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    US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms

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    The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.Mandeep Tiwana, co-secretary general of Civicus, said that the watchlist “looks at countries where we remain concerned about deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.The selection process, the website states, incorporates insights and data from Civicus’s global network of research partners and data.The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.In the news release announcing the US’s addition, the organization cited recent actions taken by the Trump administration that they argue will likely “severely impact constitutional freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression, and association”.The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid.The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”.The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.Civicus described Trump’s actions since taking office as an “unparalleled attack on the rule of law” not seen “since the days of McCarthyism in the twentieth century”, stating that these moves erode the checks and balances essential to democracy.“Restrictive executive orders, unjustifiable institutional cutbacks, and intimidation tactics through threatening pronouncements by senior officials in the administration are creating an atmosphere to chill democratic dissent, a cherished American ideal,” Tiwana said.In addition to the watchlist, the Civicus Monitor classifies the state of civic space in countries using five ratings: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed and closed.Currently, the US has a “narrowed” rating, which it also had during the Biden administration, meaning that while citizens can exercise their civic freedom, such as rights to association, peaceful assembly and expression, occasional violations occur.For part of Trump’s first term, Tiwana said, the US had been categorized as “obstructed”, due to the administration’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests and restrictive state laws that were enacted limiting the rights of environmental justice protesters, and other actions.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder Joe Biden, the classification went back to “narrowed”, Tiwana, said, but as of Monday, the US has been placed on the watchlist as the group says it sees “significant deterioration” in civic freedoms occurring.Tiwana noted that the US is again seemingly headed toward the “obstructed” category.While the Trump administration often say they support fundamental freedoms and individual rights, like free speech, Tiwana believes that the administration seem “to be wanting to support these only for people who they see as agreeing with them”.Historically, Tiwana said, the US has been “considered the beacon of democracy and defense of fundamental freedoms”.“It was an important pillar of US foreign policy, even though it was imperfect, both domestically and how the US promoted it abroad,” he added.But Tiwana believes that the recent actions and statements made by this US administration could empower authoritarian regimes around the world, undermine constitutional principles, and embolden those who “want to accumulate power and increase their wealth and their ability to stay in power for as long as possible”.Tiwana says that he and the organization want to draw attention to the fact that those in power in the US are, in his view, engaging in a “zero-sum politics game” that is eroding “constitutional principles and frankly, engaging in, anti American behavior”.“We urge the United States to uphold the rule of law and respect constitutional and international human rights norms,” said Tiwana. 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      Democrats are acting sedate and silent during Trump’s worst excesses | Moira Donegan

