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    Trump fires Black joint chiefs chair Hegseth accused of promoting diversity

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    Donald Trump abruptly fired the air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making Black fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to purge the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.The ouster of the second Black general to serve as chair of the joint chiefs comes three months after Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, outlined a plan for ridding the US military of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts during a podcast interview.“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs,” Hegseth said during a November interview on the Shawn Ryan Show. “Any general that was involved, general, admiral, or whatever, that was involved in any of that DEI woke shit has got to go.”Although Hegseth had been meeting regularly with Brown since the former Fox News host took over the top Pentagon job last month, he had openly questioned whether Brown had been named chair because he was Black. “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt – which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote in one of his books.Brown had been praised, including by Time, for breaking racial barriers in the military and for his “warfighter” credentials. When he was sworn in as the air force chief of staff in 2020, during the first Trump administration, Brown acknowledged previous US military service members who had been denied advancement because of their race, Time reported. “It is due to their trials and tribulations in breaking barriers that I can address you today as the air force chief of staff,” Brown said.In 2020, Trump himself had celebrated Brown’s confirmation on social media “as the USA’s first-ever African American military service chief” and noted that he had appointed him to that role. Brown’s experience as the former commander of Pacific air forces also meant he was “highly qualified to deter China and reassure allies in the Indo-Pacific”, Time noted that year.“Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars,” Hegseth said in a statement after Brown’s firing, calling Brown a “thoughtful adviser”.In a post on his social media platform Friday evening, Trump announced he would replace Brown with retired Lt Gen Dan “Razin” Caine, a retired military leader Trump said had been “passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden”.Trump has repeatedly said that Caine impressed him during his first administration by assuring him that the Islamic State could be defeated very rapidly.“Many so-called military ‘geniuses’ said it would take years to defeat Isis. General Caine, on the other hand, said it could be done quickly, and he delivered,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday.At CPAC in 2019, Trump previously recounted a conversation in which he recalled asking Caine how fast the Islamic State could be defeated, and claimed that Caine had told him: “Sir, we can have it totally finished in one week,” a story that fact-checkers said at the time “didn’t add up”.Caine, who is white, previously served as the associate director for military affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency, and had played a direct role in the air defense of Washington DC during the 11 September attacks. Caine recently became a venture partner at Shield Capital, a venture capital firm, which touted his experience as an entrepreneur who “co-founded and successfully exited multiple aerospace, defense, and healthcare companies”.Trump’s announcements set off a period of upheaval at the Pentagon, which is already bracing for firings of civilian staff, a dramatic overhaul of its budget and a shift in US military deployments under Trump’s new America First foreign policy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump also wrote that he would soon swap out five other high-level positions in an unprecedented shake-up of the leadership of the US military.In a statement shortly after Trump’s Truth Social post, Hegseth clarified which five positions Trump appeared to be looking to fill, saying that he was “requesting nominations for the positions of Chief of Naval Operations and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff”, firing Adm Lisa Franchetti and Gen James Slife, who currently hold those positions.“We are also requesting nominations for the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy and Air Force,” Hegseth added.Caine’s military service includes combat roles in Iraq, special operations postings and positions inside some of the Pentagon’s most classified special access programs. However, it does not include key assignments that were identified in law as prerequisites for the job, with an exemption for the president to waive them if necessary in times of national interest.The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act states that to be qualified, a chair must have served previously as either the vice-chair, as a combatant commander or a service chief – but that requirement could be waived if the “president determines such action is necessary in the national interest”.Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Pentagon lays off 5,400 civilian workers, with tens of thousands more firings due

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      The Pentagon announced plans Friday to fire 5-8% of its civilian workforce, staring next week with layoffs of 5,400 probationary workers, a Department of Defense official said in a statement.The initial civilian layoffs will be followed by a Department of Defense hiring freeze to analyze the military’s personnel needs in compliance with Donald Trump’s political goals, Darin Selnick, the acting under-secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in the statement.“We anticipate reducing the department’s civilian workforce by 5-8% to produce efficiencies and refocus the department on the president’s priorities and restoring readiness in the force,” Selnick said.“It is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission-critical. Taxpayers deserve to have us take a thorough look at our workforce top-to-bottom to see where we can eliminate redundancies.”The announcement of sweeping firings of civilian workers was followed by Donald Trump’s firing of the current chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General CQ Brown Jr.The initial Pentagon job cuts planned for next week are a fraction of the 50,000 defense department job losses that some had anticipated, but they might not be the last. The defense department is the largest government agency, with the Government Accountability Office finding in 2023 that it had more than 700,000 full-time civilian workers.A 5-8% cut in that force would mean layoffs of between 35,000 and 60,000 people.The announcement of the cuts comes after staffers from Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative, or Doge, were at the Pentagon earlier in the week and received lists of such employees, US officials said. They said those lists did not include uniformed military personnel, who are exempt.Probationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has supported cuts, posting on X last week that the Pentagon needs “to cut the fat (HQ) and grow the muscle (warfighters).”Hegseth also has directed the military services to identify $50bn in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump’s priorities. It represents about 8% of the military’s budget.Most of recently terminated employees throughout the federal government began their current position in the last year and were therefore considered probationary, giving them less job protection. Roughly half of them live in states that voted for Trump in the 2024 election, government figures show.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trans military members on the feared ban: ‘I would meet Trump to show how we’ve served our country’

