps through agenciesOn the same day Trump was sworn into office, the president issued an executive order that created Musk’s “department of government efficiency” by renaming the US Digital Service agency, which previously handled governmental tech issues. Trump’s order included only a vague mandate to modernize government technology and increase efficiency, but within days it would become clear that Musk and his team had far more expansive aims.In the months leading up to the executive order, Musk had been hiring a team of staffers that included a mix of young engineers, tech world executives and longtime lieutenants from his private companies. Running the day-to-day operations was Steve Davis, who had worked with Musk at various companies, including SpaceX and the Boring Company, for more than 20 years. Davis was known as an exacting boss – Musk once compared him to chemotherapy. Others had far less experience, including 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who had worked for several months at Musk’s Neuralink company. The teenager had been fired from a previous internship for leaking information and went by the username “big balls” in online profiles.Doge’s early days made headlines for targeting masses of government workers with layoffs and pushing others to resign, with more than 2 million employees receiving an email on 28 January titled “Fork in the road” that encouraged staffers to take a buyout. The emails, which asked: “What did you accomplish this week?” would become a signature of Musk and his new bureau, sent again and again whenever staff began to prey on a new herd of government employees.Shortly after Trump’s executive order created Doge, Musk’s team quickly began popping up in the offices of numerous agencies. One of the first was the General Services Administration, which oversees digital technology and government buildings. Doge staffers appeared on Zoom calls with no introduction and hidden last names, questioning federal employees about what they did for work and refusing to answer questions. They also began to show up in person, taking over conference rooms and moving Ikea beds on to the sixth floor of the GSA to sleep overnight. Perplexed government workers at numerous agencies described Doge’s actions as a hostile takeover, where a goon squad would appear and demand rapid changes to systems they knew little about.“They’ve only fired people and turned things off,” said a current federal employee, who agreed to speak anonymously for fear of retribution.Simultaneously, Doge staffers were aggressively gaining access to key data systems that controlled the flow of payments to federal workers and funding for government contracts. In one striking incident, Doge team members clashed with the highest ranking career official at the treasury department over access to a payment system that controls $6tn in annual funds. The fight ended with the official, David Lebryk, being put on administrative leave before he ultimately resigned. Doge staff obtained the access they wanted.Pushback against Doge from other officials resulted in similar punishments. As Doge staffers stormed into the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in early February, they found themselves in a heated standoff with security officials who tried to bar them from accessing a secure room which held sensitive and confidential data. The confrontation ended with USAID’s top security official being put on administrative leave, while Doge gained access to its systems. With no one to stop them, Doge staffers then began the process of hollowing out the agency that had once been the world’s largest single supplier of humanitarian aid. More than 5,600 USAID workers around the world would be fired in the ensuing weeks.“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted days later on X, his social media platform.Musk moves to gut the governmentDoge’s targeting of USAID turned out to be a blueprint for how Musk and company would go after other parts of the government. In early February, Musk’s team had established a presence across federal agencies and placed itself at the fulcrum of government employment systems. The next step was mass layoffs.“We do need to delete entire agencies,” Musk told attendees at a World Governments Summit in Dubai on 13 February. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”The same day as Musk’s remarks, the Trump administration ordered agencies to fire thousands of probationary workers – a designation that applies to employees who have been at their jobs for less than a year, including those who may have been recently promoted. Other workers soon received an email from Doge that demanded they list five things that they did last week or face termination, a chaotic request that also turned out to be an empty threat. Cabinet officials privately deemed it nonsensical.Amid the widespread cuts, Musk began reveling in his new powers both on X and in public appearances. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on 23 February he stood on stage in a black Maga hat, sunglasses and gold chain, gleefully wielding a chainsaw that was gifted to him by Javier Milei, the rightwing populist Argentinian president.“This chainsaw is for bureaucracy!” he said. “I am become meme.”While Musk celebrated his first cuts, Doge began going after entire offices and agencies it viewed as politically progressive or opposed to its goals. The GSA’s 18F office, which helped build software projects such as the IRS’s free tax filing service, was one of the first targets. On 3 February, Musk told a rightwing influencer on X that the office was “deleted” in response to an inaccurate post accusing the group of being radical leftists. Employees at the 18F office asked their new Musk-allied leadership what “deleted” meant, former workers said, but received no further clarification. The employees continued working for weeks under a cloud of confusion and tension with their new leaders, until the middle of the night on Saturday 1 March, when they received an email saying they were going to be laid off en masse.“We were living proof that the talking points of this administration were false. Government services can be efficient,” Lindsay Young, the former executive director of 18F, said in a post on LinkedIn. “This made us a target.”Doge’s influence soon extended beyond government tech offices into major agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March that it was cutting 10,000 jobs to align with Trump’s executive order on Doge. In a display of the chaos that Doge had inspired, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr weeks later admitted that around 2,000 of those workers were fired in error and would need to be reinstated.Musk fights the judicial systemAs soon as Trump issued the executive order to create Doge, watchdog and labor groups filed lawsuits challenging its legality. More lawsuits piled on as Doge accessed sensitive data systems, fired workers and refused to respond to public records requests. Altogether, there have now been more than two dozen cases targeting the agency.At first, Doge and Musk seemed to move faster than the judicial system could respond as they slashed and burned government agencies. Around the start of March, however, many of the court cases began to produce rulings that curtailed Doge’s layoffs and temporarily blocked its staff’s access to data. Judges ruled that the Trump administration needed to reinstate probationary workers that they fired, limited some Doge access to databases at agencies such as the Social Security Administration and ordered Musk’s team to turn over internal records it had been seeking to keep private.Musk’s reaction was a constant stream of attacks against the judicial system on X, which included demands that lawmakers “impeach the judges” and claims that there was a “judicial coup” under way against Trump. Musk repeatedly amplified far-right influencers saying that the US should emulate El Salvador’s strongman president, Nayib Bukele, whose party ousted supreme court judges in 2021 in a slide toward authoritarianism.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Musk campaigned against federal judges that were increasing oversight and forcing more transparency on Doge, he also began plowing money into a Wisconsin supreme court race that would have tipped the state’s judicial body conservative. The billionaire and the groups he funded put more than $20m toward electing a conservative judge, which he claimed was crucial to “the future of civilization”.The attempt to influence the Wisconsin vote followed his blueprint from the presidential race. His Super Pac offered $100 to voters willing to sign a petition stating their opposition to “activist judges”, and he held a campaign rally where he gave out $1m dollar checks on stage. Musk’s effort failed to convince voters, with his preferred candidate losing by 10 percentage points.The outcome of the Wisconsin supreme court race proved to be the first in a series of setbacks that tested the limits of Musk’s political influence and the toxicity of his personal brand. As the billionaire embraced his new role as a Republican mega-donor and placed himself often literally at center stage, it became clear that his routine did not always play well outside of the insulated bubbles of Maga rallies and Tesla product launches. While people saw more and more of Musk, polls showed that the public liked him less and less.Protests boom against Musk and TeslaAs Musk’s association with Trump and the international far right became too prominent to ignore over the past year, there has been a rising social stigma against associating with his products. The most tangible symbol of Musk’s empire, Tesla, has become the focus of an international protest movement since the creation of Doge. SpaceX, the second-largest source of Musk’s wealth, has seemed insulated from the vicissitudes of consumer sentiment and increased its role in US space operations.Protests at Tesla dealerships, as well as vandalism against individual cars, started small in the weeks after inauguration, with gatherings of a few dozen people in cities including New York City and San Francisco. Some Tesla owners sold their cars due to the association with Musk or placed “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy” bumper stickers on their vehicles. The demonstrations quickly escalated to more cities, though, organizing under the banner of “Tesla Takedown” protests that targeted showrooms around the country.By mid-March, a fully fledged international protest movement against Tesla and Musk had formed and brought about mass protests. Thousands of people gathered at showrooms from Sydney to San Francisco on 30 March in a day of action, with organizers stating that “hurting Tesla is stopping Musk”. Vandalism against Tesla dealerships, charging stations and cars also intensified around the world, including multiple molotov cocktail attacks and incidents of arson. Trump and Musk called the attacks domestic terrorism, while Pam Bondi, the attorney general, vowed to crack down on anyone targeting Tesla.The pressure on Tesla represented a real threat to the company, which was already dealing with an overall sluggish market for electric vehicles and increased competition from Chinese automakers. As protests spread, Musk leaned on his status in Maga world to attempt to revitalize the brand. Trump appeared on the White House driveway in front of several parked Teslas, telling reporters that he was going to buy one of them and praising Musk as a “patriot”. Others in Trump’s orbit, including Fox News host Sean Hannity, also posted sales pitches for the automaker.Despite praise from Trump and Musk’s assurances to workers and investors that they should not sell Tesla stock, analysts reported that the protests along with other economic issues were nevertheless taking a toll. A stock selloff has resulted in Tesla’s share price falling around 25% since the start of the year, wiping billions of dollars from Musk’s net worth. A first-quarter earnings call on 22 April revealed Tesla’s performance was even worse than expectations, with a 71% drop in profits and 9% drop in revenue year over year.Musk announced on the call that he would spend significantly less time working on Doge starting sometime in May.Musk eyes an exit, but Doge remainsMusk’s declaration that he would pare back his time with Doge to one or two days a week gave a more definitive sense of his exit after weeks of speculation about when and how he would leave the White House. Although Trump has remained adamant that Musk is doing a good job and remains welcome in the administration, a growing chorus of top officials have either openly feuded with him or privately griped about his presence throughout his first 100 days.Musk has had intense clashes with secretary of state Marco Rubio, transportation secretary Sean Duffy and several other top Trump staffers. He reportedly got into a near-physical shouting match with treasury secretary Scott Bessent in recent weeks, and has publicly called chief trade adviser Peter Navarro, the architect of Trump’s tariff policies, “dumber than a sack of bricks”.The power struggles between Musk and administration officials leave it unclear how much say Doge will have without Musk constantly placed at the right hand of the president, but his allies are still spread throughout the government and actively working on carrying out his mission. Doge has continued to target agencies throughout April, gutting smaller groups such as an agency that coordinates government policy on homelessness, and eyeing others including the Peace Corps for mass layoffs.Some of Doge’s cuts have directly targeted agencies that oversee Musk’s companies, including at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that regulates and investigates the risks of self-driving cars. Shifts in priorities and leadership at agencies such as Nasa and the Pentagon also put SpaceX in a position to potentially make billions off of new contracts, while former government employees say it is likely Doge already has access to confidential business data on SpaceX’s competitors.While part of the Doge team is still finding workers to fire, other members have begun accessing even more data systems and are starting to put them to work. One target has been immigration, where Doge staff have accessed personal information that includes therapy records for unaccompanied migrant children, housing information and biometric data. The goal, multiple outlets have reported, is to create a master database that could be used to enforce the Trump administration’s deportations and other anti-immigration maneuvers.Mission accomplished?As Doge’s purpose has become more amorphous over its first three months, its initially advertised goal of cutting $1-2tn from the budget has moved further from view. Musk has instead shifted the goal posts, saying that he expects to find $150bn in savings this year – a fraction of his original goal and a small dent in the overall federal budget. That number may also be an illusion, as Doge’s tally of its savings has been filled with constant errors and miscalculations. Much of Doge’s savings could also be erased by the costs of defending itself in court and losses associated with its mass layoffs.The real effects of Doge’s first 100 days are still playing out. Dismantling USAID is projected to cause around 176,000 excess deaths, more than half of them children, according to a Boston University tracking project. Cuts to agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and Federal Emergency Management Agency could imperil natural disaster forecasting and relief. Agencies such as Veterans Affairs that provide public services may deteriorate, while cuts to research and education programs may be felt for decades to come.“The amazing thing is that they haven’t actually done anything constructive whatsoever. Literally all they’ve done is destroy things,” a current federal employee said of Doge. “People are going to miss the federal government that they had.” More