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      What was the point of Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night? The annual speech – called the “State of the Union” address in every year except the one just after the president’s ascent to office – has long been a somewhat outdated bit of political theater, an event light on policy specifics and heavy on messaging in an era in which political messaging’s most effective venues have long since moved online.It’s perhaps even less clear what a speech to Congress is supposed to mean for this president, who has proven himself so indifferent to constitutional limits on his power – or for this Congress, which has shown itself so willing to abdicate its own constitutional responsibilities. It seems, like so many of the formalities of American politics do now, a bit like a phantom limb: something that Americans keep feeling for long after it has been excised. How long will it be, one wonders, until everyone stops bothering to go through the motions?But Trump, for one, seems to delight in any opportunity to make a spectacle of himself. On Tuesday, with a captive audience of all of Congress, many military leaders, about half of the US supreme court, and large swaths of the American public, he set about indulging all of his worst whims and lowest impulses. He repeatedly and extensively insulted his predecessor, the former president Joe Biden, by name and in strong terms. He relitigated old grievances, from his many prosecutions to his annoyance that not everyone likes him. He threatened the sovereignty of Panama and Greenland, went into extended discussions of the careers of various transgender athletes, boasted of ending “the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion” and removing “the poison of critical race theory”, and reminded his audience that he had renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”. Occasionally, the gathered Republicans in the crowd would burst into grunting chants of “USA! USA!” It was worse than merely vulgar. It was stupid.Trump boasted of the rapid pursuit of his agenda in the weeks since he returned to power, declaring that the US was entering its “greatest, most successful era” and that “our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never seen, perhaps never will see”. In fact, the country is on the verge of an economic recession. Thousands of federal workers have been laid off, and Trump’s hefty tariffs on the US’s largest trading partners – namely Canada, Mexico and China – sent the stock market into a freefall earlier that day. In the past, Trump has got cold feet, and backed off his tariff threats. On stage in the House chamber, he doubled down on them, declaring that he would pursue his trade wars, and acknowledging: “There will be a little disturbance.”Trump spoke intensely and at length about his culture war grievances, touting his executive orders declaring English to be the United States’ official language and that the federal government would recognize “only two genders”. “Our country will be woke no longer,” he said.He also touted his record on immigration, boasting of his administration’s mass deportation plans and the decreased number of migrants and asylum seekers at the southern border. He dwelt at length on stories of violence by undocumented immigrants, pointing to the families of murdered Americans in the crowd and describing undocumented people as “savages”. Alluding to a fringe legal theory that could be deployed to support his unconstitutional effort to end birthright citizenship, he referred to the immigrant population as an “occupation”, and cast his own mass deportation effort as something like the expulsion of an invading army – which sounds a lot more noble than the chaotic and brutal humiliations and human rights abuses that have actually taken place as a part of Trump’s deportation effort.In a section on economic issues, he blamed Biden, specifically, for the price of eggs, which have soared in some places to nearly $20 a dozen. (According to reporting from NPR, some of Trump’s advisers have asked him to talk more about egg prices, which were a repeated talking point during his campaign but which he has mentioned rarely since taking office, though prices continue to climb.) He also repeated false claims by Elon Musk’s extra-constitutional government-slashing group, the “department of government efficiency”, that Musk’s band of sycophantic teenagers who are leading the decimation of government services have found “hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud and waste” in Musk-targeted programs, such as social security. They have not.In fact, he talked about Biden a lot. At times, when he seemed to get distracted or lose his place in the speech, Trump appeared to insert insults towards Biden almost as filler. “And think of where we were with Joe Biden,” he said, in one such non-sequitur. “Biden took us very low, the lowest we have ever been.” Other digressions included complaints about his own various grievances and mistreatment. “Nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody,” he said once, after a brief discussion of a bill to combat revenge porn.Where were the Democrats during all this? Mostly, they were quiet. A few high-profile Democratic leaders, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the senator Patty Murray, skipped the speech. Others stayed and sat, sedate. Reportedly, word had gone out from Democratic leadership that party members should have a “dignified” presence at the speech, neither seizing the spotlight nor protesting against Trump out loud. The result was underwhelming.Democrats, who have told their voters that Trump represents a threat to democracy, sat silently, holding up ping-pong paddles printed with the word “false”. In an apparent nod to women’s eroded rights, some of them wore pink. Trump, for his part, used their silent presence to his advantage, turning them into props. Even if he cured a terrible disease, he jeered at the Democrats: “They will not stand, they will not jeer, they will not clap.” In fact, Trump has frozen virtually all federal funding of research into those terrible diseases, like cancer and Alzheimer’s, that American scientists were once working to cure. An opposition worth the name could have pointed that out; the one we have raised their ping-pong paddles a little higher.Trump is not the figure he used to be. He no longer seems to be quite in control of his own administration: he has delegated most spending policy to Musk, and has busied himself instead merely with turning the federal law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and the broader justice department, into instruments of his petty revenge. He’s not funny any more. But he is also more comfortable in power: even less deferential to formality, even less reverent towards his office, even more inclined to turn the presidency into what was always his greatest passion, a TV show.In Trump’s hands, an old State of the Union convention – pointing out citizens who had been brought to Congress as special guests – was given a new twist: Trump set the people up for surprises. One child, a 13-year-old aspiring police officer with cancer, was gifted with an honorary membership in the Secret Service; the cameras on him, his sunken eyes widened with surprise. A teenager who aspired to go to West Point stood up to wave to the crowd, and was told by Trump himself that he’d gotten in; his jaw momentarily hung open. The genre was the gameshow, the carnivalesque kind where nobodies see if they can catch some luck amid the random dispensation of gifts by the glamorous and benevolent host. Think of Oprah, in her decadent generosity, yelling: “You get a car!” In these moments, Trump seemed to be having fun. At least somebody is.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump is tearing up the rights of women. The message from your sisters in the Arab world? Don’t give up: resistance works | Hibaaq Osman

