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      Judge blocks Trump plan to tie states’ transportation funds to immigration enforcement

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      A federal judge on Thursday blocked Donald Trump’s administration from forcing 20 Democratic-led states to cooperate with immigration enforcement in order to receive billions of dollars in transportation grant funding.Chief US District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, granted the states’ request for an injunction barring the Department of Transportation’s policy, saying the states were likely to succeed on the merits of some or all of their claims.The Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a group of Democratic state attorneys general who argued the administration was seeking to unlawfully hold federal funds hostage to coerce them into adhering to Trump’s hardline immigration agenda.The states argued the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, lacked the authority to impose immigration-enforcement conditions on funding that Congress appropriated to help states sustain roads, highways, bridges and other transportation projects.Since returning to office on 20 January, Trump has signed several executive orders that have called for cutting off federal funding to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that do not cooperate with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as his administration has moved to conduct mass deportations.Sanctuary jurisdictions generally have laws and policies that limit or prevent local law enforcement from assisting federal officers with civil immigration arrests.The justice department has filed a series of lawsuits against such jurisdictions, including Illinois, New York and Colorado, challenging laws in those Democratic-led states that it says hinder federal immigration enforcement.The lawsuit before McConnell, who was appointed by Barack Obama, was filed after Duffy on 24 April notified states they could lose transportation funding if they do not cooperate with the enforcement of federal law, including with Ice in its efforts to enforce immigration law.The states argue that policy is improper and amounts to an unconstitutionally ambiguous condition on the states’ ability to receive funding authorized by Congress as it leaves unclear what exactly would constitute adequate cooperation.The administration has argued the policy was within Duffy’s discretion and that conditions should be upheld as there is nothing improper about requiring states to comply with federal law.The 20 states are separately pursuing a similar case also in Rhode Island challenging new immigration enforcement conditions that the homeland security department imposed on grant programs. More

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      Outrage as DHS moves to restrict lawmaker visits to detention centers

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      The US Department of Homeland Security is now requiring lawmakers to provide 72 hours of notice before visiting detention centers, according to new guidance.The guidance comes after a slew of tense visits from Democratic lawmakers to detention centers amid Donald Trump’s crackdowns in immigrant communities across the country. Many Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks have either been turned away, arrested or manhandled by law enforcement officers at the facilities, leading to public condemnation towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (Ice) handling of such visits.Lawmakers are allowed to access DHS facilities “used to detain or otherwise house aliens” for inspections and are not required “to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility”, according to the 2024 Federal Appropriations Act.Previous language surrounding lawmaker visits to such facilities said that “Ice will comply with the law and accommodate members seeking to visit/tour an Ice detention facility for the purpose of conducting oversight,” CNN reported.However, in the new guidance, the DHS updated the language to say that Ice “will make every effort to comply with the law” but “exigent circumstances (eg operational conditions, security posture, etc) may impact the time of entry into the facility”.The new guidance also attempts to distinguish Ice field offices from Ice detention facilities, noting that since “Ice field offices are not detention facilities” they do not fall under the visitation requirements laid out in the Appropriations Act.The Guardian has contacted Ice for comment.In response to the updated guidance, Mississippi’s Democratic representative and the ranking member of the House committee on homeland security, Bennie Thompson, condemned what he called the attempt by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to “block oversight on Ice”.“Kristi Noem’s new policy to block congressional oversight of Ice facilities is not only unprecedented, it is an affront to the constitution and federal law. Noem is now not only attempting to restrict when members can visit, but completely blocking access to Ice field offices – even if members schedule visits in advance,” Thompson said.“This unlawful policy is a smokescreen to deny member visits to Ice offices across the country, which are holding migrants – and sometimes even US citizens – for days at a time. They are therefore detention facilities and are subject to oversight and inspection at any time. DHS pretending otherwise is simply their latest lie.”Last month, the New Jersey representative LaMonica McIver was charged with assaulting federal agents during a visit to a detention facility in Newark alongside two Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation. McIver called the charges against her “purely political … and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight”.New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, also condemned the charges, saying it was “outrageous for a congresswoman to be criminally charged for exercising her lawful duty to visit a detention site in her own district”.On the day of McIver’s visit, law enforcement also arrested the mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, who they charged with trespassing as he attempted to join McIver’s delegation visit. The charges against Baraka were later dropped and Baraka has since filed a lawsuit against the state’s top federal prosecutor over his arrest.Bonnie Watson Coleman, another New Jersey representative who was part of McIver’s visit, rejected the DHS’s claims that the lawmakers assaulted law enforcement officers.“The idea that I could ‘body-slam’ anyone, let alone an Ice agent, is absurd,” the 80-year-old representative said on X last month, adding: “We have an obligation to perform oversight at facilities paid for with taxpayer dollars.”Earlier this month, law enforcement officers forced the California senator Alex Padilla on to the ground as he attempted to ask a question to Noem during a press conference in Los Angeles.Despite repeatedly identifying himself, Padilla was handcuffed and forced into the hallway before law enforcement officers shoved the two-term US senator chest-first on to the floor. Following the incident, which triggered widespread outrage across both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, Noem said she did not recognize the two-term senator and claimed that he did not request a meeting with her. The two then reportedly met for 15 minutes after the incident.On Tuesday, the Illinois representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Jonathan Jackson were denied entry during their attempted visit to an Ice facility in Chicago.That same day, the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, was forcibly arrested by multiple federal agents and detained for hours as he tried to accompany a Spanish-speaking immigrant out of a courtroom. The DHS claimed Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”, an accusation Lander denies.Following his release, New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, called his arrest “bullshit” and said that the charges against Lander had been dropped.A day later, the New York representatives Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler were refused entry into Ice detention facilities in Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza, despite requesting a visit in advance via letter, the City reports. More

