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      Newsom to sue Trump over California national guard deployment to Oregon

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      California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, announced on Sunday that he is suing Donald Trump over the alleged deployment of 300 California national guard personnel to Oregon.“They are on their way there now,” Newsom said in a press statement. “The Trump Administration is unapologetically attacking the rule of law itself and putting into action their dangerous words – ignoring court orders and treating judges, even those appointed by the President himself, as political opponents.”Newsom’s proposed lawsuit follows a federal judge’s ruling that blocked the Trump administration from deploying the Oregon national guard to Portland. US district judge Karin Immergut agreed with arguments it would inflame rather than calm tensions in the city.Immergut said in her ruling, which delays sending the guard until at least 18 October, that there was a lack of evidence that the recent protests in Portland justified the move.Caroline Turco, Portland’s senior deputy attorney, said that there had been no violence against Ice officers for months and that recent Ice protests were “sedate” in the week before the president declared the city to be a war zone, sometimes featuring fewer than a dozen protesters.“This isn’t about public safety, it’s about power,” Newsom said. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the President of the United States.”In a statement on X, Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield said the state is “quickly assessing our options and preparing to take legal action.“The President is obviously hellbent on deploying the military in American cities, absent facts or authority to do so,” he wrote. “It is up to us and the courts to hold him accountable. That’s what we intend to do.”The California national guard referred questions to the defense department. A department spokesperson declined to comment.“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement. For once, Gavin Newscum should stand on the side of law-abiding citizens instead of violent criminals destroying Portland and cities across the country,” read a response from the White House deputy press secretary, Abigail Jackson.The news from Oregon came just a day after Trump authorized the deployment of national guard troops to Chicago, the latest in a string of similar interventions across several US states.Trump had first announced the plan on 27 September, saying he was “authorizing full force, if necessary” despite pleas from Oregon officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who said there had been a single, uneventful protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.For years, Trump has amplified the narrative that Portland is a “war-ravaged” city with anarchists engaging in chaos and unlawful behavior.During his first term in 2020, he deployed federal forces to the city amid the protests over the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The protests spread across the US but were especially heightened in Portland. Despite protests against Ice being relatively small in the state this year, Trump has used them as a justification to deploy troops.Speaking on X about the latest move from Trump, Newsom said: “It’s appalling. It’s un-American, and it must be stopped.” More

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      Why Trump’s speech to US military top brass was such a disaster | Sidney Blumenthal

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      No dictator or would-be dictator on day one has ever assembled before him in one room the entire senior officer corps of his armed forces in order to have them belittled as failures and humiliated for their slovenly personal appearance, while degrading whole classes serving in the army, navy and air force degraded as inferior and unworthy. No dictator has ever pleaded for generals and admirals to applaud his remarks, followed by deafening silence.Donald Trump is used to entering to the din of a mob jazzed up with YMCA. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” Trump said when he addressed the country’s highest-ranking military leaders at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday. “Don’t laugh. Don’t know if you’re allowed to do that.” He was trying to force some tittering, an old lounge act gag to rouse a dead audience. “You know what? Just have a good time.” The comedian who felt his routine was bombing before he even began sought to relax the room. Then Trump instinctively replaced the ingratiating gestures with threats. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.”Trump’s syllogism perfectly encapsulated his psychology of victimhood and politics of retribution. If you do not bend the knee to him, he is personally wounded. Your failure to worship him must be punished. Your slight of his majesty condemns you to ruin.Trump cannot grasp that the silence of the commanders during his unprecedented address to them demonstrated their highest duty. Their discipline showed fidelity to uphold their oath to the constitution. By their stillness they presented themselves as models for the rest of the officer corps and the troops. They are not loyal to Trump or any cult of personality, but to his constitutional role. They were being used as a backdrop for a campaign-like rally, but they were resistant to serving as partisan players.Trump’s inability to understand their stolidity in the face of