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      From outside the US looking in, those of us who have experienced the tumultuous years since the Arab revolutions feel a strange sense of familiarity: the chaos of the Trump-Musk administration, the attacks on minority groups, the elevation of men – a number of whom have been accused of violence against women – to cabinet positions.Trump seems to have started his second term with the same ferocity, callousness, violence and ignominy in which his first term so notoriously ended. Amid the shock of the past few weeks, a sense of panic can be immobilising. But that is exactly what such a strategy is designed to do.For women in the US who now feel under attack like never before, who sense their rights, even their bodily autonomy, slipping through their fingers, I bid a weary but warm welcome to the club. You must know that you do not need to look far for solidarity. There are women in the US who have had to fight every step of the way to have their humanity recognised by a bigoted and over-mighty state. African American women, Indigenous American women, Latin American women – their civil rights struggles have been extraordinary and hugely influential across the world.But if I may, there are many examples to be shared of women in the Arab world who have taken on the laws, institutions and cultures of oppression that mired their daily lives – and won.With some US politicians now looking to bar women from seeking an abortion beyond state lines, you can take inspiration from the women of Libya. Twice now, the Libyan authorities have declared their intention to ban women from independent travel without a male “guardian”. Female activists met these proposals with campaigns that raised global attention and condemnation, exerting political and diplomatic pressure that resulted in the proposals being rescinded.That this is possible in a country in which decades of dictatorship and conflict have prevented the establishment of a democratic culture shows the power of women organising together in grassroots advocacy. Even when the levers of power are not accessible directly, there is still huge power in working together strategically.When women in Jordan and Lebanon started work on addressing colonial-era laws that meant convicted rapists could escape punishment by agreeing to marry their victim, there were not many female parliamentarians they could find to champion their cause in the corridors of power. So they found other means. On social media, they developed hugely creative campaigns. Through this activism, women’s groups built coalitions that put the issue on the political agenda, with the laws abolished in both countries within days of each other.Such laws – which could still be found on the statute book in France as late as the 1990s – are based on an all-too-common belief that it is more shameful to be the victim of rape than it is to be the perpetrator. The work in Jordan and Lebanon then finds a haunting echo in the amazing courage shown last year by Gisèle Pelicot. Her case emphasises that while legal or constitutional changes are vital, the more difficult but fundamental task is to change a culture that allows such violence and discrimination to be conceived and committed at all.It makes me think of the incredible work going on in Egypt led by my colleagues reaching out to religious leaders. Over years, these activists have brought imams to engage with a study on women’s rights, gradually overcoming resistance and demonstrating compatibility with their faith.Some leaders went further, using the study in sermons and advocating for policies such as criminalising early marriage. That work has required incredible patience, persistence and compassion. It takes a lot to understand where people are coming from and to build a platform for respectful conversation, all without ceding ground or your own principles. But it can be done.Such a task of dealing with, and challenging, deeply held beliefs faces women in the US.American women did not suddenly wake up one morning to find sexual abusers in the White House. The path to this point has been long and ignominious. If things are to change for the better, the road ahead is equally long and challenging – but women can lead the way. There will be missteps, there will be failures. But nothing at all will be achieved if those disgusted and enraged by this state of affairs choose to sit back.The triumphs I have witnessed have been the fruit of years of hard work, of determination, of people being prepared to take risks. The stakes in the US show the time for playing it safe is long gone. This is a time to make noise, to find strength in solidarity and being part of a movement.The Trump administration threatens not only the health and rights of women within the US, but the progress that women have made globally. His cuts to American development, humanitarian and medical aid overseas are already having devastating consequences for women and girls facing violence, armed conflict, disaster and disease. And by cosying up to regimes notorious for perpetrating organised gender-based violence, he threatens decades of work to address the impact of conflict on women and girls.In this fight, women across the world are with our US sisters. Our cause is one – it has always been. To stand up against the injustice and inequality you see is an awesome challenge, but it is not one you are facing alone. More

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      Out-of-date polls to wrong aid amounts: factchecking Trump’s Congress address