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      Judge re-ups demand that White House show efforts to retrieve Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador

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      A federal judge on Wednesday again directed the Trump administration to provide information about its efforts so far, if any, to comply with her order to retrieve Kilmar Ábrego García from an El Salvador prison.The US district judge Paula Xinis in Maryland temporarily halted her directive for information at the administration’s request last week. But with the seven-day pause expiring at 5pm, she set May deadlines for officials to provide sworn testimony on anything they have done to return Ábrego García to the US.Ábrego García, 29, has been imprisoned in his native El Salvador for nearly seven weeks, while his mistaken deportation has become a flashpoint for Donald Trump’s immigration policies and his increasing friction with the US courts.The president acknowledged to ABC News on Tuesday that he could call El Salvador’s president and have Ábrego García sent back. But Trump doubled down on his claims that Ábrego García is a member of the MS-13 gang.“And if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that,” Trump told ABC’s Terry Moran in the Oval Office.Police in Maryland had identified Ábrego García as an MS-13 gang member in 2019 based on his tattoos, his Chicago Bulls hoodie and the word of a criminal informant. But Ábrego García was never charged. His attorneys say the informant claimed Ábrego García was in an MS-13 chapter in New York, where he has never lived.The gang identification by local police prompted the Trump administration to expel him in March to an infamous Salvadorian prison. But the deportation violated a US immigration judge’s order in 2019 that protected him from being sent to El Salvador.Ábrego García had demonstrated to the immigration court that he probably faced persecution by local Salvadorian gangs that terrorized him and his family, court records state. He fled to the US at 16 and lived in Maryland for about 14 years, working construction, getting married and raising three children.Xinis ordered the Trump administration to return him nearly a month ago, on 4 April. The supreme court ruled on 10 April that the administration must facilitate his return.But the case only became more heated. Xinis lambasted a government lawyer who could not explain what, if anything, the Trump administration had done. She then ordered officials to provide sworn testimony and other information to document their efforts.The Trump administration appealed. But a federal appeals court backed Xinis’s order for information in a blistering ruling, saying: “[W]e shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision.”The Trump administration resisted, saying the information Xinis sought involved protected state secrets and government deliberations. She in turn scolded government lawyers for ignoring her orders and acting in “bad faith”. More