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      Ice is cracking down on Trump’s own supporters. Will they change their minds? | Tayo Bero

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      By now, the cycle of Donald Trump supporters being slapped in the face by his policies is common enough that it shouldn’t warrant a response. What is noteworthy is the fact that his crusade of mass deportations seems to have taken the Maga crowd by surprise in a way that makes little sense if you’ve been paying attention to Trump, his campaign promises, his party and the people he surrounds himself with.Even as they witness friends and family members hurt by this administration’s immigration clampdowns, some Trump supporters appear resistant to doing a full 180.Bradley Bartell, whose wife, Camila Muñoz, was recently detained, says he has no regrets about voting for Trump. Muñoz is from Peru and overstayed a work-study visa that expired right when Covid hit. She was trying to get permanent residency in the US when she was detained.“I don’t regret the vote,” Bartell told Newsweek. His rationale? Trump is a victim of a bad immigration system that his administration inherited. “He didn’t create the system but he does have an opportunity to improve it. Hopefully, all this attention will bring to light how broken it is.”For Jensy Machado from Manassas, Virginia, things are a bit more complex. Machado, a naturalized US citizen, was driving to work when, according to NBC 4, he was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, who brandished guns and surrounded his truck. According to Machado, a man facing a deportation order had given Machado’s home address as his, and when Machado assured agents that they had the wrong person and offered them his Virginia driver’s license, they ordered him to leave his car and handcuffed him.“I was a Trump supporter,” Machado, who is Hispanic, said. “I voted for Trump last election, but, because I thought it was going to be like … against criminals, not every Hispanic, Spanish-lookalike.“They will assume that we are all illegals,” he continued. “They’re just following Hispanic people.”Machado said his support for the administration had been shaken. Others have been rattled by how and where Trump’s policies are being applied.That dissonance is well articulated in a recent New York Times piece about a small Missouri town that supported Trump – and is now grappling with the effects of his decisions.Many residents of Kennett, Missouri, were stunned when a beloved neighbor, Carol, was arrested and jailed to await deportation after being summoned to Ice offices in St Louis in April. According to the government, Carol came to the US from Hong Kong in 2004, and has spent the past two decades trying to secure legal stay in the country, ultimately being granted a temporary permission to stay known as an order of supervision. Carol’s most recent order of supervision was supposed to be valid through August 2025, but on the day of her arrest, she was told it was being terminated.Now, despite the fact that she’s spent the last two decades building a life and community in this small town, getting married and buying a house, she’s spent weeks moving between jails as she awaits a final decision on her deportation.“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” said Vanessa Cowart, who knows Carol from church. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves … This is Carol.”That last line – and the Kennett story as a whole – reveals a deeply American way of thinking about law and order and civil liberties: that anything is fair game once someone is considered a “criminal”. It’s an idea that has been sent into overdrive in the Trump years, where “criminal” has become a catch-all for the most evil, dangerous and undesirable in our communities, and shorthand for referencing anyone society doesn’t want to deal with.Trump ran on a campaign of hate, and the voters who helped cement that hatred and codify it into policy are now encountering the kind of state-sanctioned violence they endorsed at the ballot box.Still, to say “I told you so” in a moment like this is not only useless, it feels like a cruel understatement when the thing you were warning about is so destructive.So what can we learn from this? US leadership is clearly invested in the destruction of vulnerable American lives. If people who have been directly affected by Trump’s behaviour still find reasons to rationalize his leadership, it’s a reminder that ousting this regime will require the rest of us to speak out against tyranny and the establishment politics that got us here in the first place.