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      View image in fullscreenFor Bree Fram, an active-duty colonel in the US space force with 22 years of military experience, the last few weeks have been “incredibly challenging”.“Like thousands of other transgender military personnel, I am doing my job every day, while feeling fear and uncertainty of what is coming next,” said Fram.Fram and other trans servicepeople are awaiting word on what they fear may be a blanket ban by the Trump administration on transgender people serving in the armed forces. This would affect not only those who wish to join and those within the military who are transitioning and require medical treatment but also service members who have already transitioned and been working in the armed forces for many years.“This is not a place where we expected to be after a decade of open service,” Fram said. “The ban makes me sad for myself and my transgender colleagues, and also concerned for America’s national security. We have thousands of transgender service members who have served openly and honorably, and their loss would leave a massive hole in our country’s military capabilities.”Lt Cdr Geirid Morgan, who has served in the navy for 14 years, said: “An all-out ban would mean the rapid termination of thousands of transgender service members, many of whom are mid-career like myself,” adding: “Many trans service members are senior-enlisted or at officer rank, with 10-plus years of service, multiple deployments, and millions of dollars invested in their lives and careers.” (Fram and Morgan, like the other trans servicepeople featured in this article, emphasized that they were speaking in a personal capacity, and not officially representing the Department of Defense and US government.)View image in fullscreenOpen service for trans people in the US military was introduced in 2016. In announcing the revival of a ban he initiated in his first term of office (later revoked by Joe Biden), Donald Trump said in a 27 January executive order: “The Armed Forces have been afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists unconcerned with the requirements of military service like physical and mental health, selflessness, and unit cohesion.”In Trump’s executive order, as with a slew of measures targeting trans people in recent weeks in areas such as healthcare provision and sports, the administration made clear it did not recognize trans identities – rather only two sexes, male and female: “Expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for Military Service.”CPO Ryan Goodell, a signal analyst with the navy, said: “That isn’t true. The requirements for service are the same for trans people as their cisgender counterparts.” He continued: “Let our service speak for itself. I’ve been dedicated to my career for 13 years and would like to continue doing it.”On 7 February, as first reported by the Hill, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, issued instructions for the military to cease employing new trans recruits and suspend medical treatments existing trans recruits may have been receiving, claiming that allowing trans people to serve openly undermined military capability.However, a 2016 Rand study found the opposite, showing that the cost for the military of medical transitions was comparatively minor and unit cohesion was unaffected by the presence of trans service members.Some fellow trans service members have already had medical treatments canceled, Goodell said. “This has caused them distress, but there is also a lot of resilience and determination. I’ve no idea what the obsession with the transgender community is, and it’s very disheartening to watch this campaign to erase the transgender community. We haven’t harmed anyone. We’re not enemies of the state, or anything crazy like that. We’re citizens of the United States. We want to show up in our daily lives, and live our lives.”View image in fullscreenA Department of Defense official did not respond to specific questions about when official policy regarding transgender troops would be announced and what would be included in its sweep, or to charges that the ban was discriminatory and unfair.The official said: “The Department of Defense will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives. We will provide status updates as we are able.”Alexandria Holder, a master sergeant with the US air force, said it was “extremely stressful” to work in a climate of such governmental hostility and lack of clarity.“I have served my country for 20 years, and have a family to support,” Holder said, referring to her wife, Brittanie, and their four children. “It makes it very difficult to plan for the future. I’m scared, but I continue to do my job, and do it well. My service is core to my identity.”“People forget this doesn’t just impact us as service members, but also our loved ones and families,” said Fram, who has a wife, Peg, and two children. “The impact goes far beyond us and has major effects on all those people we care about.”The trans military ban, like other Trump administration measures targeting trans people, is already the subject of legal challenges – one by Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign, and the other by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (Glad Law).View image in fullscreenThe organizations are representing trans plaintiffs from the army, navy and air force with many years of decorated service behind them. The plaintiffs include the navy Cdr Emily “Hawking” Shilling, the president of Sparta, an organization representing an estimated 15,000 active and reserve transgender troops.