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      Trump 100 days: tariffs, egg prices, Ice arrests and approval rating – in charts

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      in US Politics

      Trump 100 days: delusions of monarchy coupled with fundamental ineptitude

      by

      He has blinged it with gold cherubim, gold eagles, gold medallions, gold figurines and gilded rococo mirrors. He has crammed its walls with gold-framed paintings of great men from US history. In 100 days Donald Trump has turned the Oval Office into a gilded cage.The portraits of Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan and other past presidents gaze down from a past that the 47th seems determined to erase. Trump is seeking to remake the US in his image at frightening speed. The shock and awe of his second term has challenged many Americans’ understanding of who they are.In three months Trump has shoved the world’s oldest continuous democracy towards authoritarianism at a pace that tyrants overseas would envy. He has used executive power to take aim at Congress, the law, the media, culture and public health. Still aggrieved by his 2020 election defeat and 2024 criminal conviction, his regime of retribution has targeted perceived enemies and proved that no grudge is too small.Historically such strongmen have offered the populace a grand bargain: if they will surrender some liberties, he will make the trains run on time. But Trump’s delusions of monarchy have been coupled with a fundamental ineptitude.His trade war injected chaos into the economy, undermining a campaign promise to lower prices and raising the spectre of recession; his ally Elon Musk wreaked havoc on the federal government, threatening health and welfare benefits for millions; his foreign policy turned the world upside down, making friends of adversaries and turning allies into foes.Having promised so much winning, Trump is losing. Just 39% of respondents approve of how he is handling his job as president, according to an opinion poll by ABC News, the Washington Post newspaper and Ipsos, while 55% disapprove. For the first time Trump is even under water on his signature issue of immigration.“Donald Trump’s first 100 days as president have been 100 days from hell for the American people,” Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, wrote in a letter to Senate colleagues. “His first 100 days have been the worst for any president in modern history, and unsurprisingly, he has the lowest 100-day job approval any president has seen in 80 years.”The scale of the disaster is hard to comprehend for anyone who expected a repeat of Trump’s first term. His first 100 days in 2017 were consequential enough: a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, an order for construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border and the firing of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, over undisclosed contacts with Russia. But while America’s guardrails bent, they did not break.View image in fullscreenFrom the moment he was sworn in on 20 January 2025, with the tech oligarchs Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg looking on, it was clear that Trump’s second presidency would be of a different magnitude. Instead of the conservative stalwart Mike Pence as vice-president, there is the Maga isolationist JD Vance. Instead of the retired four-star general Jim Mattis as defence secretary, there is the former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth.And instead of experienced hands ready to curb Trump’s impulses, there is a cabinet of sycophants eager to indulge them, including in ostentatious displays for the TV cameras. Trump, 78, told the Atlantic magazine: “The first time, I had two things to do – run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys. And the second time, I run the country and the world.”Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and White House chief of staff, said: “In the first term there were some guardrails and individuals that were able to restrain him before he took action. In the second term he doesn’t have any guardrails and deliberately selected a cabinet in which loyalty was the primary quality that he was after.“The problem is that he goes ahead and takes actions that can cause tremendous disruption. The only check that I can see is when something he does could very well lead to an economic disaster of one kind or another. It’s only when that seems clear that he basically pulls back.”Trump and his allies had four years in political exile to plot and plan a disruptive agenda laid out in Project 2025, a set of proposals by the rightwing Heritage Foundation thinktank in Washington. Yet its execution has been undermined by the president’s mercurial nature, cabinet infighting and leaks, especially at the Pentagon, reportedly now in disarray.Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “I’m struck by this weird combination of a focused and very well-planned agenda on the one hand and reckless incompetence on the other. You have Russ Vought [director of the office of management and budget] and the Project 2025 folks who clearly had a blueprint for action ready to go and yet you also see this pattern of dysfunction running through agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense.”For Trump’s diehard supporters, his key strength is his success as a businessman and promise to run the economy accordingly. As president he has imposed tariffs on trading partners including Mexico, Canada and China, with Chinese goods facing a combined tax of 145%.The impact has been profound, with consumer confidence plummeting, stock markets convulsing and investors losing confidence in the credibility of Trump’s policies. In the ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 72% said they thought it was very or somewhat likely that his economic policies would cause a recession in the short term.View image in fullscreenTrump, who promised be a dictator only on “day one”, has signed more than 135 executive orders, well ahead of any other president in their first 100 days, bypassing Congress. He tapped Musk to lead the “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, aimed at reducing government waste with a Silicon Valley-inspired “move fast and break things” mentality.Doge has been slashing programmes, jobs and entire agencies, including the Department of Education, that by law receive funding under the purview of Congress. Musk and his team have combed through tax, social security and health records, putting private data at risk. While Musk initially aimed for $1tn in budget cuts, analysts predict that he will fall dramatically short.Doge has caused turmoil in medical research by firing doctors and scientists working to cure diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. It has frozen funding for military veterans’ facilities and fired critical workers at hospitals serving disabled veterans. Musk has also described health and social welfare programmes as “the big ones to eliminate” and social security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time”.Even long-term political observers are aghast at Trump’s acts of self-sabotage. Paul Begala, a former White House adviser and Democratic strategist, said: “I expected him to be stupid. I expected him to be chaotic. I expected his team to be a bunch of sycophants and nincompoops. I expected the tariffs and trade war.“Here’s what I didn’t expect. For me, the defining word of these 100 days has been betrayal. A good politician takes office and tries to expand beyond his base; an average politician tries to reward his base; Trump is the first politician who’s screwing his base, betraying his base. I honestly don’t understand it.”View image in fullscreenIn keeping with his campaign promise, Trump has implemented some of the hardest-line immigration policies in the nation’s history, driving a sharp decline in illegal border crossings.He invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport immigrants without due process, including sending alleged Venezuelan gang members to a mega-prison in El Salvador in defiance of a court order. The action was met with legal challenges and judicial rebuke. Trump also pledged to end birthright citizenship and proposed “gold cards” for millionaires to buy US citizenship.Another defining theme of the first 100 days is retribution. On his first day in office, Trump pardoned virtually everyone who took part in the 6 January 2021 insurrection. He has actively targeted prosecutors who investigated him, former officials who criticised him and universities whose policies he disliked. He ordered the justice department to investigate Christopher Krebs, a cybersecurity director who refuted unfounded claims of election fraud in 2020.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “This will truly be known as the administration of revenge and retribution. No one’s ever done these things before. Even Richard Nixon, who kept an enemies list and was full of anger and resentment, couldn’t hold a candle to Trump.“It’s frightening and has the effect of intimidating people. He loves to bully and he has done more than any other president, certainly in a short period of time. There’s just nothing like this in all of American history. I’ve had so many people my age say, can I survive this? Because it’s stressful.”Trump’s executive orders have faced more than 150 lawsuits and judges have blocked the administration numerous times. The president called for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled against him, prompting a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. Last week agents arrested Hannah Dugan, a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities at her courtroom.Trump is also waging a culture war. Funding for arts and cultural institutions has been cut, and leaders ousted, with the president declaring them fronts for a “woke” agenda. The administration has gone after the media, fighting against news organisations in court and seeking to dismantle the Voice of America broadcaster. Access for some outlets has been restricted while “Maga media” have been platformed.PEN America, which defends writers worldwide against autocratic regimes, said the opening weeks of the Trump White House were unlike anything seen since the red scare McCarthy era of the 1950s. It warned of a “five-alarm fire” for free speech, education, the right to protest and a war against ideas and language themselves.The events – along with outlandish statements about annexing Greenland, retaking the Panama canal and making Canada the 51st state – have hurt America’s reputation around the globe.View image in fullscreenPatrick Gaspard, a former official in the Barack Obama administration, said: “Donald Trump has been radically successful in demonstrating that in 100 days you can destroy a brand that’s been built up over nearly 250 years. If that’s a success then congratulations.”He added: “We’re in DefCon 1 in a democracy where the president is radically consolidating power, politicising non-partisan agencies, attacking civil society and private firms, and literally disappearing people from our streets. Tragically, those with influence only seem to be moved by the volatility in the stock market because of tariffs, failing to see that the entire edifice that makes their success possible is being dismantled.”Trump’s political honeymoon appears to be over. Even among Republicans, polling shows that there is ambivalence about his priorities, with only about half saying he has focused on the right things. Street protests are growing across the country, judges continue to hand him defeats and Harvard University stood its ground against him. As the Democratic party tries to regroup, Trump could find his second 100 days heavier going than his first.In 2021 Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist, told the Guardian that history would remember Trump as by far the worst president ever on the basis of his first term. “I was wrong,” he acknowledged last week. “This is the worst presidency in American history.“The ignorance was actually our ally in the first Trump term. He didn’t know what he was doing and now, unfortunately, while he still doesn’t know what he’s doing, he knows more than he did. Trump believes he is infallible. He’s going to burn out with the public long before the end of this term.” More