      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘He’s moving at a truly alarming speed’: Trump propels US into authoritarianism

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      It reads like a checklist of milestones on the road to autocracy.A succession of opposition politicians, including Alex Padilla, a US senator, are handcuffed and arrested by heavy-handed law enforcement for little more than questioning authority or voicing dissent.A judge is arrested in her own courthouse and charged with helping a defendant evade arrest.Masked snatch squads arrest and spirit people away in public in what seem to be consciously intimidating scenes.The president deploys the military on a dubious legal premise to confront protesters contesting his mass roundups of undocumented migrants.A senior presidential aide announces that habeas corpus – a vital legal defence for detainees – could be suspended.The sobering catalogue reflects the actions not of an entrenched dictatorship, but of Donald Trump’s administration as the president’s sternest critics struggle to process what they say has been a much swifter descent into authoritarianism than they imagined even a few weeks ago.“Trump is throwing authoritarian punches at a much greater rate than any of these other cases in their first year in power,” said Steven Levitsky, Harvard political scientist and author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of How Democracies Die. “But we don’t yet know how many of those punches will land or how society will respond.”Five months after Trump’s inauguration, seasoned analysts with years of studying one-time stable democracies degenerating into autocracies are voicing alarm at the speed of the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on institutions and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression. They are unnerved by the deployment of masked Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents – dressed in plain clothes and without identifying official insignia – to arrest people on the streets for deportation, a tactic critics say is evocative of dictatorships and designed to provoke fear among the general population.Some voice doubts about the judiciary’s capacity to act as a democratic safeguard, despite a wave of legal challenges to the president’s executive orders. They cite the 6-3 conservative majority of the US supreme court, which has a history of issuing rulings friendly to the president, who appointed three of its justices to the bench during his first administration.Trump has tried to propel the US in an authoritarian direction with greater intensity than noted autocrats like the late Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, or Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, according to Levitsky.Eric Rubin, a former US ambassador to Bulgaria and acting ambassador to Moscow, said Trump was outpacing Vladimir Putin, the Russia president for whom he had often voiced admiration.“This is going faster than Putin even came close to going in terms of gradually eliminating democratic institutions and democratic freedoms,” said Rubin, who witnessed Putin’s early years in power at close quarters. “It took him years. We’re not even looking at six months here.”Bright Line Watch, a survey of political scientists, recently gave the US a score of 53 – the lowest since it started collecting data in 2017 – on a spectrum ranging from 0 for total dictatorship to 100, denoting a perfect democracy, according to Brendan Nyhan, a professor at Dartmouth College, one of the institutions conducting the study.Academics commissioned said they expected the country to fall further, forecasting a score of 48 by 2027.“We’re in the range of countries like Brazil and Israel, but well above countries like Russia,” said Nyhan. “I do expect things to get worse. The potential for further democratic erosion is very real.”Key to whether Trump can tilt America decisively into authoritarianism will be his efforts to assert control over the armed forces, argued Levitsky.“Trump’s ramping up of the effort to politicize the military can still go in multiple directions,” he said. “It could be really ugly and bad, because the only way that you can get from where we are to real authoritarianism like Nicaragua or Venezuela or Russia is if Trump has the military and security forces on his side, and he’s taken steps in that direction.”Padilla’s manhandling – after he tried to question homeland security secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference – drew fierce scrutiny. It took place against a backdrop of Trump’s deployment of 4,000 national guard troops on to the streets of Los Angeles, later augmented by 700 active marines, against demonstrators protesting against the administration’s anti-migrant crackdown, who did not appear to be present an undue challenge to local law enforcement authorities.View image in fullscreenThe decisions took place against the opposition of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who would normally be empowered to deploy the national guard in the state but whose role Trump usurped as he sought to make an example of a state with a large immigrant population and whose Democratic stranglehold he wishes to break.The deployments, denounced by opponents as an attempt to foment violent confrontation, took place in the run-up to a military parade staged in Washington last Saturday. Ostensibly held to honor the US army’s 250th anniversary, the event was held – perhaps not coincidentally – on the president’s 79th birthday. Opponents said it was redolent of autocracies like China, North Korea and Russia and reflected a desire by Trump to turn the military into his personal tool.Amid speculation that the parade might be disrupted by an anti-Trump No Kings protest