“The language in the executive order and other things is so rabid that we 100% think the final order will go after all trans people – the intention is all-out erasure,” said the senior attorney Sasha Buchert, director of Lambda Legal’s Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project.Of the pending legal cases, the defense department official told the Guardian: “As a matter of policy, the department does not comment on ongoing litigation.”The charge that trans service members are weak and disruptive “doesn’t resonate with my and my friends’ experiences”, said Morgan. “My engagements with colleagues and leadership only improved when they were interacting with me as my authentic self. I have had two of the most productive years of my professional life since beginning my transition. I am able to trust and depend on people as I have never been able to before. That’s not an exception, that’s a general rule for all my trans colleagues. Being able to be ourselves has made us better service members.”
      We exist. We do incredible things. We are serving in the military with distinction, and we will continue to do so for as long as we are ableBree Fram
      Goodell echoed that sentiment: “It’s taken a very long time in my life to come to the realization of who I am, and I am a better person, a better son, a better sailor and a better leader as a result.”Holder serves as flight chief for 43 airmen, supporting operations in the Middle East and North Africa, leading groups of Arabic linguists and intelligence analysts.“I love what I do, especially when it comes to leading,” she said. “There was a lot of stress around the first ban, but this time is different because of the level of demonization of trans people during and after the election campaign, and the number of anti-trans bills at both state and federal levels.“Being able to come out and go through my transition allowed me to be a better leader, and feel better empathy with the people around me,” Holder said. “Being open about who you are should be seen as strength and be celebrated, instead of being demonized and perceived as a weakness. If someone wants to claim I, or any trans service member, is weaker than them, I would challenge them to do what I have done while serving my country and see if they can do the same.”While Hegseth has stated that trans service members “will be treated with dignity and respect”, those who spoke to the Guardian said that having their years of service nullified and careers terminated simply because they are transgender revealed the opposite.Fram said: “When we are told we are not meeting military standards without any evidence, when the language of these executive orders and memos challenges our honor, it is extremely painful to hear – and also to be put in a position where we have to defend our existence and capabilities.”View image in fullscreenHolder said: “I look at all that trans people have achieved in uniform, and would ask President Trump and Secretary Hegseth to look at what we do and achieve rather than what our identities are, and let us continue to serve.” She added: “I would welcome meeting them to tell them about my experiences and my work, and show them how trans people have served our country.”Fram said she had been “overwhelmed” with the support shown by cisgender colleagues. “Their message is, ‘I see you, I support you,’” Fram said. “The question in the military is, ‘Are you with me? Do you have my back?’ When it comes to supporting transgender service members, the answer is ‘yes’. But I don’t want to be in a position where people feel they need to check in on me or offer support. It’s incredibly gratifying to know I have that, but it takes away from the work we should be doing.”Goodell said he would be “forever grateful” to the doctors who helped him transition, especially with his recent final gender-confirming surgery. “I sensed they were frustrated with the prospect of any ban that would forbid them from providing care, because that is what they do, that is their calling. I expressed my sincere gratitude for all they had done for me.”The service members said they remained optimistic, but all are preparing for “the worst-case scenario”, as Fram put it, should they suddenly find themselves thrown out of their jobs.“In a perfect world I would like to continue to serve and do 20 years of service,” Goodell said. “But if that isn’t the case, those of us who have served I hope will be treated with dignity and respect and be afforded the benefits we’ve earned, like veterans’ healthcare.”Fram said: “No proclamations will erase our existence. The only person who gets to judge who we are is ourselves.” She continued: “Trans people are some of the most resilient people out there. We had to dig deep and find who we really are. Nothing that comes out of this government can invalidate that fact. We exist. We do incredible things. We are serving in the military with distinction, and we will continue to do so for as long as we are able.“My hope is that trans people have the opportunity to serve and thrive now and far into the future – to show that trans people belong everywhere.”@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) 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      in US Politics