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      Trump 100 days: Trump’s whirlwind start to his second presidency

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      Law-abiding migrants sent to foreign prisons. Sweeping tariffs disrupting global markets. Students detained for protest. Violent insurrectionists pardoned. Tens of thousands of federal workers fired. The supreme court ignored.The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term have shocked the United States and the world. On the eve of his inauguration, Trump promised the “most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history”, and what followed has been a whirlwind pace of extreme policies and actions that have reshaped the federal government and the US’s role in the world.Let’s look at what he has achieved and destroyed.Shattering alliancesView image in fullscreenThe end of the postwar orderTrump’s first 100 days has been marked by arguably the biggest shake-up in US foreign policy since 1945. He has feuded with Nato and turned on Ukraine, slapped tariffs on US allies around the globe, ignored international institutions and publicly admired dictators from Vladimir Putin to El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.‘The EU was invented to screw us over’Trump has called European allies “freeloaders” who have relied on the US to pay for their defense and said he would not defend allies who didn’t meet a spending threshold of 2% of GDP. He has accused European allies of conspiring to “screw over” the US by forming the European Union. “The west as we knew it no longer exists,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said.Video-2: To view this video please download this article it in our appA new Monroe doctrine?As Trump has retreated from Europe, he has increasingly thrown the US’s weight around the western hemisphere. He said Canada should become the 51st state, threatened to annex Greenland, and proposed in his inaugural speech that the US “take back” the Panama canal. Some have compared his foreign policy to that of James Monroe, the former president who in 1823 declared a US sphere of influence in North and South America.View image in fullscreenTariffs and ChinaTrump’s haphazard imposition of tariffs has angered US allies from Europe to Asia, where longtime trade partners such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have scrambled to try to negotiate new deals to protect their economies from severe shocks. China’s Xi Jinping has toured south-east Asia, seeking to promote Beijing as the world’s protector of rules-based trade and calling on countries to “jointly oppose unilateral bullying”.View image in fullscreenJD Vance, Elon Musk and the court of TrumpIf Trump has seemed transactional toward Europe, then his top advisers have appeared downright hostile. JD Vance made waves in Munich when he portrayed European leaders as ideological tyrants and accused them of “running in fear of your own voters”. Musk has backed far-right movements from the UK’s Reform to Germany’s AfD.Attacking rule of lawPardoning January 6 protestersTrump issued more than 1,500 pardons or commutations to people convicted in connection to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.View image in fullscreen‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’– Trump in a February post on X, underscoring that he believes he can justify breaking the lawView image in fullscreenDefying court ordersIn March, the Trump administration ignored an order from the US district judge James Boasberg to turn around a plane headed to El Salvador containing people alleged to be gang members. It was a staggering act of defiance.View image in fullscreenThreatening judgesTrump and allies have threatened judges who have ruled against them. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!,” Trump said in an 18 March post on Truth Social. Elon Musk, a top Trump adviser, has also called for impeaching judges and supported Republicans who champion doing so.View image in fullscreenAttacking lawyersTrump has used executive orders to punish law firms connected to rivals or that have taken on causes averse to his administration. Several firms have settled with Trump to avoid being punished. Others have successfully sued the administration.Trade
      warsView image in fullscreenThreatsTrump did not wait to return to the White House before threatening China, Canada and Mexico with sweeping tariffs. These would be implemented on the first day of his second term, he declared. This was the first of many times Trump would attempt to use the threat of an economic assault to force countries to bend to his will.View image in fullscreenDelaysFor Canada and Mexico, the supposed deadline for threatened tariffs shifted from January, to February, to March. When tariffs were imposed, it was barely 48 hours before all goods covered by a previous trilateral trade deal were spared. Companies caught in the crossfire struggled to keep up.Video-4: To view this video please download this article it in our app‘Liberation’Trump and his aides sought to bill 2 April 2025 – the day he presented sweeping tariffs on much of the world, including China – as “liberation day”. The plan lasted all of a week before it was watered down. All of the countries in the administration’s sights except China now face a blanket tariff of 10%, rather than the higher rates, after a global market sell-off and warnings of recession.Markets crashingView image in fullscreenTrade warWhile Trump has repeatedly pulled back from the brink of all-out economic war with most countries, China is the exception. When Beijing retaliated against US tariffs, Trump hiked them further – leaving the world’s two largest economies spiraling into a tit-for-tat dispute. US tariffs on Chinese goods stand at 145%.View image in fullscreenConfusion ​Amid mounting concern over the impact of Trump’s volatile trade strategy on the economy, and the risk of recession, businesses of all sizes are attempting to grab a moving target. “Nobody knows what’s coming next,” John Cochrane, an economist at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, observed recently.Government ‘efficiency’View image in fullscreenMusk ushered into governmentOn day one, Trump signed an executive order creating the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – a novel initiative chaired by Elon Musk. In the weeks that followed, Doge staff, many of whom are former employees at Musk’s companies and lack government experience, embedded themselves in federal agencies large and small, directing sudden and disruptive cuts to programs and payrolls.View image in fullscreenFederal workers targetedThe Trump administration moved to dramatically shrink the federal workforce, first by proposing buyouts. About 75,000 employees opted to leave, as did thousands more in the weeks that followed. But the numbers were fewer than the White House hoped, so cabinet secretaries fired tens of thousands more, while Trump approved the termination of about 25,000 employees on their probationary periods. The supreme court refused to hear a challenge to the latter firings in April.View image in fullscreenAgencies shuttered, perhaps illegallyTrump moved to dismantle USAID, which has administered Washington’s foreign aid agenda for more than six decades, and fold it into the state department. He also directed the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to oversee the closure of her department. The offensives against these and other agencies quickly wound up in the courts.View image in fullscreenDoge rattles Trump’s cabinetDoge has left few corners of the federal government untouched. But reports have emerged that Musk’s initiative is grating some of Trump’s newly confirmed cabinet secretaries, who see him as unhelpfully disrupting their departments. In March, Trump reportedly stopped Musk from seeing the defense department’s secret plans for a potential war with China during his visit to the Pentagon, noting that the Tesla boss had extensive business interests in China.Musk takes a stand in Wisconsin – and losesMusk was a major financial supporter of Trump’s campaign