on the same day, the president threatened to use “very big force” against demonstrators, in apparent contradiction of the US’s tradition of tolerance of peaceful dissent. In the event, no clashes between government forces and protesters were reported at the Washington parade on a day when an estimated 5 million demonstrators turned out at 2,100 locations across the US, according to organizers. However, there were sporadic reports of violence elsewhere; in northern Virginia, a man drove his car through a crowd of No Kings protesters, striking one, in what police said was an intentional act.But in a much worse portent for democracy on the same day, Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state legislator in Minnesota, was shot dead at her home along with her husband Mark in what was called a targeted political assassination allegedly carried out by 57-year-old Vance Boelter, whose friends say was a Christian nationalist Trump supporter.Boelter, who is now in police custody, is suspected of then shooting and wounding another politician, John Hoffman – a Democratic member of the Minnesota senate – and his wife, Yvette. He is said to have had a list with more than 45 targets, all of them Democrats, at the time of his arrest.Rubin said the shootings created a climate of fear comparable to that of Weimar Germany before the rise of Hitler.“Fear is powerful and pernicious,” he said. “People won’t be willing to to be candidates for these positions because they’re afraid. The general public is intimidated. I’m somewhat intimidated.“You can say passivity is immoral in the face of evil, that it is complicity, all the things that were said about Nazi Germany. Well, it’s easy to say that. In Nazi Germany, there were some courageous people, but not very many, because they were afraid.”Equally significant, analysts say, is the Trump administration’s efforts to expand the legal boundaries of the president’s powers – the fate of which will be decided by the supreme court, which issued a ruling last year that effectively granted Trump vast prosecutorial immunity for acts committed in office.“Has Trump solidified his power? Have we reached a point where we have an out-of-control president who controls all the institutions? No, but we’re at the 11th hour,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociology and international affairs professor at Princeton University. “He’s moving at a truly alarming speed and pressing all the authoritarian buttons. We’re a few supreme court decisions away from having a president we can’t get rid of.”Trump’s national guard deployments in Los Angeles may have been aimed at establishing a legal precedent enabling him to deploy troops at will when state authorities tried to defy him.“He wants to establish that he can disable the governors from fighting back against him [by using] military force,” Scheppele said. “The Los Angeles deployment was perceived as an escalation but in reality, the military haven’t done that much. However, there’s a legal infrastructure underneath it all that’s scarier.”Levitsky, said the administration – spearheaded by Stephen Miler, the powerful White House deputy chief of staff – had adopted a practice of declaring emergencies to acquire potentially dictatorial powers.“In the US constitution, almost every existing constraint on executive power can be circumvented in a state of emergency,” he said. “And it’s becoming clear that the administration is learning that emergencies are the easiest route to circumvent the law and not be blocked by the courts. The supreme court is very reluctant to say, ‘No, that’s not an emergency, Trump, you lied. You made that up.’ It’s sort of a free pass for circumventing the rule of law.”The White House used economic emergency legislation to impose sweeping trade tariffs, while invoking the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act, passed in anticipation of a war with France, to justify summarily deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members. Miller repeatedly called last week’s protests in Los Angeles an “insurrection”, implicitly justifying the invocation of the Insurrection Act, which enables a president to use military forces to quash a rebellion on US soil.Writing in the Atlantic, David Frum, an anti-Trump conservative commentator, warned that the penchant for emergencies could be applied to next year’s congressional elections, when the Democrats hope to regain control of the House of Representatives, an outcome that could curtail his authoritarian power grab.“Trump knows full well that the midterms are coming. He is worried,” Frum wrote.“He might already be testing ways to protect himself that could end in subverting those elections’ integrity. So far, the results must be gratifying to him – and deeply ominous to anyone who hopes to preserve free and fair elections in the United States under this corrupt, authoritarian, and lawless presidency.”Even if Trump were to suffer an election reverse, his ability to wreak further havoc will remain, Nyhan warned, simply because Senate Republicans are unlikely to vote in sufficient numbers to remove him from office in the event of him being impeached by a Democratic-controlled House.“The Founding Fathers anticipated Trump precisely,” he said, referring to the constitutional provision to try and remove a president and other officials for “high crimes and misdemeanors”.“It was just assumed that Congress will jealously guard its prerogatives and impeach and remove any president who exceeded the boundaries of the constitution. But in our current political system, that is a seemingly impossible task.“So we face the prospect of a lawless authoritarian continuing to act for the next three and a half years, and there’s a great deal of damage he can do in that time.” More