      Presidents at War: how battle has shaped American leaders

      by

      In his new book, Presidents at War, Steven M Gillon considers how the second world war shaped a generation of presidents, a span that takes in eight men – but not all of them served in uniform between 1941 and 1945.Gillon likes to “ask people, ‘There are seven men who served in uniform in world war two and who went on to be president: who are they?’ And most people think Jimmy Carter did, and they forget Ronald Reagan.”Carter was born in 1924 and came of age in wartime. But the submariner turned peanut farmer turned politician, who died aged 100 in December, graduated the US Naval Academy in 1946, the year after the war. Reagan, meanwhile, joined the Army Reserve in the 1930s and spent the war years enlisted – but stayed at home in Hollywood, where he made his name as an actor, narrating films and joining fundraising drives.“Reagan was the most fascinating for me,” says Gillon, emeritus professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and scholar-in-residence at the History Channel. “I once bought the story about: ‘Oh, he wanted to go and fight but his eyes were too bad.’ In fact, there’s all these machinations going on behind the scenes that keep him from going overseas, to make sure he stays in California so he can make movies, while at the same time creating this public image of a guy who has been off to war, and he comes home to his wife [Jane Wyman], and there’s a picture of him in his uniform, kissing his wife – who in fact he slept with every night during the war.”Gillon focuses on how the war affected men who led their country through the cold war with Russia, into the quagmire of Vietnam, and eventually into the first Iraq war. To Gillon, “those presidents who came closest to combat were the ones who were most restrained in their use of force afterwards,” meaning Dwight Eisenhower, who commanded Allied forces in Europe, and John F Kennedy and George HW Bush, who flirted with death in the Pacific, JFK as a torpedo boat captain, Bush as a navy flier.“Reagan is the exception of so many of these things,” Gillon says. “Reagan never sees war. He thinks he saw the Holocaust camps, but he didn’t. He just makes stuff up, and he thinks it’s true. But what I did not know was how he came out of the war with the real fear of nuclear weapons, and he belonged to an organization for international control of atomic weapons, largely a liberal organization, as he was involved in other liberal organizations like Americans for Democratic Action.“While he shed all the other liberal ties, he never shed that fear of nuclear weapons. And despite all his bombastic language, he was very restrained in the use of force. I mean, the only thing he did was create a phony war in Grenada [in which 19 Americans died] and see 241 Americans killed in Lebanon [both in 1983], and that was a peacekeeping mission.”View image in fullscreenIn response to the Beirut embassy bombing, Reagan launched limited strikes. He also bombed Libya, in 1986, and funded and fueled conflicts elsewhere, his efforts in Nicaragua creating the Iran-Contra scandal. But on the global scene, Gillon “was surprised at how restrained Reagan was. And then his fear of nuclear weapons made him open to [Mikhail] Gorbachev’s overtures” for detente and arms control “during his second term … this was where Reagan followed his own instincts and in this case his instincts were right, and he was the right person to do it because he had such strong anti-communist credentials. So that was a twist I had not appreciated before.”Gillon’s book contains more twists. Many involve Lyndon Baines Johnson, like Reagan no stranger to distorting facts for political gain. A congressman when the US entered the war, LBJ got himself into uniform for a Pacific fact-finding tour. Hitching a ride on a bomber, he survived an attack by Japanese fighters.“There’s controversy over whether that took place the way he described it,” Gillon says. “There was an article written by some aviation historians who said it never could have happened. And then, years later, the Japanese pilot who had actually led the attack against the American planes said he remembered Johnson’s plane. He remembered crippling it, and he said the plane was so wounded that he knew it wasn’t going to do any damage, so he broke off and went back into the main attack.”Johnson’s plane made it back to base, leaving him alive to tell tales of his own bravery on the campaign trail. Gillon shows how those tales grew more shameless but thinks the basic story “is definitely true”, including how a bathroom break meant Johnson lost a spot on a plane which was shot down, killing all onboard.“Yeah, Johnson was just cool as a cucumber. And I’m sure he was thrilled when he landed.”Gillon was born in working class Philadelphia in 1956, in the shadow of the war. Too young for the Vietnam draft, fascinated by the presidency, he graduated from Widener and Brown and then taught at Yale and Oxford. Recent books include America’s Reluctant Prince, about his late friend John F Kennedy Jr, and The Pact, about Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, a Democratic president and a Republican House speaker whose relationship resonates loudly today.With his latest book, Gillon focuses on the major lessons of the second world war, particularly the cost of appeasement, Hitler’s triumph at Munich in 1938 a constant ghost at the feast. Such lessons, he says, “some forgot, like Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, while others, like Kennedy and Bush, those who really saw battle and the horrors of war, you see them thinking about world war two all the time when they’re making big decisions, whether it’s the Cuban Missile Crisis for Kennedy or it’s the invasion of Iraq with George Bush”.View image in fullscreenLooking to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Gillon describes how both served but did not see battle. Both were in the navy. Ford’s closest brush with action involved a fire aboard his ship during a Pacific typhoon. Nixon was posted to tropical islands, working logistics and supply, failing to reach the front line.Vietnam dominates Gillon’s book. US involvement began under Eisenhower, accelerated under Kennedy, swirled into nightmare under Johnson and finally ended under Nixon – though he had lengthened the horror by thwarting peace talks for his own political gain. Gillon retells the extraordinary Anna Chennault affair, in which a Washington socialite acted as a go-between with the government of South Vietnam, relaying Nixon’s urge to boycott talks till the 1968 election was done. When Johnson learned of it, he told a senior Republican: “This is treason.” The senator agreed. Johnson called Nixon, who denied it. Gillon writes: “According to some reports, after hanging up, Nixon collapsed with laughter.”In 1968, Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey. The war did not end until 1973. Reading Presidents at War, it is striking to realize that no future president who was of an age to serve in Vietnam did so.Bill Clinton opposed the war, studied abroad and denied accusations of dodging the draft. Joe Biden secured student deferments then was exempted on account of teenage asthma. George W Bush, the son of a war hero, went into the Texas Air national guard, which, Gillon notes, “is a place notoriously where rich, powerful people put their kids during war”. Al Gore, John Kerry and John McCain did go to Vietnam – but lost presidential elections.As so often, Donald Trump is a whole other matter. He obtained student draft deferments but also found a doctor to say “bone spurs” in his heels rendered him unfit for service. He has also said avoiding sexually transmitted diseases while dating in New York was his “personal Vietnam”, making him feel like “a great and very brave soldier”. It’s not a line to endear him to Gillon, who says he cast his first vote for a Republican president, Ford, but whose epilogue to Presidents at War makes clear his distaste for Trump, his view of military matters and his reported negative comments about those who serve.“I have my political point of view but when I write history, I try to be really fair-minded,” Gillon says. “And I can’t be fair-minded toward Trump. I just dislike him so much that I don’t think I could write a book about him. I wrote a book about Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, and what made me happy was that both Clinton and Gingrich liked it. I take great pride in being fair of mind towards someone like Newt Gingrich, who I have no political affinity for, but I just can’t get to that point mentally with Trump. I can’t write a book that I feel I can’t be fair.”