to return to the presidency. But his foray into the race for a Wisconsin supreme court seat in April was not as successful. Although he spent about $20m supporting the former Republican attorney general Brad Schimel, voters instead choose the Democratic-backed Susan Crawford, preserving the 4-3 liberal majority on the state’s highest court.Information warView image in fullscreenFlooding the zoneTrump has been everywhere all the time, dominating the “attention economy” like no other public figure. He takes questions from reporters far more often than his predecessor Joe Biden. He posts frequently on his Truth Social platform. He has attended the Super Bowl, Ultimate Fighting Championship and other sporting events.View image in fullscreenSidelining the ‘lamestream’ mediaThe White House banned the Associated Press from events in the Oval Office and Air Force One over the news agency’s refusal to obey Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The AP sued over access to presidential events and won a court ruling, though it was unclear if and when the White House would put it into effect.View image in fullscreenPlatforming Maga mediaThe White House took over deciding which outlets are allowed to take part in the press pool, a group that acts as the eyes and ears of the media covering the president up close, and included more fringe outlets. Rightwing journalists also became more prominent at press briefings.View image in fullscreenChallenging state fundingMore than 1,300 Voice of America journalists, producers and assistants were placed on leave, crippling a broadcaster that was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operates in almost 50 languages. Grants to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia were terminated. A judge recently ordered the restoration of Voice of America’s operations, but the administration is likely to appeal.Executive ordersTrump increasingly relies on executive ordersTrump has signed 140 executive orders in his first 100 days, including 36 in his first week in office. His use of the presidential pen is unprecedented in modern US history. Below are the number of executive orders presidents signed in their first 100 days.View image in fullscreen‘Invasion’ at the borderTrump’s day one border emergency declaration deployed 1,500 active-duty troops alongside 2,500 national guard members to the southern border. Framing migration as an “invasion”, the order militarized immigration enforcement and redirected defense resources to border control, raising serious legal and humanitarian concerns about the use of the military for domestic enforcement.View image in fullscreen‘Deep state’ purgeThe reinstated “Schedule F” executive order has stripped tens of thousands of federal employees of civil service protections, allowing the administration to fire career officials deemed disloyal.View image in fullscreenPro-Palestinian targetsA week after the Columbia graduate and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was detained in March, Trump signed an order called “Securing American Values” to target visa holders who have participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The order directs immigration agencies to authorize visa revocations of demonstrators linked to organizations accused of hate speech, and detain and expedite deportations for those involved in activity the administration deems antisemitic.View image in fullscreenBirthright citizenship attackTrump’s unconstitutional day one executive order aimed to end automatic citizenship for babies born on US soil to undocumented immigrants or those on temporary visas – directly challenging the 14th amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens. The order remains blocked by courts pending litigation.View image in fullscreenGlobal aid freezeThe administration’s foreign aid freeze has halted thousands of humanitarian and development programs worldwide. The executive order targeting USAID has disrupted even life-saving health initiatives like HIV treatment in Africa, even though the administration says they have not been affected.Fortress AmericaVideo-1: To view this video please download this article in our appRefugee admission suspendedTrump has suspended all refugee resettlement into the United States, leaving tens of thousands of people in an overseas limbo. The indefinite pause on the resettlement program has made it nearly impossible for refugees fleeing war and violence to seek safe haven in the US. The order is subject to ongoing legal action.Arrests ramp upUS Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) arrests in February outstripped not just the same period under Biden but even the figures from Trump’s first term.View image in fullscreenAlien Enemies ActThe Trump administration used an 18th-century wartime law to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are being held in a draconian mega-prison known as Cecot. Trump’s use of the law faces legal challenges. Onboard one of the deportation flights was a Maryland father with protected legal status mistakenly deported in what the administration called an “administrative error”. The supreme court has ordered the US to “facilitate” his return.View image in fullscreenFree speech crackdownIn an extraordinary crackdown on free speech, the Trump administration has tracked down and detained international students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, among them Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and lawful permanent resident.View image in fullscreenSchools and churches no longer out of boundsThe Trump administration now allows immigration authorities to make arrests in schools, healthcare facilities and places of worship. But on 7 April, federal agents were denied entry to two Los Angeles area elementary schools after they alleged the children entered the US without documentation.Opposition and protestView image in fullscreenProtesters take to the streetsAfter a slower start than Trump’s first term, protests have erupted across the country, including in small towns in Republican areas, standing up against his overreach. Established groups have joined together with a decentralized protest movement around broad messages against oligarchy and dismantling democracy.View image in fullscreenMusk is targetedElon Musk proved a potent target for the opposition, given his prominent role leading Doge as it slashed through the federal government. As Doge cut through agency after agency, people turned up outside federal offices in opposition. “Tesla Takedown” protests at local dealerships went after his publicly traded company, tanking the stock.View image in fullscreenDemocrats take a standAfter a bruising electoral loss, Democratic officials struggled to find their voices as an effective resistance to an emboldened Trump, but some have found a footing. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched an anti-oligarchy tour, drawing huge crowds. Some Democrats, including Congressman Al Green, disrupted a joint session of Congress. Cory Booker gave a record-breaking 25-hour speech on the Senate floor. Meanwhile, the party announced a new effort to funnel money into critical state races.Video-3: To view this video please download this article in our appLawsuits put brake on Trump agendaA strategy that worked well in the first Trump term remained a major plank of the opposition: endless lawsuits. A coalition of Democratic attorneys general have brought handfuls of suits, often successful, to stop his actions. Outside groups have filed lawsuits over his unconstitutional plans. But his administration is defying court orders in some instances, a sign that the courts alone won’t be enough to stop him.Trump’s approval flippedNet approval ratingTrump’s first 100 days were largely designed to make a statement, and they achieved that goal. But it’s clear that within this time period there have been consequences to the executive orders, policy making and budget cuts that could continue to spiral out of the president’s control. The impacts will crystallize in the lives of the American public, and abroad, in the more than 1,300 days to come. More