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      New US visa rules will force foreign students to unlock social media profiles

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      Foreign students will be required to unlock their social media profiles to allow US diplomats to review their online activity before receiving educational and exchange visas, the state department has announced. Those who fail to do so will be suspected of hiding that activity from US officials.The new guidance, unveiled by the state department on Wednesday, directs US diplomats to conduct an online presence review to look for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States”.A cable separately obtained by Politico also instructs diplomats to flag any “advocacy for, aid or support for foreign terrorists and other threats to US national security” and “support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence”.The screening for “antisemitic” activity matches similar guidance given at US Citizenship and Immigration Services under the Department of Homeland Security and has been criticised as an effort to crack down on opposition to the conduct of Israel’s war in Gaza.The new state department checks are directed at students and other applicants for visas in the F, M and J categories, which refer to academic and vocational education, as well as cultural exchanges.“It is an expectation from American citizens that their government will make every effort to make our country safer, and that is exactly what the Trump administration is doing every single day,” said a senior state department official, adding that Marco Rubio was “helping to make America and its universities safer while bringing the state Department into the 21st century”.The Trump administration paused the issuance of new education visas late last month as it mulled new social media vetting strategies. The US had also targeted Chinese students for special scrutiny amid a tense negotiation over tariffs and the supply of rare-earth metals and minerals to the United States.The state department directive allowed diplomatic posts to resume the scheduling of interviews for educational and exchange visas, but added that consular officers would conduct a “comprehensive and thorough vetting” of all applicants applying for F, M and J visas.“To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M and J non-immigrant visas will be asked to adjust the privacy settings on all their social media profiles to ‘public’”, the official said. “The enhanced social media vetting will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country.” More

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      ‘Abducted by Ice’: the haunting missing-person posters plastered across LA