      Presidents at War is out now More

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      US watchdog to investigate Musk ‘Doge’ team’s access to payment systems

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      A government watchdog is to launch an inquiry into security over the US treasury’s payments system as a judge on Friday considered whether access by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to the highly sensitive data base was unconstitutional.Amid mounting court cases concerning Doge’s activities, the treasury department’s inspector general said it would launch an audit after Democrats complained about the access gained to a 25-year-old Musk associate, Marko Elez, who was briefly granted edit access within the system, meaning he had the potential to change entries. The access was later rescinded by an interim court ruling.The payment system contains the personal details of millions of Americans and disburses trillions of dollars to federal government programmes.Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX, has been tasked by Trump to slash government spending by targeting alleged waste and fraud and has upended large swaths of the federal bureaucracy, cancelling contracts, stopping spending programs and throwing thousands of staff out of work.Loren Sciurba, the treasury’s deputy inspector general, said the audit would review the past two years of the system’s transactions to examine Musk’s claim that his team has uncovered evidence of billions of dollars of fraudulent payments.She said the audit – launched in response to demands from the Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden – would begin immediately and take until August to complete.Its launch coincided with a judge in Washington considering a legal suit lodged by Democratic attorneys general from 14 states, arguing that Doge’s work was illegal on the alleged grounds that Trump violated the US constitution by creating a federal government department without congressional approval.The attorneys general argue that Musk has exercised “virtually unchecked power” by entering government agencies and ordering sweeping cuts without oversight or authorization from Congress.USAid, the government foreign assistance agency, has been shuttered on his authority and its workforce put on leave, although a judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift the funding freeze it has imposed on the agency’s humanitarian work.The suit, led by New Mexico’s justice department, alleges that Doge has “unraveled federal agencies, accessed sensitive data, and caused widespread disruption for state and local governments, federal employees, and the American people”.The attorneys general asked the court to order Musk to identify how “any data obtained through unlawful agency access was used” and to destroy any “unauthorised access in his or Doge’s possession”. They called on the court to bar Musk and his team from stopping the disbursement of public funds, cancelling contracts and dismantling agencies.The hearing was due to take place after Musk said the US needed to “delete entire agencies” to eliminate waste.A separate hearing in a court in New York was due over whether to extend a temporary block on the Doge team entering the payments system that was imposed in an interim ruling last Saturday by Judge Paul Englemayer. Musk called for Englemayer’s impeachment after that ruling, while JD Vance, the vice-president, wrote in a social media most that judges were not allowed to interfere with a president’s “legitimate power” – a view contested by most constitutional law experts.Swingeing cuts continued apace despite the plethora of legal challenges. Federal agency heads were ordered to fire most recent hires who have not completed their probation period – a move likely to affect about 200,000 workers, the Washington Post reported.The treasury department audit coincided with a call from Chris Murphy, Democratic senator for Connecticut, for an official investigation into the “legality and scope” of Musk’s penetration of the federal bureaucracy.“Musk and his aides are subject to various conflict of interest statutes which prohibit federal employees from participating in matters that impact their own financial interests,” Murphy wrote to the US government comptroller general, Eugene Dodaro.He added: “It is imperative the public understands whether Musk and his aides have complied with the law and whether highly sensitive data could be at risk if accessed by private actors who seek to benefit from the information illegally, or worse, by foreign adversaries who wish to attack this country.”Despite the rising resistance to its activities, the US armed services were preparing a list of weapons systems to be cut in preparation for Doge casting its gaze over the Pentagon, the Wall Street Journal reported.Members of Musk’s team were expected to visit the Pentagon on Friday. “People are offering up things sacrificially, hoping that will prevent more cuts,” a defence official told the Journal.The army was said to be volunteering cutting outdated drones and vehicles, while the navy is proposing cuts to frigates and littoral combat ships. More

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      ‘I became collateral damage’: the trans pilot falsely targeted over Washington DC crash