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      Donald Trump’s marathon address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday was littered with false claims, many of them falsehoods he has previously stated, been corrected on, and continued to repeat regardless. Here are some of the main statements he made that are just not true.The United States has not given Ukraine $350bn since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022The president repeated one of his new favorite lies: that the United States has given Ukraine $350bn since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and Europe has given just $100bn.In fact, as Jakub Krupa and Pjotr Sauer reported for the Guardian last month, a running tally kept by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy shows that the US has spent about $120bn, while Europe – counted as the sum of the EU and individual member states – has allocated nearly $138bn in help for Ukraine. When the contributions from non EU countries, like the UK, are included, Europe’s share is even larger.Last week, on three consecutive days, three visiting world leaders corrected Trump on this false statement while sitting next to him in the Oval Office: the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Trump did not stop ‘$45m for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma’One in a litany of spending on foreign aid projects that Trump presented as ridiculous was “$45m for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma”.There is no evidence that any such scholarships were planned. As the former representative Tom Malinowski pointed out, when this claim was first made by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, this appears to be a reference to a very different program, USAid’s Lincoln Scholarships, which helped educate young people struggling for freedom against Burma’s military dictatorship.It is not clear why Trump or Musk wrongly thought that these were “diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships, but, as Malinowski noted, the USAid project description did specify that the scholars were Burmese students “from diverse backgrounds”. That seems like an important policy, given that the military dictatorship in Burma has exploited ethnic and religious divisions to stay in power.Trump wrongly suggested that millions of dead people might be getting social security paymentsTrump drew attention to the fact that a Social Security Administration database includes millions of people who would be over 110 years old.But, as the Guardian has reported previously, when Musk claimed that “a cursory examination of social security,” showed that “we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old”, this is a deeply misleading way of talking about about real flaw in the social security system which could enable fraud, but apparently does not.That flaw was revealed in a 2015 report by the independent inspector general for the social security administration who discovered that the agency did not have death records for millions of people who had passed away. As of 2015, the inspector general found, there were “approximately 6.5 million numberholders age 112 or older who did not have death information” on their files.According to the report, social security payments were still being made to just 13 people who had reached the age of 112. At least one of those people was certainly still alive, and tweeting, at the time the report’s data was compiled in 2013.When the report was issued in 2015, the oldest person with a social security number and no death record on their file was born in 1869, but there was no record of payments still being made to that person, who would have been nearly 150.In fact, the social security administration already has in place a procedure to conduct interviews with anyone who reaches the age of 100, to verify that they are alive and their account is not being used by someone else to collect fraudulent payments.Trump incorrectly claimed that a middle school in Florida had ‘socially transitioned’ a 13-year-old childTrump said that January Littlejohn, a mother from Tallahassee, Florida, had discovered that her 13-year-old child’s middle school had secretly socially transitioned her from female to non-binary without notifying the parents.While Littlejohn made that case in a lawsuit, the suit was dismissed by a federal judge, and emails obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper showed that Littlejohn had written to the school in 2020 to notify a teacher that her child wanted to change pronouns.The emails showed that Littlejohn worked with a teacher to determine how best to navigate the situation, and thanked the teacher for their help.Trump cherrypicked an out-of-date poll to suggest that most Americans say the US is now going in the right direction“Now, for the first time in modern history,” Trump proclaimed early in his address, “more Americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction than the wrong direction”.In fact, Trump appeared to be citing a single poll, published three weeks ago by the Republican-leaning polling firm Rasmussen, which showed a 47%-46% edge for the right direction over the wrong direction. However, that same polling firm’s most recent survey, this week, shows that 45% of Americans now say the country is on the right track, and 50% say it is on the wrong track.As the polling expert Nate Silver noted last year, when it was revealed that Rasmussen was secretly showing its results to the Trump campaign, “this sort of explicit coordination with a campaign, coupled with ambiguity about funding sources, means that we’re going to label Rasmussen as an intrinsically partisan (R) pollster going forward”.Other polling firms, not associated with the Republican party, show that more Americans say that the country is on the wrong track now than on the right track.The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, in late February, shows that 49% of Americans say that the country is headed off on the wrong track, and just 34% say that the country is headed in the right direction.An Economist/YouGov poll last week found that 50% of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction, with just 38% saying it is on the right track.The most recent Morning Consult poll, published on Sunday, shows that the current spread is 56% wrong to 44% right. In the final week of the first Trump administration in 2021, Morning Consult found that 81% of Americans said the country was on the wrong track, with just 19% saying it was on the right track.Trump falsely claimed Musk’s cost-cutting had ‘found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud’Since the start of its work, Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative has repeatedly claimed to have uncovered “fraud” only to have examples it cited turn out to be incorrect of invented. The most eye-catching example, that the government planned to spend $50m to send condoms to Gaza, turned out to be completely fictional.As the New York Times reported on Monday, receipts posted online by Musk’s “department of government efficiency” document less than $9bn in savings from cancelled government contracts, none of which involved fraud. More

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      Trump can’t fulfil his promise to fix the economy, so he’s blaming workers instead