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      “Missing son.” “Missing father.” “Missing grandmother.”The words are written in bright red letters at the top of posters hanging on lampposts and storefronts around Los Angeles. At first glance, they appear to be from worried relatives seeking help from neighbors.But a closer look reveals that the missing people are immigrants to the US who have been disappeared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Some of the faces are familiar to anyone who has been following the news – that missing father, for instance, is Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador in March without a hearing, in what the Trump administration admitted was an error. “Abducted by Ice,” the poster reads, under a picture of Ábrego García with his small son. “Did not receive constitutional protections. Currently being held in detention.”The missing grandmother is Gladis Yolanda Chávez Pineda, a Chicago woman who was taken by Ice when she showed up for a check-in with immigration officials this month. She had arrived in the US seeking a better life for her daughter and was in the midst of applying for asylum. “Lived in the US for 10 years,” the poster states. “No criminal history.”View image in fullscreenThe missing son is Andry Hernández Romero, a makeup artist who fled persecution in Venezuela. On arrival in the US, he was detained, with US authorities claiming his tattoos indicated gang membership. His family and friends say that’s ridiculous. He was among hundreds of people deported to the El Salvador mega-prison known as Cecot in March. “Currently being held in a concentration camp,” the poster says.The posters are just a few examples of a campaign of quiet resistance on the streets of Los Angeles. On Monday, a walk down Sunset Boulevard in the historic Silver Lake neighborhood meant encountering an array of flyers, artwork and spray-painted messages of support for disappeared immigrants and fury at the administration.The “missing” posters, which have also appeared in other neighborhoods, were particularly effective. Duct-taped to telephone polls amid ads for comedy shows, guitar lessons and yard sales, they reminded passersby of the individual lives derailed by Trump’s immigration crackdown – instead of names in the news, these were families and friends who might have lived just down the road.View image in fullscreenHumanizing people’s stories was precisely the goal, said the creators behind the posters.“I just wanted to reframe this idea of immigrants as criminals, and put into perspective that these are people – this is someone’s grandmother, this is someone’s father, this is someone’s son,” said Ben*, the posters’ 28-year-old designer. He worked with his friend Sebastian*, 31, to distribute them around town.What began as a friends-and-family effort expanded after Ben shared the PDF: “I shared it with a few friends, then they shared it, and so it kind of just blew up.”For Sebastian, the issue was personal. “I moved here from Colombia 14 years ago, and ever since the first Trump administration, I’ve seen my community being attacked,” he said. “So as soon as I saw these posters that my friend was doing, that I felt something in me that needed to go out and help.”While they worked, “people started taking photos, and I had a moment with this one elderly woman where she was looking at it, and she really just started tearing up,” Ben said. “At that moment, I was like, ‘OK, this is actually connecting to people.’”The images have appeared in recent days as the city has become a focal point for protests against Trump’s immigration policies, which began on 6 June amid raids targeting immigrants at several locations in the city.As the protests emerged in parts of LA, Donald Trump called in the national guard without the governor’s consent – an action no president has taken since 1965. Shortly afterward, he summoned hundreds of marines. Much news coverage painted the city as a kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape, with protesters facing off against troops and cars on fire, fueling Trump’s narrative of a lawless city hopelessly embroiled in chaos.In fact, much of the unrest was confined to a small area of downtown LA. Across most of the vast city and county, life continued as normal, the sun shining over familiar traffic jams, studio lots and suburban sprawl. Still, the protests – and the federal government’s wildly disproportionate clampdown – served as a spark that has helped to fuel a national outcry, as well as this subtler demonstration of local solidarity.Alongside the “Missing” posters were a series of alternative descriptions of Ice – rather than Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, stenciled messages on the pavement and shop windows condemned “Illegal Country-wide Embarrassment”, “Institution of Child Endangerment” and the perhaps less clear “Insecure Confused Ejaculation”.View image in fullscreenOther flyers advertised Saturday’s “No Kings” protests, while still others noted that “Undocumented hands feed you”, with an illustration of a person working in a field. Those latter posters were created by Sydney*, 29, who works in the music industry in Los Angeles. Her 9-to-5 job makes it impossible to attend protests, she said, so creating this image was an alternative way to participate in resistance. “You read something tragic every morning lately about the Ice raids,” she said.She was particularly moved by the plight of agricultural workers, toiling for low wages under the threat of immigration crackdowns. “I just felt very compelled to speak up for them in places that people probably don’t think about them, like Silver Lake and the city,” she said. “I am Latina. I have many family members that came here and are immigrants, and so it just touches home for me.”Inspired by a slogan she saw in protest photos and Mexican decor flags, Sydney created the stylized image as a social media post. “I just wanted to tie something beautiful with something very political and loud,” she said. A friend saw the post, asked if she could print it out, and plastered it around town.That DIY approach adds to the posters’ power: there is a sense of neighbors helping neighbors. As the administration conjures a tale of a city in crisis, the images – unpretentious and haunting – serve as a reminder of what the protests are actually about.* The Guardian is withholding full names for privacy reasons More

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      Trump overseeing a ‘fascist regime’ says Brad Lander after arrest – US politics live

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      Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a mayoral candidate, has lashed out at Donald Trump and “his fascist regime”, after he was arrested on Tuesday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.Posting on X, Lander wrote:
      We will all be worse off if we let Donald Trump and his fascist regime undermine the rule of law.
      Lander was arrested, according to video footage of the incident, as he and his staff walked with an immigrant – who he later identified as “Edgardo” – who had their case dismissed pending appeal earlier in the day, per AMNY.Lander can be seen and heard in videos of the incident asking the immigration officials if they have a judicial warrant. Additional footage of the arrest shows Lander telling the officials:
      I’m not obstructing. I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.
      In a statement to the Guardian, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”.Upon his release, Lander said he “certainly did not” assault an officer.In an interview with CNN after his arrest, Lander said:
      All I was trying to do was the things I had done [in] the prior two weeks of just accompany people out to safety. That was my goal today. I sure did not go with any intention of getting arrested.
      Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to meet Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, for talks today. The meeting is expected to take place in the White House cabinet room at 1pm Washington time.It comes after India’s prime minister Narendra Modi told Trump late on Tuesday that a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day conflict in May was achieved through talks between the two militaries and not US mediation.Trump had said last month that the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours agreed to a ceasefire after talks mediated by the US, and that the hostilities ended after he urged the countries to focus on trade instead of war.“PM Modi told President Trump clearly that during this period, there was no talk at any stage on subjects like India-US trade deal or US mediation between India and Pakistan,” Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri said in a press statement, according to Reuters.More on both of these stories in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:

      Israel’s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and weighed his military options. Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel’s bombing campaign in Iran.