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      Jo Ellis is alive.It was a non-controversial, irrefutable fact – until she was accused of piloting the military helicopter that collided with a commercial airplane in Washington DC on 29 January, killing all involved.After the crash, before valid explanations began to surface, Donald Trump blamed diversity. There is no evidence that diversity initiatives played any role in the crash, but that didn’t matter.Ellis, 34, wasn’t involved in the crash in any way. But she is a Black Hawk pilot in the Virginia national guard. And she’s transgender.In the immediate aftermath of the crash, two of the helicopter pilots killed were named, but the family of the third pilot initially elected to keep her name private, though she was later identified. Ellis was misidentified as the pilot in the in-between.On Friday morning, Ellis got a text from a close friend at about 4.30am telling her a random account was commenting on all of his public Facebook posts asking if he was friends with Ellis, “the one that killed those people in the crash”. She thought it was maybe a bot and discounted it.Ellis, who has been in the Virginia national guard since 2009 and has deployed to Iraq and Kuwait, had written for the news website Smerconish.com about being trans in the military on 28 January and then spoken to the commentator Michael Smerconish for an interview. She thought the attention was because of her article.In the article, she wrote that she grew up in a religious and conservative home with a history of military service, but that she knew she had gender dysphoria since she was five years old. She tried to be “more religious, more successful, more manly” in hopes it would “cure” her.“I got married, bought a house, helped raise a stepdaughter, played drums in the church band, and adopted a dog,” she wrote. “All the things I believed a good man should do. And I really wanted to do those things, but I also secretly hoped it would fix me. It didn’t work.”She realized during the pandemic that she was at a point where she could begin to address her gender dysphoria. She notified her command in 2023 that she would begin transitioning and came out to her unit in 2024 and got “overwhelming support”, she wrote. She paid for all of her trans-related care out of pocket.Ellis said she believed she was targeted because she’s a trans woman.“Once I put that article out, I became collateral damage, just like so many other trans people that are being unnecessarily targeted.”Later, on the Friday morning after the crash, another friend sent her screenshots of an article on a Pakistani website that included Ellis’s photo and claimed she was the third pilot. (This article, which says Ellis was “rumored to be” the unnamed pilot, is still uncorrected.)“Then the Daily Mail called my personal cellphone and asked if I was alive,” Ellis said. “And that’s when it kind of sunk in. And I was like, oh, this is big. This is not some corner of the internet saying something ridiculous.”She discovered that her name was trending on X, with some posts getting hundreds of thousands of views. “Why is this only on Twitter?” rightwing commentator Ann Coulter wrote on X, sharing a post about Ellis being the pilot. One account said the crash could be “another trans terror attack”.People opined that she hated Trump and was motivated by that hatred to act, killing herself and dozens of others to make a point. Trump issued an executive order banning trans people from joining or serving openly in the military, though it did not immediately kick trans people out. A group of trans military members have sued over the order.Ellis says she’s a political moderate and has voted red more than blue. “I didn’t say anything negative about Trump. I just said I want to keep serving.”Ellis posted on Facebook on Friday morning to try to quash the rumors, asking people to report any posts naming her as the pilot. But she soon realized that wouldn’t suffice, so she made a video. Proof of life.“Interesting morning,” she starts in the video. “It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda. They don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve this. And I hope that you all know that I am alive and well, and this should be sufficient for you all to end all the rumors.”She went quiet from there, packed some bags, and left her home for the night after arranging armed security and arming herself. She worried someone might use public records to find her home and try to hurt her family.The response to her video was overwhelmingly, though not uniformly, positive. Some people messaged her to say said she should have been on the helicopter instead, or that it’s nice she was alive but she shouldn’t be in the military because she’s mentally ill. Others shared anti-trans and antisemitic (she had said in the Smerconish interview that she was exploring the faith) comments on social media.But she said the video ultimately worked, due in large part to the misinformation being easy to debunk. “All I had to do was say I’m alive, and that kind of broke the whole rumor,” she said.She watched as people started correcting the rumor. She saw some veteran, pro-Trump accounts telling others they shouldn’t be going after a member of the military like this. Two days after the rumors reached a fever pitch, it appeared, she said, as if the misinformation was stopped in its tracks.She has tried unsuccessfully to report some remaining social media posts that falsely claim she was a pilot. “Calling me a murderer is apparently not a violation of X rules,” she said.She said she was not deterred from speaking out again, though. Her guard supported her throughout the ordeal, and it affirmed she wants to continue serving in the military.“I know not everyone loves me back, and that’s OK, but I want to serve everyone,” she said. “I want to use this incident somehow as a form of good. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I really want to turn this into something that does good for the world.“I don’t want to make it about me,” she added. “I don’t want to be the victim or the martyr. I want to show people that being strong and standing up to this hate, that hopefully something good can come from it.” More

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      ‘Ridiculous blunder’: Trump wades into California’s water wars – and strikes some of his strongest supporters