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      During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump never missed an opportunity to harp on inflation, promising that “on day one” he would “end inflation” and lower the costs of groceries, cars and other common goods.Well, it’s day 40, and inflation saw its largest increase in over a year. Blink and you might have missed that Trump and his fellow Republicans have largely abandoned their concerns about inflation to focus on government “waste”.While Trump hasn’t fulfilled his campaign promise, he is living up to his usual brand of politics: the blame game. And this blame, as usual, is rooted in generating anger against “undeserving” Americans.This time, the undeserving are federal workers and poor people who get nominal benefits from the federal government – like Snap, which administers food stamps, and Medicaid. To fix so-called waste, the president apparently has no choice but to crack down on spending (and enlist help from Elon Musk), an issue that barely registered in the public consciousness in the past 10 years but is somehow now a rampant problem, according to Trump.There are policy frameworks backing Trump and the GOP’s divisiveness, including the well-known Project 2025 and a lesser-known House proposal published in 2024, Fiscal Sanity to Save America, that centers government “waste” instead of corporate greed. And now, with Republicans controlling the House, Senate and presidency, Republicans have the power to act on cuts that will harm millions of Americans.Musk and Trump, of course, have already worked to cut thousands of federal workers’ jobs. And with the Trump-backed budget bill the House passed on Wednesday, including $800bn in likely cuts from Medicaid, Republicans are one step closer to bulldozing America’s already paltry social safety net.This isn’t just at the federal level. Republicans have been floating proposals in state governments that would restrict healthcare, housing and food benefits instead of making it easier to afford things.The party of “freedom” is endorsing government home visits to surveil “fraud” in all US states (according to page 43 of the GOP’s “Fiscal Sanity” plan). The party of “family values” is also turning its attention to school lunch and breakfast programs, which it claims are subject to “widespread” fraud and abuse (page 46). The party that wants to “make America healthy again” is floating restrictions to Medicaid that would make recipients work at least 80 hours a month, a proposal that wastes government time and money to verify work requirements and which would probably just deter people from getting healthcare, as a flailing GOP work requirement experiment in Georgia has shown.And as Trump touts himself as an anti-war president, his proposals belie the fact that much of these spending cuts will now be diverted to defense contracts and other military and border spending, not on improving the economic lives of everyday workers to whom he made sweeping campaign promises.Meanwhile, straightforward proposals to simply give people more money (which does have evidence of working), such as universal basic income, would be outright banned at the federal level under the GOP plan. So as the cost of living is primed to increase, Republicans have ready-made excuses to justify cutting billions of dollars from these programs, an exceptional sort of cruelty.Of course, no one wants to see public money being spent wastefully or fraudulently. But incessant focus on “waste” stems from faulty, selective evidence. According to reports from Musk’s own so-called “department of government efficiency”, nearly 40% of cancelled contracts to cut costs are expected to yield no savings. It also stems from something else that does have proven results: the utility of public outrage.Focusing on extreme examples and “undeserving” government beneficiaries animates America’s existing propensity for divisiveness, giving Trump and his party wide latitude to wreck the lives of millions of people who don’t engage in fraud, waste or abuse. When Reagan wanted tax cuts for the rich, we saw the “welfare queen” trope. When neoliberal Democrats and Republicans wanted to cut public housing at the federal and local level, we saw extreme stories about the criminality of people who lived there. We cannot waste the money of hard-working Americans on these “others”. It’s a narrative – often hinging on racism and sexism – that has great outcomes for America’s capitalist class and the politicians who support them.So instead of protesting against the rising cost of living or making demands for universal healthcare, federal job guarantees, increased labor rights, or Snap benefits for all, or cutting the bloated defense budget and increasing taxes on the super-rich to pay for the nominal social welfare benefits that other industrial countries have normalized, working-class Americans are engaging in petty debates about what kinds of groceries other working-class Americans should buy and deputizing themselves to root out “abuse” among other workers.Republicans redirecting blame towards people who are suffering in this economy under the guise of “waste” is a distraction. As inflation is poised to worsen under Trump, Americans would be wise to focus their anger more on the elected officials and billionaires who profit from their pain than on each other.

      Malaika Jabali is a 2024 New America fellow, journalist and author of It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On More

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      White House gives federal agency heads deadline to produce plan for layoffs

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      US government agency heads have been given a 13 March deadline to produce a plan for drastically slashing the federal workforce as Donald Trump reinforced warnings that workers who failed to account for what they do could be fired.A White House memo issued on Wednesday directed bosses to provide details of their workforce reduction plans in the most specific instruction yet to managers to cut stuff who are deemed unnecessary or inefficient.“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” reads the seven-page, acronym-laden document, jointly written by Russ Vought, the newly installed director of the White House’s office of management and budget, and Charles Ezell, acting director of the office of personnel management (OPM).“Tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens.”As a remedy, it adds specific guidance to an executive order issued by Trump this month mandating large-scale “reductions in force” across government department and agencies.It calls for the elimination of “agency components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or regulation who are not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations”.“Agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily-required functions,” the memo states.View image in fullscreen“Each agency will submit a Phase 1 ARRPs [agency reductions in force and reorganization plans] … for review and approval no later than March 13, 2025.”The dryly bureaucratic language was hardened by Trump at his first cabinet meeting in the White House on Wednesday, during which he said he spoke with the Environmental Protection Agency secretary, Lee Zeldin, about cutting “65 or so per cent” from the agency.Trump’s ally Elon Musk, head of the self-styled “department of government efficiency” unit that is spearheading the search for spending cuts, said he would send a second email asking federal workers to detail what they achieved at work.More than 1 million members of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce have not replied to Musk’s initial demand that they describe their previous week’s work in five bullet points. Several of Trump’s cabinet members – including the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, director of the office of national intelligence – instructed staff not to answer because of the risks of revealing classified information.“Those million people that haven’t responded, they are on the bubble,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t say that we’re thrilled about it. Maybe they don’t exist. Maybe we’re paying people that don’t exist. [But] a lot of those people who have not responded …it’s possible those people will be fired.” More