his provocations showed his incomprehension not only of the military but the presidency under the law. When he took offense at their stoney silence his rebuke disclosed that he saw them merely as his pawns. They were to his mind no different from his personal attorneys he had installed at the Department of Justice to do his bidding, including the suppression of the Epstein files.Trump had come on an urgent mission for them to carry out. He was there to tell the military chiefs they were to be his unquestioning agents for the greatest reversal of military strategy since the “war on terror” –a new war to be waged against his perceived political opponents at home in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the domestic deployment of the US military as a police force.All the senior generals in all the world had been gathered for the unprecedented event at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on the order of secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. They had no inkling for what momentous occasion they were being summoned. They dared not speculate that Hegseth brought them to be his captive audience for his self-referential vanity Ted talk attempting to rehabilitate his image and assert his authority. That would have seemed too stupid for words.But the commanders could have gotten more than a hint that they were being rounded up for the latest episode of It Can’t Happen Here, by reading Trump’s executive order of 22 September, Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization, an “organization” that does not exist. This was followed by a National Security Presidential Memorandum No 7 on 25 September citing the murder of Charlie Kirk and a series of disparate events as pretexts: “This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns … ”According to NSPM-7, a new “national strategy” would be implemented against an ideology of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” Jimmy Kimmel was not mentioned.These vapors were not a description of an ideology so much as a hodgepodge of Maga shibboleths. If there were any ideology expressed it was an inchoate fascism based on a repressive impulse that conjured up an all-purpose enemy called “Antifa”. Any sense of irony, of course, was completely missing. In fact, January 6 was the last attempt to overthrow the US government, incited by Donald Trump. The leadership of Trump as a paragon of “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” defies satire and only underscores the recurrent demand for the release of the Epstein files.The theatrical presentation at Quantico began with Hegseth darting back and forth on the stage. He was a motivational speaker as a drill sergeant with a book to hawk – and a warm-up act for the headliner. Observing him was like seeing the negative of a photograph. The darkest parts were reflections of his own grievances at the criticism and censure provoked by his past behavior.The former national guard major said he had been been “deemed an extremist”; he was flagged as a possible “insider threat” by fellow officers. (Hegseth has denied that he is an extremist). Despite numerous accounts of his alcoholism, he told Megyn Kelly in an interview: “I never had a drinking problem,” but then reportedly promised a senator that he would “not touch alcohol while I have this position”. Hegseth was accused of sexual assault in 2017, and settled a lawsuit brought by the woman who had accused him. (The settlement terms were confidential. Hegseth has said the allegations were false).As a Fox News host, Hegseth had been a prominent advocate for pardoning or granting clemency to service members accused or convicted of war crimes. Hegseth described them as “warriors” rather than “war criminals”. “If he committed premeditated murder, then I did as well … Put us all in jail,” he said about one of them. Hegseth voiced support for members of his own unit in Iraq killing three unarmed detainees who were told to run and then shot. Once Hegseth was confirmed, he purged the top-rank judge advocate general. He’s pushing a plan to send many of the rest to work in immigration courts.Hegseth said that the military should not “fight with stupid rules of engagement”, his long-time complaint against rules designed to protect civilians and enforce military law against war crimes.Now, in his speech, Hegseth declared he was clearing away “the debris”. He encouraged loosening regulations aimed at preventing forbidden violence within the armed forces. He announced the “overhauling” of the inspector general and whistleblower complaint process, which would undermine legal protections and shield violent or reckless offenders from accountability. He would, he said, impose discriminatory measures of “gender-neutral” or “male level” physical standards for combat roles, stating: “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.” (In 2023, more than 17% of the military force was composed of women, with thousands in combat roles.)Hegseth swaggered in front of the commanders, barking obscenities – “Fafo”, or Fuck Around and Find Out. “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit.”The generals sat expressionless at his vulgarity that could be charged under the Uniform Military Code of Justice as a violation against indecent language that “neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline”.According to Pete, it was the flabby generals who needed to work out like Pete. “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look,” he said. “No more beardos.” That means you, Gen Grant.Hegseth, at last, was