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      Under orders from Donald Trump, billions of gallons of irrigation water were laid waste in California’s thirsty agricultural hub this month, a move that left water experts shocked and local officials scrambling.The water, stored in two reservoirs operated by the army corps of engineers, is a vital source for many farms and ranches in the state’s sprawling and productive San Joaquin valley during the driest times of the year. It will be especially important in the coming months as the region braces for another brutally hot summer with sparse supplies.The reservoirs are also among the few the US president can control directly.Staged to give weight to Trump’s widely debunked claims that flows could have helped Los Angeles during last month’s devastating firestorm and to show that he holds some power over California’s water, he ordered the army corps to flood the channels. Less than an hour of notice was reportedly given to water authorities down-river who rushed to prepare for the unexpected release, which threatened to inundate nearby communities.The move is just the latest in a series of misinformed attempts Trump has made to wade into California’s water wars, adding new challenges and conflicts over the state’s essential and increasingly scarce water resources. But in what now appears to be just a political stunt, Trump has struck some of his strongest supporters. Many counties across California’s rural Central valley – home to much of its roughly $59bn agricultural industry – backed Trump in the last election, forming a red strip at the heart of the blue state.“It is almost mind-boggling that this has happened,” said Thomas Holyoke, a professor of political science and water expert at California State University, Fresno, calling the act a “ridiculous blunder”.Experts, who were left scratching their heads in the aftermath, have found no justification for the order. The reservoirs were not at risk of overflowing and irrigation is not necessary during the wetter winter months. These releases also did not support threatened ecosystems such as those in the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, where contentious debates continue about flows and diversions.Some have suggested the flows will help bolster groundwater stores, “but a lot of that water will end up evaporating,” said Holyoke. “It’s just going to be water lost – and they know it.”‘Purely a stunt’Governed by agreements between an array of stakeholders and close coordination between federal and local officials, releases from these reservoirs are typically well-planned. Lake Kaweah and Lake Success, the two reservoirs in Tulare county, are part of a sprawling network of channels that do not flow to the ocean or connect to the aqueduct serving the southern part of the state.The water held within them is also largely spoken for. Its distribution isn’t often contentious.But Trump, it seems, saw it differently.“Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory!” he said in a post on Truth Social the day the release was ordered, boasting that he opened a flow for 5.2bn gallons of water alongside a photo of a nondescript waterway.Acting quickly, local authorities were able to convince federal officials to bring that total down to 2bn, which was released over three days.View image in fullscreenBut Trump’s rhetoric around the issue hasn’t shifted. He has made several false statements about water in California and his ability to direct it including claims that he sent the US military to turn on the water in the aftermath of the deadly fires, his clear misunderstanding about where water supplies originate from and distribute to, and his allusion to a simple valve that can be turned to control water supply.He posted again thanking the army corps of engineers “for their LOVE of our Country, and SPEED in getting this Emergency DONE! [sic]” saying that water was “heading to farmers throughout the State, and to Los Angeles”, even as experts repeatedly debunked this claim.“Those releases had absolutely zero to do with anything to do in Los Angeles,” said Gregory Pierce, a water policy expert and the director of the UCLA Water Resources Group, adding that this also did not benefit anyone in the central valley. “This was a stunt purely so Trump could say that he did something and released the water.”Few have been willing to admonish the administration for the move. Support for Trump and hopes that he will aid agriculture with its water woes is still strong in this region.“I have a conservative mindset. I encourage the trigger-pulling attitude, like: ‘Hey, let’s just get stuff done,’” Zack Stuller, a farmer and president of the Tulare county farm bureau told Politico, admitting that the reservoir release was a little nerve-wracking.The bureau declined to comment to the Guardian, but sent a combined statement from the four water management associations and districts, which attempted to make sense of the puzzling and dangerous release. In it, they said there would be “continued close coordination with the Administration and the Army Corp of Engineers”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome locals who said they were deeply concerned about the act and its outcome said they were afraid to speak out because their businesses might be targeted by supporters of the administration.While Trump continues to frame the action as evidence that he has taken power over California water, he isn’t able to control much water policy in the state, according to Pierce.“The federal government of course matters for water in California, but not that much,” he said, adding that’s why Trump ordered releases where he was able to, even if they weren’t connected to the overall problem he was claiming to address. The federal government does play a role in funding big projects but “California’s been left on an island with respect to federal support for quite some time,” he said.Trump has tried to exert more control through funding, especially now that the state is depending on the federal government for aid in the aftermath of the Los Angeles wildfires, now considered one of the most costly natural disasters in history with damage estimates climbing above $250bn.View image in fullscreenTrump has cast California’s governor Gavin Newsom as his opponent on the issue, but when it comes to water, and more specifically boosting supplies of it for cities and agriculture, the two might already be on the same page.The state recently issued a fact-check on Trump’s claims, which criticized him for spreading misinformation, but highlighted how supplies have increased since Trump’s first term.Environmental advocates have long criticized the Delta Conveyance, a controversial infrastructure project championed by Newsom that would reroute more water to the south, which could get even more momentum under a Trump presidency.“The governor is actually aligned with Trump on this and I think Trump has only recently figured that out,” Pierce said. “The cards are certainly stacking up that that’s going to be pushed forward.”That doesn’t mean that Trump’s misleading rhetoric won’t leave a mess.“President Trump comes blundering into this complex situation with no understanding at all or no effort at understanding how it works,” said Holyoke.“California is trying to strike a delicate balance,” he added, detailing the challenging and layered issues that come with distributing essential resources to residents, the agricultural industry, and declining ecosystems as the world warms and supplies run short.“Farmers in the valley are hurting from water cutbacks, there is no question about that,” Holyoke said. “The answer isn’t to toss all the laws and court orders aside and throw lots of water at farmers. We simply need to find inventive ways to make the best use of the water that we have.” More