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      The US is destroying climate progress. Here’s a strategy to win over the right | Erin Burns

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      We are witnessing the most devastating climate disasters on record: wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, deadly floods in North Carolina, and global temperature records shattered month after month. We have officially surpassed 1.5C (2.7F) of warming, a critical threshold scientists have long warned against. At the same time, the US is scaling back policies, freezing critical programs and shifting priorities away from climate action.But now isn’t the time to give up on climate action. Instead, it is high time to rethink how it succeeds.The reality is that the United States has never had a true, comprehensive climate policy. Unlike other countries that have enacted economy-wide regulations, the US approach has been fragmented, focused on supporting specific technologies rather than tackling climate change holistically. That has especially been true for carbon removal technologies and practices that remove existing carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere and an essential tool for meeting global climate goals.Instead, we have federal direct air capture policy, federal agriculture policy, and federal forestry and oceans policy. Each of these exists within distinct legislative and political frameworks, driven not by national political divides but by state-level economic interests, policy mechanisms like tax credits or R&D funding, and the coalitions that support them.This distinction is crucial. Over the past few years, bipartisan support has helped unlock billions of dollars for carbon removal. But that does not mean carbon removal itself is bipartisan. Direct air capture has bipartisan support, as do soil carbon programs, reforestation efforts and ocean-based carbon removal. Almost every piece of legislation supporting a pillar of carbon removal has sponsors from both parties, but that is because they align with localized economic and political priorities – not because of broad bipartisan agreement on climate action.So, how do we make progress over the next four years? By acknowledging that climate action is a key consideration in policy, but is never the sole driving force shaping decisions. Take California’s decision to implement cleaner car standards. Yes, the state acted because the climate was in a bad spot, but also because smog was choking cities, making it harder for people to breathe. The policy wasn’t just about the long-term benefits of reducing emissions; it was about protecting public health in the immediate term. People supported action because they could see the direct, personal consequences of pollution in their daily lives.This is the lesson for carbon removal and broader climate solutions. Some climate advocates have suggested that, in order to navigate the shifting political landscape, we should build our political pitches around the economy rather than climate itself. But the path forward isn’t about removing climate from the conversation, because we will never build champions by pretending the world isn’t burning. Instead, it’s about “climate and … ” Climate and economic growth. Climate and public health. Climate and energy security. When we talk about and implement carbon removal, we need to prioritize the co-benefits beyond climate not because of who sits in the White House, but because these benefits are real and essential to securing long-term support from a broader bench of champions.Long-term public policy requires durable political coalitions. That means we must stop pretending climate action is only about climate. We need to ensure that communities hosting projects see tangible benefits–because without that, these projects won’t happen.I don’t say this only as someone who has worked in federal climate and energy policy for nearly 15 years, but as someone who grew up in the heart of West Virginia’s coal country. My community has lived through the rise and fall of a fossil fuel economy. We understand better than most the benefits and costs of an industry-dependent future. We also know that when economic transitions happen without real planning and investment in local communities, they leave devastation in their wake.This is why focusing on co-benefits isn’t a concession; it’s the only viable path forward. We need to defend existing climate and carbon removal policies based on the real, tangible benefits they provide. And we must build coalitions that last beyond election cycles, ensuring that climate progress is not derailed by shifting political winds.To those working on bipartisan climate solutions: now is not the time to water down our message or repackage our work for short-term political convenience, but to shore up our political capital for the long game. We need to secure immediate policy wins over the next four years, but we must also lay the groundwork for the next hundred. That means being honest about why we do this work, articulating both the benefits and trade-offs, and building trust – not just with policymakers, but with the communities that will host these projects.The political landscape will shift, but our commitment to a just, sustainable future must remain unwavering.