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      Ice seeking out unaccompanied immigrant children to deport or prosecute

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      Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials are seeking out unaccompanied immigrant children in operations nationwide with a view to deporting them or pursuing criminal cases against them or adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US, according to sources and an Ice document.The moves are sparking fears of a crackdown on such children and prompting alarm about what one critic called “backdoor family separation”.In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice have begun engaging in “welfare checks” on children who arrived in the US alone, usually via the US-Mexico border, to “ensure that they are safe and not being exploited”, according to a DHS spokesperson.Although DHS is characterizing the welfare visits as benevolent, an internal Ice document accessed by the National Immigration Project advocacy group and then shared shows Ice is also seeking out children who came into the US alone as immigrants – and their US-based sponsors – for immigration enforcement purposes and/or to pursue criminal prosecutions. The recent operations and document confirm a February report from Reuters, that the Trump administration has directed Ice to track down and deport this group.Meanwhile, in Donald Trump’s second term, legal services provided to unaccompanied minors have been slashed and funds are not flowing despite court intervention. And the federal agency monitoring unaccompanied immigrant children has begun sharing sensitive data with Ice.The Ice document shows “ it’s not just about checking in on kids, making sure that they can account for them and that they’re not being exploited”, said Michelle Méndez, the director of legal resources and training for the National Immigration Project. “It shows they have other goals, and the goals are criminalization of the kid or criminalization of the sponsor. It’s backdoor family separation.”In addition to verifying that the children are not trafficked or exploited, the Ice document shows officials are also gathering intelligence to see whether the children are a “flight risk” or a “threat to public safety” or whether they are viable to be deported. Immigration experts and attorneys say such “fact finding” operations by Ice to track unaccompanied minors are still in their early stages.“It’s enforcement. It’s in the name of saying that they’re pursuing children’s welfare. They seem to be actually trying to conduct an enforcement operation,” said Shaina Aber, the executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice. “It seems very clear that what they are actually doing is gathering intelligence on the family.”For advocates, one of the most troubling aspects, as stated in the document, is that Ice officials will target children with alleged “gang or terrorist ties/activities”. In recent months, the Trump administration has been engaging in arrests, expulsions and deportations of immigrants – mostly Salvadorians and Venezuelans – accused of having links to gangs deemed to be terrorist organizations. The administration has used flimsy evidence to justify many of the expulsions and deportations under the controversial, rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act, or AEA, leading to a showdown between the administration and the judiciary and a threat to the rule of law.“As long as the government has some nebulous allegation, they know an immigration judge will likely order the person removed,” Méndez said.Earlier this month, Ice officials visited a 16-year-old girl in Washington state for a “welfare check”. During the visit, which was first reported by the Spokesman-Review, the frightened girl messaged and called Samuel Smith, the director of immigrant legal aid at Manzanita House, the organization that is representing the girl in her immigration case.“Both the text messages sent and the tone of communication when talking on the phone, was of a child who was incredibly scared,” Smith said. “She had no idea what was going on and was worried that her life would be flipped upside down.”The Washington Post reported this month that other federal agencies have also been conducting welfare checks and reporting information to Ice.“I can appreciate the publicly stated goal, but I don’t necessarily believe it,” Smith said.According to the Ice document and a federal law enforcement source with knowledge of the operations, two offices within Ice are conducting the unaccompanied immigrant children operations: enforcement and removal operations (ERO) and homeland security investigations (HSI). The former, ERO, runs Ice’s deportation system while HSI runs mostly international criminal investigations into drug smuggling, human trafficking and fraud, but they are increasingly working together in this administration.According to the Ice document, officials from ERO and HSI will coordinate “on pursuing UAC”, which stands for “unaccompanied alien children”, while ERO will verifiy that “immigration enforcement action is taken”, if necessary.“ERO officers should remember they are to enforce final orders of removal, where possible, and HSI will pursue criminal options for UAC who have committed crimes,” the document says.Becky Wolozin, a senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, finds it “difficult to reconcile the alleged well-meaning intention of these visits with the reality of the terror and trauma they have caused for children and families across the country”.“Given the intent articulated in this memo, families have well-founded fear surrounding these visits,” Wolozin added.Unaccompanied immigrant children who reach the US border are apprehended by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and then placed in custody of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), under the department of Health and Human Services (HHS), while their immigration case proceeds. ORR will place children in shelters and later, if there is a sponsor available, children are placed under a sponsor’s care. Typically, sponsors are the children’s relatives in the US; at times, they are unrelated adults. The sponsors complete an assessment process and undergo a background check, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.For years, ORR has operated independently of DHS, in an attempt to address the immigration of children in a humane manner, rather than through law enforcement.Unaccompanied minors then go through lengthy proceedings and in the meantime enroll in school.Some children released to ORR sponsors have been found to have been trafficked and exploited.“There are instances of trafficking in the United States,” Smith said. “But it’s the exception, not the rule here. The vast majority are in placements that are supportive, in a good place for them to be able to live.”For years, Trump allies have pushed the narrative that unaccompanied immigrant children have been trafficked, placing blame on the Biden administration. They have pointed to a DHS inspector general report that found that Ice was not able to adequately track unaccompanied minors under their care. Experts point to a bureaucratic paperwork backlog by Ice, saying most of those children are safe, with relatives or sponsors.“The previous administration allowed many of these children who came across the border unaccompanied to be placed with sponsors who were actually smugglers and sex traffickers,” the DHS assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement. “Unlike the previous administration, President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem take the responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to reunite children with their families.”Since the Trump administration returned to office, HHS has cut legal services for unaccompanied children. There is currently a legal fight at play, in an attempt to restore legal resources for unaccompanied minors who are attempting to stay in the US.During the first Trump administration, ORR began to share data with Ice regarding immigrant children and their sponsors. Similarly at that time, immigration officials arrested 170 undocumented immigrants who tried to become sponsors for children in government custody.Although the Biden administration stopped the data-sharing practice, the new Trump White House has again begun the process of information sharing between agencies. A new Trump-era change now also allows for ORR to share the legal status of children’s sponsors with Ice, sparking fears that the information will be used to arrest and deport undocumented sponsors.ORR did not respond to a request for comment.“I worry about the trauma the kids are going through. There is a climate of fear for immigrants in this country right now,” Aber said. “The amount of trauma that this administration seems willing to put kids through is really upsetting.”The new acting director of ORR is Angie Salazar, a former Ice agent under HSI. Salazar took over the role in March after the prior acting director of ORR, another Ice official, was ousted from the role. More