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      US military will no longer accept trans troops, Pete Hegseth’s memo says

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      The US military will no longer allow transgender individuals to join the armed forces and will stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members, according to a memo from defense secretary Pete Hegseth filed in court Monday.Hegseth’s memo comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that took aim at transgender troops in a personal way. The president’s order had said that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member”.To that end, the memo from Hegseth on Monday – filed with the US district court in Washington DC – said: “Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused.“All unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for service members are paused.”Hegseth’s memo added, “The department must ensure it is building ‘one force’ without subgroups defined by anything other than ability or mission adherence. Efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated.”The memo from Hegseth cited Trump’s executive order, stating: “As the president clearly stated … ‘expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service’.”Hegseth said individuals with gender dysphoria who are already in the military would be “treated with dignity and respect”, and the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness would provide additional details on what this would mean.The military has about 1.3 million active-duty personnel, according to US department of defense data. While transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members, officials say the number is in the low thousands.A poll from Gallup published on Monday said 58% of Americans favored allowing openly transgender individuals serving in the military – but the support had declined from 71% in 2019.A US federal judge recently asked lawyers for Trump’s second presidential administration to ensure that six military members who sued to stop the executive order targeting transgender troops are not removed from service before further court proceedings are held.Civil rights organizations had filed for a temporary restraining order after a service member alleged that she was told she must either be classified as a man or be separated from the military.Miriam Perelson, a 28-year-old female transgender service member based at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, had said she was required to leave the sleeping area for female troops. She was given a cot in an empty classroom and not allowed to use the female restrooms.On Thursday, Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign filed a lawsuit on behalf of three senior Naval officers against the Trump administration over his executive order to ban transgender people from the military.In the lawsuit, two of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy groups wrote: “Transgender service members take the same oath as every other service member to serve our nation and place themselves in harm’s way – potentially paying the ultimate price – in service of our country. And to be clear, our country needs ready, able, and willing service members to stand up and protect our freedoms.”It added: “But the 2025 military ban turns them away and kicks them out for no legitimate reason. Rather, it baselessly declares all transgender people unfit to serve, insults and demeans them, and cruelly describes every one of them as incapable of ‘an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life’, based solely because they are transgender. These assertions are, of course, false.” More

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      Trump hints Musk ‘Doge’ team has free rein with Pentagon next in line for cuts

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      Donald Trump has indicated that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is operating without guardrails after it gained access to Americans’ private information “very easily” and as it prepares to assail the Pentagon.The US president was speaking at a White House press conference alongside Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister of Japan, but most of the questions focused on Musk’s sweeping mission to root out waste in the federal government, which has caused disarray in Washington.Trump suggested that he has given the tech billionaire free rein and appeared blase about the details. Asked why Doge needs access to treasury payment systems including Americans’ social security numbers, home addresses and bank accounts, he replied: “Well, it doesn’t, but they get it very easily. We don’t have very good security in our country.”The president claimed that he was “very proud” of Musk’s team of young and “very smart” software engineers. He said: “They’re doing it at my insistence. It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption and we’ve found tremendous corruption.”Doge has so far produced no evidence of corruption at USAid, which it shuttered without seeking the required authority from Congress, or other agencies. Its fast and furious assault on the government has resulted in a flurry of lawsuits and street protests.Pressed on whether there was anything he has told Musk he cannot touch, Trump offered only a vague reply. “Well, we haven’t discussed that much,” he confessed. “I’ll tell them to go here, go there. He does it. He’s got a very capable group of people. Very, very, very, very capable.“They know what they’re doing. They’ll ask questions, and they’ll see immediately as somebody gets tongue-tied that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing. We have very smart people going.”Trump confirmed that he had asked Musk – the world’s richest man – to review spending in the sprawling defence department, which has a proposed budget for 2025 of $850bn. “I’ve instructed him to go check out education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad.”But he added pointedly: “Social security will not be touched. It will only be strengthened … we have illegal immigrants on social security and we’re going to find out who they are and take them off.”Democrats in Congress are seeking a treasury department investigation of the access that Musk’s team was given to the government’s payment system, citing “threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data”.Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden wrote in a letter to inspectors general: “Given the threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data posed by Mr Musk and his team’s reported access to critical federal payment systems … we request that you use your authorities to investigate this matter further.”On Friday, Trump also said Doge should rehire a staff member who resigned after being linked by a newspaper report to an openly racist social media account.First JD Vance, the vice-president, said Marko Elez, 25, should be brought back and blamed “journalists who try to destroy people”. Asked whether he endorsed Vance’s view, Trump told reporters he was not aware of the specific case but “I’m with the vice-president”.Soon after Musk, who had polled his X followers on the question, posted: “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs or the federal workforce, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More