      Erin Burns is executive director of Carbon 180, a climate NGO seeking to reverse two centuries of carbon emissions More

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      USAid workers to be ‘escorted’ back to collect belongings amid Trump shutdown bid

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      Workers at the US Agency for International Development (USAid) have been invited back to its office “to retrieve their personal belongings” as the Trump administration continues its bid to shut down the foreign aid agency.An email seen by the Guardian described how staff in Washington would be allowed to briefly return on Thursday or Friday of this week. They would be “escorted to their workspace” and granted “approximately 15 minutes” to gather their items, it said.All of the nearly 10,000 employees at USAid, aside from personnel deemed essential, have been placed on administrative leave. The Trump administration has signaled it plans to cut 2,000 positions.The move comes after a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to put thousands of USAid workers on leave, in a setback for unions that are suing over what they have called an effort to dismantle the agency.Staff who spoke to the Guardian sounded the alarm over the impact of these moves on global security, warning that closing USAid and withdrawing foreign aid is “only leaving war on the table”.The agency is “the canary in the coal mine” as Trump seeks to test the limits of his executive powers, said one USAid official, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation and harassment. “We see us as the most acute and boldest example of overreach, that checks and balances ought to restrain the powers of the president and the president should abide by the powers of Congress and the courts.“Can the president act like a king? We’re a glaring flare for all of those things.”The agency has been subjected to attacks and conspiracy theories about its work, with Elon Musk and his supporters making false claims about funding, including a baseless claim about the agency sending $50m to Gaza for condoms, and false claims about grants such as the suggestion by the so-called “department of government efficiency” that $21m had been sent to India to influence elections.Musk has called the agency “a criminal organization” and argued that it was “time for it to die”. Pushed on his false condoms claim earlier this month, he responded: “Some of the things I say will be incorrect.”Health clinics reliant on USAid grants in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Iraq and other countries around the world have been forced to shut down and international aid groups have already cut thousands of jobs due to the funding freeze.The Trump administration is fighting challenges in court to freeze all USAid funding, place nearly all employees on leave.“USAid was established by act of Congress. It needs to be un-established by act of Congress. They are ignoring that rule,” the USAid official said. “I would guess around 500 workers, no one has provided specifics, senior leaders, HR and IT people, are left behind to participate in the dismantling of the agency.”Contracts and grants are still being cut and terminated, with only a small fraction of the agency’s work abroad still continuing, they said. “We’re a lifesaving agency. They certainly have done damage that will take years to undo, but even though they’ve closed the building and banned us from it, we’re not done. We still exist,” they said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother USAid employee, who received a reduction-in-force notice, said: “They are not being above board. Nothing is following the law. The level of impunity that is occurring has our own domestic lawyers confused about what’s happening with the courts.”They criticized misinformation and allegations made against USAid, noting their funding is approved and constantly assessed by Congress, with no discretion for employees on how those funds are used. They argued the agency’s dismantling will result in a debt of diplomacy and hurt America’s standing around the world, and said other countries or bad actors will fill the void.“USAid will save you exponentially more money in bullets and blood. We are only leaving war on the table,” the worker said. “We don’t exist as an isolationist country. Our partners clearly don’t appreciate what is happening and are reconsidering how dependable we are, which has been to our benefit for 60 years. How does that make us safe, more secure, or more prosperous?”People “think this is about efficiency”, they added. “It’s a fundamental aspect of democratic governance for people to understand what is happening, and the current administration is taking great lengths to divorce the public from that and let people do whatever they want.”USAid deferred comment to the state department, who were contacted for comment. The White House was also contacted for comment. More

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      ‘We’re being treated as grifters or terrorists’: US federal workers on the fear and chaos of their firings