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      How Trump’s war on DEI is roiling US police: ‘it doesn’t mean work will stop’

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      After the murder of George Floyd, protests pushed some police agencies to bring in a new class of professionals like Colleen Jackson to help make departments more representative of and responsive to the communities they serve.Hired as the first chief diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officer in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 2021, Jackson has assisted in a hiring process that swore in a class of women, Black and Asian American recruits and has surveyed residents on their experiences with the police. She is now organizing an event to bring together young residents and Black officers that she hopes will lead to safer interactions on the street.“I hope what I do touches people’s hearts and that changes their behavior,” she said.Yet, the threat of the Cleveland suburb losing a federal grant because of her work only becomes more palpable as her friends and colleagues in the field of DEI lose their jobs – and the work they’ve dedicated their lives to hemorrhages esteem. “I’m just not the person who’s gonna operate in fear,” she said. “But I am a person who operates in reality.”View image in fullscreenThere is a growing realization among DEI professionals such as Jackson and police officers across the country that a backlash is gaining momentum. Donald Trump, who has called DEI “illegal”, has halted federal programs and encouraged executive branch agencies to investigate and withhold funds from institutions that engage in DEI practices.The new administration has threatened to pull federal funding to compel policy changes in other areas of American life, such as universities, but policing experts are skeptical that a similar tactic would work on the nation’s roughly 17,000 local and state law enforcement agencies, particularly because they draw most of their funds from local taxes.Still, Trump’s actions are already having an impact, contributing negatively to the culture in police departments by “encouraging tension within the ranks”, said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy project director of policing. Opposition to diverse perspectives, she said, can breed an insular culture prone to abuse of underrepresented groups.“This is not merely about the threat to diversity in policing,” Borchetta said. “That threat can spill out into the street.”Increasing diversity among the ranks isn’t a panacea for police abuse – think of the case of Tyre Nichols, a Black man in Memphis, Tennessee, who died after being beaten by several Black officers. Still, policing experts say, hiring a more diverse force combined with efforts to change the culture within departments can help.Trump’s anti-DEI push is not the first time efforts to diversify policing have faced a backlash. Black officers hired in the south during Reconstruction lost their jobs in the late 1800s when the federal government relinquished its control over former Confederate states. Later in the 1970s, after the civil rights movement era, federal efforts to force several big-city police departments to diversify faced opposition from white-dominated police unions. By the 1990s, most of these federal efforts were terminated.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after Floyd’s murder in 2020 and the rise of DEI in policing, the number of Black officers hit its high-water mark in 2022, constituting 17% of the nation’s rank-and-file cops before falling to 14% last year, which is about the number of Black Americans in the country. In 2024, white people made up more than 79% of police officers and women made up more than 14%.Although law enforcement diversity and inclusion experts such as Nicola Smith-Kea maintain that DEI is about more than race – it’s about including people with different abilities, genders, faiths and ages – Smith-Kea thinks Trump has transformed the acronym into a “code word” for Black, creating a framing that DEI is discriminatory against white officers.Smith-Kea said a backlash could mean “removing programs” that serve “the broader population, not just any one race”, such as accessibility ramps for disabled people or equal pay programs for women.In February, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, dismissed Biden-era lawsuits that accused police departments of hiring discrimination. Bondi dropped a case against the Maryland state police (MSP) before an agreement could be signed that would have required MSP to revise a test that Biden’s justice department found disproportionately disqualified Black and female applicants.In her dismissal, Bondi said police officers would now be “chosen for their skill and dedication to public safety – not to meet DEI quotas”.Phillip Atiba Solomon, the chief executive of the Center for Policing Equity, an organization that collects and analyzes public safety data to improve policing outcomes, said he wondered whether the Trump administration might try to use the Department of Justice to investigate police departments with DEI programs for “reverse racism”. Although Trump might have the power to quickly transform the executive branch, lawyer James Fett believes that it will take more time for the federal courts to turn against DEI. Fett, who frequently represents white officers who say they have faced employment discrimination, is eagerly awaiting the disposition of a case now with the US supreme court filed by a woman who claims she was denied a promotion with the Ohio department of youth services because she is not gay.If the conservative court rules in her favor, experts believe it could lower the standard that straight, white people will have to meet to prove they have faced employment discrimination. “It’s going to be much easier when people want to attack promotions or hiring or even terminations based on a DEI policy,” Fett said.Charles Billups of the Grand Council of Guardians, the umbrella organization for New York state’s African American policing organizations, said he and many of his members fear that Trump’s anti-DEI orders could roll back the progress they’ve seen in hiring and promotions. “A lot of us are preparing for the fair competition fostered by DEI to be eliminated,” he said.Even before Trump, some DEI professionals said they were facing pushback.Delaware county, Pennsylvania, hired Lauren Footman as its first DEI director in spring 2022. Included in her purview were the park police and law enforcement officials within the local prosecutor’s office. She said she felt tokenized right away in a department that was not interested in cultural change and only supportive of hosting parties for identity celebrations such as Black History Month.“Someone in HR actually thought that I was an event coordinator,” she said. During her time, she never worked with the park police or criminal investigation division because she says that Delaware county did not compel them to participate.Footman was fired in the spring of 2024. She says the termination was retaliation for her attempts to address the county’s culture of discrimination and she is currently pursuing legal action. When asked about Footman’s claims, Delaware county said that after her termination, the county worked with a consultant to evaluate its programs and make recommendations. However, county officials vigorously denied her accusations.Even in departments where DEI appears to have support, it can fall short. Veteran Sgt Charlotte Djossou believes that is the case in the DC Metropolitan police department (MPD).View image in fullscreenDjossou is a whistleblower who has been speaking out since the 2010s against the racial targeting in the MPD’s jump-out tactics, which involve plain clothes units accosting and searching people on the street. The courts have repeatedly found jump-outs to be discriminatory and unconstitutional. When Djossou first talked about them in the news media, she attributed their pervasiveness to the lack of Black officers in positions of power.But while she has seen more Black people hired and promoted due to DEI, she doesn’t believe it has altered the way the Black community is policed. “It’s not a Black or white thing. It’s a blue thing. And no matter what your race is, in policing, you have to conform in order to move up,” Djossou said.Djossou has filed a lawsuit against the MPD claiming it retaliated against her for whistleblowing by denying her promotions during a time when the department has been engaged in a high-profile DEI campaign to recruit and hire women. That DEI effort was shepherded by Chief Pamela A Smith, who initially joined the MPD in 2022 as its chief equity officer in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder.“I’m Black. I’m a woman. And all they’ve done is hold my career back,” Djossou said. The MPD did not respond to a request for comment.Smith-Kea understands the frustration some reform-oriented officers might have had with DEI. “Change doesn’t happen overnight,” she said, but there are advances, pointing to the widely used toolkit she helped develop for the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which instructs departments on how to implement interventions for dealing with people in a mental health crisis.Tragic killings like that of Daniel Prude have revealed the interplay between race and mental health in fatal police interactions. Prude was apprehended by Rochester, New York, police in the midst of a mental health crisis in 2020 and died of asphyxia after police put a mesh hood over his face and pinned him on the ground. Smith-Kea believes DEI-rooted solutions can prevent deaths like Prude’s. As an example, she points to the BJA toolkit’s potential to make all people, not just Black people, safer.Despite all the worries about DEI’s fate in policing, the ACLU’s Borchetta said departments have incentives to keep DEI because many learned in the 2020s that to solve crimes they “need to gain the trust of the people and that trust is more easily eroded when police departments don’t reflect the people they’re policing”.Borchetta noted that police departments also learned to use diversity to avoid accountability. She was the lead attorney in the case that brought an end to the New York police department’s unconstitutional practice of stop and frisk in 2013. While working on that case, she said, one of the NYPD’s key defenses was simply: “See how diverse our department is.”However, she also credited that diversity with helping to win the case, including the contribution of Latino and Black officers who raised alarms about stop-and-frisk. “That’s a reminder that diversity is important because it brings in perspectives of people who might be affected by your program in different ways,” she said.In Shaker Heights, where the mayor has vowed to continue its DEI initiatives, Jackson was optimistic about the future of DEI in policing. She believed that her work had touched people, and that kind of personal impact couldn’t just be erased with an executive order. She said she was certain she and other DEI professionals would continue the work, regardless of Trump’s efforts.“I recognize these executive orders could bring the end of this particular name for the work – DEI – but it doesn’t mean the work will stop,” Jackson said. When asked how she could be so sure, she said: “The work of DEI has been going on for generations. It’s the only reason why I, as a Black woman, have a job in the public sector, you know what I mean?”This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization covering the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook. More