seemingly getting his revenge for being tagged as an “insider threat”. He shouted: “No more side-tracking careers, no more walking on eggshells.” He accused the brass of harming the military by evaluating the mental stability of officers: “We’ve weeded out so-called toxic leaders under the guise of double-blind psychology assessments, promoting risk-averse, go-along-to-get-along conformists instead.” Then he plugged his book: “You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.” The title of his book was The War on Warriors.Not once did Hegseth mention “Russia” or “Ukraine”. He made not the slightest reference to Russia’s huge missile attacks bombarding Ukraine, Russia’s drones over Romania, Estonia and Denmark, the tensions over US wavering within the western alliance, or utter anything that might be construed as a strategic thought.After his menacing speech, Hegseth made way for Donald Trump. Trump displayed his usual contempt for the military by baiting them with an array of partisan barbs to which they remained rigidly motionless. He slipped into a whirlpool of self-celebration followed by anxiety. There were bits about the “Gulf of America”, calling Joe “the autopen” and watching the 1950s TV series Victory At Sea, before Trump came to his worry of falling down stairs. “Every day, the guy is falling downstairs,” Trump said about Biden. “We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs,like, I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very – I walk very slowly.” He could not contain his envy of Barack Obama. “So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great. I don’t want to do it.”In the middle of his stream of consciousness, he dropped his new mission for the military against the “enemy from within”, with major American cities as the “training grounds … the ones that are run by the radical-left Democrats … And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.” Silence.The next day, 1 October, in Memphis, Hegseth appeared as a member of a posse with attorney general Pam Bondi and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to speak before a rally of Ice agents and federal marshals in anticipation of the arrival of a contingent of national guard troops. Miller delivered his imitation of Patton. “The gangbangers that you deal with – they think they’re ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they’re tough? They have no idea how tough we are. They think they’re hardcore? We are so much more hardcore than they are.” Miller, not any mere general, gave the order. “You are unleashed.”You could tell Stephen Miller embodied the new “warrior ethos”. No beard. Shaved head, too. And lawless.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Nature, books and naked bike rides: Portlanders push back on Trump claims that city is ‘like living in hell’

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      In Portland, Oregon, a city Donald Trump claims to have seen “burning down to the ground” on his television, residents are pushing back on the US president’s false depiction of their tranquil city as a war zone.Trump, who refuses to accept firsthand accounts from Oregon’s governor and the Portland mayor that the widespread unrest he thinks he’s seen on television is not actually happening, has ordered the military in to the Pacific north-west city.Portland police made three arrests on Thursday night after fistfights broke out between demonstrators and a pro-Trump influencer from Washington DC at an Ice field office, and 200 national guard troops are expected to arrive in the coming days. But a visit to the Ice field on Thursday afternoon showed that, far from being “under siege” by militants, there were fewer than 10 protesters on the sidewalk, nearly outnumbered by journalists.Now residents, frustrated with the president’s false claims that Portland is “war ravaged”, are showing a different side of their city from the one depicted by Trump and Fox News.A raft of Instagram and TikTok videos from Portlanders are poking holes in Trump’s claim that life in their city is “like living in hell”, showcasing verdant hiking trails, trees in rich fall colors and a thriving food scene. Plans are also being drawn up for the most Portland of all possible responses: an Emergency Naked Bike Ride against “the militarization of our city”.View image in fullscreenOn a rainy Thursday in the city, the kitchen at Kann, Portland’s award-winning Haitian restaurant, was busy preparing for dinner. Jokes about Trump’s war were shared at Coava, a cafe with a single-origin coffee menu that changes seasonally which is popular with Japanese tourists. Business was brisk at Powell’s Books, the downtown icon which inspired the new protest slogan: “Portland isn’t a war zone; it’s a bookstore with a city around it.”The parking lot was full at Providore Fine Foods, a culinary marketplace whose owner, Kaie Wellman, said she was concerned about how Trump’s “threats against our city” could be “devastating for local businesses” like hers, which worked so hard to survive the pandemic only to be hit first by Trump’s tariffs and now his “100% false” portrayal of a minor protest at the Ice field office in the city’s south waterfront district. “It’s really profoundly upsetting,” she said.Wellman, a fifth-generation Oregonian, is opening a bistro this month in the Portland Art Museum’s new Mark Rothko Pavilion, a $110m expansion that has taken a decade to complete. “It really is such a cornerstone for our community, for downtown Portland, to have such a significant new building,” she said. She describes her leap of faith in opening a new restaurant just blocks from where the 2020 protests for racial justice took place as “a love letter to Portland and what a vibrant community we are.