      An unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress’s approval. Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

      “Effective today, I am lifting the curfew in downtown Los Angeles,” the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.

      A federal judge in Boston ruled that transgender and intersex people can obtain passports that align with their gender identity during litigation that seeks to overturn Trump’s executive order that US passports must conform to the sex citizens were assigned at birth.

      Ukrainian diplomats have been left frustrated – and in some cases embittered – at Donald Trump’s refusal to make Ukraine a priority after Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew 5,000 miles to the G7 conference in Canada only for the US president to return home the night before the two leaders were due to meet. Trump said he needed to focus on the Israel-Iran conflict.

      Donald Trump has abandoned his brief immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) reprieve for farm and hotel workers, ordering the agency’s raids in those sectors to resume after hardliners crushed a pause that lasted just four days.

      A federal appeals court in San Francisco heard arguments on Tuesday in Trump v Newsom, to determine whether the Trump administration must return control of the California national guard troops deployed to Los Angeles by Trump to the state’s governor during protests over federal immigration raids.

      Bernie Sanders has endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign.
      As Donald Trump publicly threatens to join Israel in attacking Iran, an unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress’s approval.On Tuesday, Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined with several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.“This is not our war. But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our constitution,” Massie wrote on X in announcing the resolution. Democrats Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez replied “signing on” to the tweet, while Massie’s office later announced that several others, including chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Greg Casar, would also sponsor the resolution.The resolutions’ introductions came hours after Trump left a G7 summit in Canada early to return to Washington DC and demand Iran’s “unconditional surrender” following days of Israeli airstrikes that have targeted its top military leaders and nuclear facilities.The White House later denied media reports circulating that the US had decided to become involved in the conflict, with spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer saying:
      American forces are maintaining their defensive posture, and that has not changed. We will defend American interests.
      However, US military aircraft and sea vessels have moved into the Middle East, and Iran’s deepest nuclear facilities are thought to be penetrable only by a bunker-busting bomb possessed by the US alone.The Federal Reserve wraps up its two-day policy meeting later today, with most analysts expecting that the central bank will leave its benchmark borrowing rate alone for the sixth straight meeting.Traders are now largely betting on the possibility of just one or maybe two cuts to interest rates this year by the Fed if any. That’s down from expectations of potentially six cuts, AP reports.A Fed policy statement and projections are expected at 2pm, followed by press conference by its chair Jerome Powell at 2.30pm.For context, US president Donald Trump has been putting pressure on Powell to cut interest rates in a bid to ‘supercharge’ the economy after his tariffs.Israel’s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and weighed his military options.Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel’s bombing campaign over Iran.He told journalists in the morning that he expected the Iranian nuclear programme to be “wiped out” long before US intervention would be necessary. Later he took to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to suggest that the US had Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in its bomb-sights, and could make an imminent decision to take offensive action.“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump said. “But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”In a post a few minutes later, Trump bluntly demanded “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER”.It was not just Trump’s all-caps threats that triggered speculation that the US might join offensive operations. They were accompanied by the sudden forward deployment of US military aircraft to Europe and the Middle East, amid a general consensus that Iran’s deeply buried uranium enrichment facilities could prove impregnable without huge bunker-busting bombs that only the US air force possesses.“If Iran does not back down, complete destruction of Iranian nuclear programme is on the agenda, which Israel cannot achieve alone,” German chancellor Friedrich Merz told ZDF television a day after meeting Trump at the G7 summit in Canada.A federal appeals court on Tuesday seemed ready to keep Donald Trump in control of California national guard troops after they were deployed following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.Last week, a district court ordered the US president to return control of the guard to Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, who had opposed their deployment. US district judge Charles Breyer said Trump had deployed the Guard illegally and exceeded his authority. But the administration quickly appealed and a three-judge appellate panel temporarily paused that order.Tuesday’s hearing was about whether the order could take effect while the case makes its way through the courts, including possibly the supreme court.It’s the first time a US president has activated a state national guard without the governor’s permission since 1965, and the outcome of the case could have sweeping implications for Trump’s power to send soldiers into other US cities. Trump announced on 7 June that he was deploying the guard to Los Angeles to protect federal property following a protest at a downtown detention center after federal immigration agents arrested dozens of immigrants without legal status across the city. Newsom said Trump was only inflaming the situation and that troops were not necessary.In a San Francisco courtroom, all three judges, two appointed by Trump in his first term and one by Joe Biden, suggested that presidents have wide latitude under the federal law at issue and that courts should be reluctant to step in.“If we were writing on a blank slate, I would tend to agree with you,” Judge Jennifer Sung, a Biden appointee, told California’s lawyer, Samuel Harbourt, before pointing to a 200-year-old supreme court decision that she said seemed to give presidents the broad discretion Harbourt was arguing against.Even so, the judges did not appear to embrace arguments made by a justice department lawyer that courts could not even review Trump’s decision.It wasn’t clear how quickly the panel would rule.Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a mayoral candidate, has lashed out at Donald Trump and “his fascist regime”, after he was arrested on Tuesday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.Posting on X, Lander wrote:
      We will all be worse off if we let Donald Trump and his fascist regime undermine the rule of law.
      Lander was arrested, according to video footage of the incident, as he and his staff walked with an immigrant – who he later identified as “Edgardo” – who had their case dismissed pending appeal earlier in the day, per AMNY.Lander can be seen and heard in videos of the incident asking the immigration officials if they have a judicial warrant. Additional footage of the arrest shows Lander telling the officials:
      I’m not obstructing. I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.
      In a statement to the Guardian, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”.Upon his release, Lander said he “certainly did not” assault an officer.In an interview with CNN after his arrest, Lander said:
      All I was trying to do was the things I had done [in] the prior two weeks of just accompany people out to safety. That was my goal today. I sure did not go with any intention of getting arrested.
      Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to meet Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, for talks today. The meeting is expected to take place in the White House cabinet room at 1pm Washington time.It comes after India’s prime minister Narendra Modi told Trump late on Tuesday that a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after a four-day conflict in May was achieved through talks between the two militaries and not US mediation.Trump had said last month that the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours agreed to a ceasefire after talks mediated by the US, and that the hostilities ended after he urged the countries to focus on trade instead of war.“PM Modi told President Trump clearly that during this period, there was no talk at any stage on subjects like India-US trade deal or US mediation between India and Pakistan,” Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri said in a press statement, according to Reuters.More on both of these stories in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:

      Israel’s war on Iran appeared to be approaching a pivotal moment on Tuesday night after five days of bombing and retaliatory Iranian missile strikes, as Donald Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” from Tehran and weighed his military options. Trump convened a meeting of his national security team in the White House situation room after a day of febrile rhetoric in which the president gave sharply conflicting signals over whether US forces would participate directly in Israel’s bombing campaign in Iran.

      An unlikely coalition of lawmakers has moved to prevent the president from involving US forces in the conflict without Congress’s approval. Republican congressman Thomas Massie, whose libertarian-tinged politics have often put him at odds with Trump, joined several progressive Democrats to introduce in the House of Representatives a war powers resolution that would require a vote by Congress before Trump could attack Iran. Democrat Tim Kaine has introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

      “Effective today, I am lifting the curfew in downtown Los Angeles,” the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.

      A federal judge in Boston ruled that transgender and intersex people can obtain passports that align with their gender identity during litigation that seeks to overturn Trump’s executive order that US passports must conform to the sex citizens were assigned at birth.

      Ukrainian diplomats have been left frustrated – and in some cases embittered – at Donald Trump’s refusal to make Ukraine a priority after Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew 5,000 miles to the G7 conference in Canada only for the US president to return home the night before the two leaders were due to meet. Trump said he needed to focus on the Israel-Iran conflict.

      Donald Trump has abandoned his brief immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) reprieve for farm and hotel workers, ordering the agency’s raids in those sectors to resume after hardliners crushed a pause that lasted just four days.

      A federal appeals court in San Francisco heard arguments on Tuesday in Trump v Newsom, to determine whether the Trump administration must return control of the California national guard troops deployed to Los Angeles by Trump to the state’s governor during protests over federal immigration raids.

      Bernie Sanders has endorsed the leftwing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in the latest boost to his insurgent campaign. More