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      Trump’s second term will be the worst presidential term ever | Steven Greenhouse

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      In his first 100 days back in office, Donald Trump has made a strong case that his second term will be by far the worst presidential term in US history. So many of his flood-the-zone actions have been head-spinning and stomach-turning. His administration seems to be powered by ignorance and incoherence, spleen and sycophancy. Both he and his right-hand man, Elon Musk, with their resentment-fueled desire to disrupt everything, seem intent on pulverizing the foundations of our government, our democracy, our alliances as well as any notions of truth. Tragically, Trump’s second term is already more lawless and more authoritarian than any in US history.The worst and most dangerous part of Trump’s agenda is his war against our democracy and constitution – defying judges’ orders, deporting people without due process, suggesting he will run for a third term, calling to impeach judges who rule against him, pardoning hundreds of January 6 criminals, gutting federal agencies and firing thousands of federal employees in flagrant violation of the law, and banning books from military libraries. (One wonders: will book burning be next?) Underlining just how dangerous and lawless Trump is, he is talking publicly about disappearing US citizens to foreign countries where they could be locked in prison forever. For those who care about democracy and basic freedoms, this is Defcon 1 stuff.From Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, every president since the second world war has worked hard to build alliances to promote peace and prosperity and deter aggression. But right out of the box, Trump 2.0 has rushed to blow up our alliances and cavalierly alienate our allies. Trump quickly rejected the US’s traditional foreign policy and ideals by warmly embracing Vladimir Putin, a brutal dictator, and turning against Ukraine and its noble fight against Putin’s aggression. Trump sounded like a rapacious 19th-century imperialist when he threatened to take over the Panama canal and, ditto, when he talked of using force to seize control of Greenland, which belongs to our longtime Nato ally, Denmark. Then there’s Trump’s astoundingly idiotic talk – and taunt – that Canada should be our 51st state. What a way to anger and alienate a nation that has long been the US’s best friend.Then there is the disaster – or should we say clown show – of Trump’s on-again, off-again, on-again, who-knows-what’s-going-to-happen-tomorrow tariffs. His “liberation day” tariffs were put together by a clown-car crew, just three hours before he announced it, and Trump and company seemed to have zero idea that his hodgepodge of tariffs would send the world’s stock markets into a nervous breakdown. Trump’s team was stupid enough to think that China was too feeble to respond effectively to Trump’s trade war – treasury secretary Scott Bessent said China had “a losing hand” with just “a pair of twos”. Trump and his clown car failed to realize that China had the ability to retaliate in devastating ways – by clamping down on rare earth exports that American manufacturers and tech companies desperately need, and perhaps by selling off hundreds of billions of dollars in US bonds. Former treasury secretary Janet Yellen was appalled, saying: “This is the worst self-inflicted policy wound I’ve ever seen in my career inflicted on our economy.”Moving beyond his bombastic rhetoric, Mr Make America Great Again has been showing the world that the US is not so great. Because of Trump’s incoherent policies, bond investors are souring on the US and the dollar as never before as they question America’s reliability with such an unstable man at its helm. Investors are even questioning whether the US under Trump will make good on its debts – a fear that has caused interest rates to soar on treasury bonds. For the first time in modern history, they are questioning the dollar’s primacy and whether it should remain the world’s reserve currency. To the world’s investors, it’s clear that Trump is dragging America down, not lifting it up.Indeed, Trump’s economic stewardship has been so astonishingly inept that we went from economists saying early this year that there was no way the US would have a recession anytime soon to many economists predicting a recession this year.

      Steven Greenhouse is a labor reporter. More