“One of the main reasons that we’re opening up this cafe downtown, and do what we do here in town, is because of our deep love for the state and for the city. And to see it portrayed anything less than what it is, you know, is just so frustrating. It’s a place that people want to come and live and raise their families. And it’s kind of unmatched in beauty,” Wellman said.View image in fullscreen“Yes, we’ve had issues here, but we’ve had the same issues that basically every other city around this world has had. And we’re coming at these issues from a thoughtful place and not trying to sweep them away. But the issue that’s being portrayed right now does not exist in this town.”Asked about Trump’s claims of lawlessness, Wellman said it was “not the case at all”. “And I am in the south waterfront at least two to three times a week because my 92-year-old mother lives in the south waterfront,” she added. “So I can tell you firsthand what’s been happening down there. And what I have seen, at the quote-unquote very worst, it’s still been peaceful protests. Maybe there’s been some strong words thrown around.”“I would say right now, if there is any disturbance that’s been going on, it’s Black Hawk helicopters that are circling around a neighborhood that is filled with many retirees and older people … causing all of them fear and a lack of sleep,” she added.View image in fullscreenBack at the Ice field office protest, Amanda Cochran, a US army veteran, was holding a homemade sign that read “Vets Against Militarization” on one side, and “Immigrants Are Not the Enemy’ on the other. She wore a tour shirt for the Canadian rock band Three Days Grace with the lyrics “Let’s start a riot.”“I’m here because I’m really fed up with the fact that Trump is talking about using the military to go into cities and to train the forces,” she said.“I served in the US army for six years and this is my first time ever protesting,” she said. “I just felt really strongly that if we don’t stand up and say something then this could easily become a militarized country and the citizens will be under the control of the military, and I don’t think that that is OK, and that’s not what I fought for.“Us veterans, we have the privilege of being able to express our opinions because we’re out, and hopefully we can kind of give those soldiers that don’t want to be there a voice. If enough of us show up, maybe Trump will back off,” she added.Across the street, the Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who has been reporting from inside the facility, prepared for a live hit out front, accompanied by three men with covered faces who appeared to be private security guards.Just to their left, a young protest organizer, Jack Dickinson, who achieved a measure of viral fame this week for the chicken costume he wears to mock Trump, was being interviewed for the local news.Why a chicken? One of the advantages of the costume, Dickinson explained, is that “it disarms people.“We’re dealing with a real influx of rightwing agitators right now,” he continued. “It becomes difficult for them to interact in certain ways, I think, when there’s the chicken suit, but not just the chicken suit, it’s then somebody who tries to have a conversation with them about the soybean situation that we’re facing right now,” referring to the collapse in crop prices for US farmers due to Trump’s trade war with China.View image in fullscreen“We do not want this to escalate,” he said, agreeing with local officials who suggest that Trump wants to provoke a response from the protesters.“There is definitely a desire for a response. We saw this most clearly on Sunday night because for that protest, we had 30 people that were down here associated with rightwing Twitter accounts or rightwing YouTube channels,” Dickinson said. “There is a clear desire to get somebody reacting in a way that they can frame as a justification for what they are doing. And Portland just isn’t giving them what they want.” More

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      When will US generals stand-up to Trump? | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      At what point will the US’s top military brass decide that enough is enough, that loyalty to the constitution and the rule of law supersedes blind fealty to job and Donald Trump?The question is hardly academic. The president has been rapidly intensifying military operations on United States soil during his second term. In April, he began expanding the military presence along parts of the US’s southern border by establishing so-called “national defense areas”. Troops are now authorized to search, question and detain people in those zones, dangerously muddling the line between military rule and civilian law enforcement.By the summer, Trump sent in the marines and the national guard to Los Angeles, against the wishes of the governor, and later to Washington DC. Similar deployments of the national guard, also against the wishes of the respective state governors, are expected for Chicago and Portland, Oregon.Needless to say, US law, under the Posse Comitatus Act, generally prohibits the use of the military in civilian law enforcement roles. A federal judge ruled in September that Trump’s troop deployment in Los Angeles violated the act, but Trump is doing it anyway. And he expects the military to follow him.Not just follow him. He expects the military to venerate