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      The Trump administration has fired at least 20,000 government employees in its first month, as Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) dramatically overhauls work at federal agencies. Some economists have speculated that these terminations, which could affect nearly 300,000 workers, will be the biggest job cuts in US history.Most of the workers cut were in probationary periods and lacked job protections that come with longer terms of employment. In social media spaces, especially the r/fednews subreddit, these workers described scenes of confusion and feelings of anger directed at Musk, an unelected billionaire dubbed a “special government employee” by the White House. Last week, unions for federal workers sued the Trump administration for unlawfully using probationary periods to cut staff.The mass firings appear far from over: this weekend, Musk demanded that all remaining workers detail their day-to-day duties in bullet points or face dismissal. (Several federal agencies told their employees not to respond to Musk’s email, and unions and advocacy groups moved to prevent retaliation against employees who did not comply.)Three recently terminated probationary workers told the Guardian about the effects on their lives and job prospects, and how the consequences will “trickle down” to all Americans. They requested anonymity due to fears of retaliation and the fact that they are currently looking for new jobs.‘Do I need to think about becoming a political refugee?’Scientist who works on food sustainability issues in the north-east USI was the third person hired in our unit, almost three years ago, to look at issues of access and fairness when it comes to food. Our probationary period for government scientists is three years. I was 10 weeks away from the end of this period; one of my colleagues who was also fired was only six weeks out.I went on maternity leave in August. When Trump was elected, I knew it would mess with my job. Specifically, I thought it would mess with telework, which I did half the time after I returned from maternity leave. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to have the time to breastfeed my baby at home or to manage the postpartum separation anxiety I’ve experienced. I decided to take a deferred resignation, because then I’d get severance.Six days after my resignation, when I was into the off-boarding process, my boss told me I was going to get a termination letter. It was a huge, emotional process to resign – I feel like I was basically bullied by Trump into doing so – but at least it was my decision to make. Now, I was getting fired. It’s been an insane rollercoaster of emotions.Government workers are real people with families who dedicated their lives and expertise to service. It feels like we’re being treated as grifters or terrorists, when we’re not. A lot of us have given up options for much higher incomes in order to do the work that we thought was going to help the world. This is a huge, huge loss for science, because now government researchers are going to shift into the private sector. There’s a lot of good work that the world won’t even know to miss, because we won’t get to do it.Now I’m wondering, do I need to think about becoming a political refugee? I have a big network in Europe and Canada, though I’d like to stay in the US. It’s hard these days to know what’s catastrophizing and what’s good planning. I think people are really hesitant to go to the worst-case scenario, but we know from history that things can get really bad. Some people see it coming, and some people don’t.It’s also been really, really disappointing and enraging for me to see the lack of effective resistance to Trump and Musk from Congress. There’s a lot of talk on the left about how this is all bad, but nothing’s really getting done. I understand the numbers, the majorities and minorities, but I just think this is not the time to be playing nice with the fascists.‘I’m exploring legal options’Cultural resource specialist for the National Resources Conservation Services (NRCS), an agency of the US Department of Agriculture, in North DakotaI’m an archaeologist. Anytime the NRCS wants to provide support to private landowners such as ranchers or famers, they are legally required to have someone like me to do on-the-ground surveys and excavations of the site.I started on 30 December. I was let go on 13 February. I’d moved from California to North Dakota, and believe it or not I was given relocation expenses to help pay for my move. I came here with my wife and two dogs, and we spent a good amount of money to do so. I sold my Camry and bought a Subaru because I thought I needed a car that could handle the snow up here; now I have a new SUV and a car payment.They told me that if I didn’t work for the federal government for more than a year, I’d have to pay back those expenses. I don’t know if they’re going to come after me for that now.View image in fullscreenIt would be one thing if they’d sent me a personalized letter saying something like: “Your position is being cut.” Instead, I got this generic form letter that still said “template” in the document title. It told me I was being fired for performance-based reasons, but my boss and I were like, I haven’t even worked here long enough to get a performance review. How can they say that?I guess there’s camaraderie among the people who got cut, but more than that everyone just talks about how stupid it is. Are they really making the government more efficient if they’re getting rid of all these people who do things that are required by law? I get the impression that Musk’s treating this like he would a private company such as Twitter, where he fired a lot of people. He’s acting like a CEO, but it’s not his company. It’s the federal government.I’m exploring legal options with employment lawyers, who indicated I’ll have to go through a bigger class-action type thing. There are a couple of class-action lawsuits going around that I’ve submitted my information to. I’m also applying to jobs, and I have a couple of interviews set up. One is for a job that’s in this area, another is out of state. If something good comes up, I would take it and move. That wouldn’t be too hard – I’ve been here for such a short time that I haven’t even unpacked everything yet.‘I didn’t go into this because I wanted to make six figures’Educator at a national forest in OregonI’ve worked for the forest in one way or another since 2019, first as an intern and then in a seasonal position. I got my permanent position in July of last year. During Trump’s first week, they asked for a list of names of everyone who had been hired in the last year. That put me on edge.One day, I saw a bunch of people at the USDA posting on the subreddit for federal employees about getting fired. I was going to text my supervisor to ask: “Am I getting fired?” and then she called me to say that she didn’t have any details but it was probably going to happen. The next day, Valentine’s Day, she called with her definitive list. That was a Friday. It was not a good weekend.It’s overwhelming to know that all the work I put in during the past five years is completely wasted. I have a two-year-old, and my husband and I wanted to have another, but now we don’t know about that. Working in the natural resources field, I don’t know what positions are going to be available, and I’m not sure where my career will go. Do I just give up and go into accounting or something? It’s so uncertain.I feel like we’re being attacked. There have always been people who are anti-government, but now I feel like people see all government employees as villains. I really cared about the work I did, and I didn’t go into this because I wanted to make six figures. The forest or park services have always been very bipartisan, and it’s not something you can easily throw away.We do a lot of school field trips – those won’t happen any more without us. Kids, especially those who come from poorer communities, won’t have the opportunity to come out here and see the natural world. The forest is going to be in disarray, the bathrooms won’t be cleaned, anyone who comes here will have a terrible experience. Without people maintaining the forest, the wildlife will have a worse habitat. All of these things trickle down. The people who fired us are higher-ups who don’t work in the field; everyone who knows the day-to-day of how to take care of this place is gone. More