him. Trump turned a 250th Anniversary Parade for the Army, which we already didn’t need, into his own 79th birthday celebration, which we definitely didn’t need. (Both anniversaries were on the same day. Attendance at the parade was not only sparse, but was dwarfed by the estimated 5 million people who turned out for the “No Kings” demonstrations across the country on the same day.)And most recently, he joined his recently renamed secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, in an abruptly summoned meeting of the country’s military commanders on 30 September. (“I love the name,” Trump said, referring to the Department of War. “I think it’s so great. I think it stops wars.”) At the meeting, Trump told the leadership: “We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.” His evidence was that “Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape,” even though all the cities he listed – San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles – have some of their lowest levels of violent crime in decades. And then he said: “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”Trump and Hegseth are attempting to reshape the US military into a partisan force committed to preserving Trump’s power, a prospect which is not only anathema to our tradition but should also worry all Americans. And they want to make this restructuring into a spectacle. Everything Hegseth said at this highly publicized and very expensive meeting could have been issued by memorandum, and in fact was. But Hegseth in particular needs a rebrand. He is, at this point, much less known for leading military operations than he is for leaking them. For Hegseth, the very public lecture was a vainglorious attempt at buffing his own tarnished image. Unfortunately for him, it came across more like a condescending Ted talk that had possibly been directed by the ghost of Leni Riefenstahl.But far more significant, and infinitely more troubling, was Trump’s foreshadowing of even greater numbers of troops on our American streets. So, I return to my initial question: when will the nation’s top military brass decide that enough is enough?There’s every reason to believe that high ranking members of the military might already be worried about getting sacked by this president, either for being insufficiently loyal to Trump, insufficiently white, or insufficiently male, based on past actions from this administration. Within weeks of assuming office, Trump sacked the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Air Force Gen CQ Brown, only the second Black man to hold the position. Adm Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to be named to chief of naval operations, the US Navy’s highest rank, was also dismissed.Trump also got rid of judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force, and fired Gen Tim Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, reportedly at the request of far-right activist Laura Loomer, who claimed Haugh was insufficiently loyal to the president. There are many more examples.While it’s true that every administration does some house cleaning upon assuming power, it’s also true that the scale and mission to restructure the military during this administration is unprecedented. As Peter Feaver and Heidi Urben write in Foreign Policy: “No previous administration exercised its power in this dramatic fashion for fear that doing so would effectively treat the senior officer corps as akin to partisan political appointees whose professional ethos is to come and go with changes of administration, rather than career public servants whose professional ethos is to serve regardless of changes in political leadership.”Hegseth claimed that he will also now get rid of “stupid rules of engagement”. Those rules, however, define what is lawful and unlawful behavior by the military, a line made more difficult to discern as the administration decimates the legal wing (the judge advocate generals) of the military. Clearly, there has been plenty of illegality in the US military behavior from its inception until today. But if you are a member of the military, you have the right, if not the duty, to refuse illegal orders.The Trump administration is currently engaged in blatantly illegal acts being carried out by the US navy. Lethal strikes are being launched against vessels in the Caribbean that the US claims are drug smuggling boats. No evidence has been provided, and now the administration is claiming the US is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels and the people who were murdered by the US in the strikes are “unlawful combatants”.This is ludicrous, of course, and is reminiscent of the worst legal reasoning developed during the early War on Terror era. Even if the people on those boats were participating in drug smuggling (which is quite unlikely), being involved in the sale of a controlled substance does not rise to the standard of engaging in hostilities, as noted by Geoffrey Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer and formerly the army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues.When a state intentionally kills a person outside of armed conflict and without due process, it’s a form of murder. It’s already happening in the Caribbean Sea. Is that the path we’re headed down on the streets of our own cities? Trump may have drawn up his own battle plans for his purposes, but it’s the members of the military who will have to carry them out. With all our institutions currently on the line, including the military, we need a much stronger defense against his idea of war.

      Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York More

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      Trump signs order promising measures, including military, to defend Qatar

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order vowing to use all measures including US military action to defend the energy-rich nation of Qatar – though it remains unclear just what weight the pledge will carry.The text of the order, available Wednesday on the White House’s website but dated Monday, appears to be another measure by Trump to assure the Qataris following Israel’s surprise attack on the country targeting Hamas leaders as they weighed accepting a ceasefire with Israel over the war in the Gaza Strip.The order cites the two countries’ “close cooperation” and “shared interest”, vowing to “guarantee the security and territorial integrity of the state of Qatar against external attack”.“The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty or critical infrastructure of the state of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States,” the order says.“In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures – including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military – to defend the interests of the United States and of the state of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”The order apparently came during a visit to Washington on Monday by Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump organized a call by Netanyahu to Qatar during the visit in which Netanyahu “expressed his deep regret” over the strike that killed six people, including a member of the Qatari security forces, the White House said.Qatar’s foreign ministry described the US pledge as “an important step in strengthening the two countries’ close defense partnership”. The Qatari-funded Al Jazeera satellite news network declared: “New Trump executive order guarantees Qatar security after Israeli attack.”Trump also spoke on the phone later Wednesday to Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.The White House did not release details about the call, though Qatar later said the two men spoke about Doha’s efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.The true scope of the pledge by the US remains in question. Typically, legally binding agreements, or treaties, need to receive the approval of the US Senate. However, presidents have entered international agreements without the Senate’s approval, as Barack Obama did with Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.Ultimately, any decision to take military action rests with the president. That uncertainty has clouded previous US defense agreements in Trump’s second term, such as Nato’s Article 5 guarantees.Qatar, a peninsular nation in the Persian Gulf, became fantastically wealthy through its natural gas reserves. It has been a key partner of the US military, allowing its Central Command to have its forward operating base at its vast Al Udeid airbase.Joe Biden named Qatar as a major non-Nato ally in 2022, in part due to its help during the US’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. And Qatar has maintained close ties to Trump, from a real estate project with his eponymous Trump Organization to offering him a Boeing 747 to use as Air Force One.In the aftermath of the Israeli attack, Saudi Arabia entered a mutual defense agreement with Pakistan, bringing the kingdom under Islamabad’s nuclear umbrella. It’s unclear whether other Gulf Arab countries, worried about both Israel as well as Iran as it faces reimposed United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program, may seek similar arrangements with the region’s longtime security guarantor.“The Gulf’s centrality in the Middle East and its significance to the United States warrants specific US guarantees beyond President Donald J Trump’s assurances of nonrepetition and dinner meetings,” wrote Bader al-Saif, a history professor at Kuwait University who analyzes Gulf Arab affairs. More

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      What do Trump and Hegseth’s inflammatory speeches to military generals signal? | Moira Donegan

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      Shortly after Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s defense secretary, summoned all the military’s generals to Quantico, Virginia, from their positions around the world in an unusual demand for an in-person assembly, Ben Hodges, a retired general, took to social media to evoke a bit of history. “July 1935,” Hodges said. “German generals were called to a surprise assembly in Berlin and informed that their previous oath to the Weiman constitution was void and that they would be required to swear a personal oath to the Führer. Most generals took the new oath to keep their positions.” Hegseth’s account replied to Hodges post: “Cool story, General”.Yet when the meeting finally happened on Tuesday morning, the army generals and navy admirals were treated to a 45-minute speech by Hegseth, followed by a rambling, hour-long address by Trump, which confirmed at least some of what Hodges seemed to fear. The defense secretary emphasized the army’s appearance, decrying “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon”, and signaled his intent to reshape the military’s culture so as to purge “wokeness” and evoke a more masculine image. “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses,” he said. “No more division, distraction and gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before, and will say again: We are done. With that. Shit.” The military, Hegseth suggested, would become an advertisement for the Trump regime’s preferred cultural style, and this transformation will evidently involve many changes to what the armed forces look like when they are photographed.To this end, Hegseth announced that he would also be eliminating or drastically curtailing the equal opportunity, whistleblower, inspector general and complaint procedures that allow military personnel to report harassment and misconduct. The changes seemed designed to particularly roll back efforts undertaken over the course of the 2010s to reduce sexual assault in the military and end its impunity.“No more frivolous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more smearing reputations,” said Hegseth, who settled a lawsuit brought by a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2020. (The settlement terms are confidential. Hegseth has said the allegations were false). “No more walking on eggshells.” One former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told CNN: “I think what this is, is people are sick and tired of not being able to make inappropriate or sexually explicit jokes at the staff meetings.” Hegseth, it seems, is committed to restoring this treasured freedom.Hegseth similarly declared that he would be changing procedures that have allowed the military to be more diverse – such as eliminating special permissions for soldiers to grow beards, frequently used by Black soldiers, and raising physical fitness standards for specialized, often high-pay and high-status combat roles to what Hegseth seemed to believe is a threshold only men will meet. Hegseth, who has opposed women serving in combat roles, said that candidates for such jobs will be held to the “highest male standard”, which he also said was “gender neutral”. “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it,” Hegseth said. “That is not the intent,” he added, questionably. “But it could be the result.”As for the officers themselves, a group which included several Black men and women of various races, Hegseth seemed to offer what he evidently thought was a flattering assessment of their masculine violence and virility. “You kill people and break things for a living,” Hegseth said to the assembled generals. “You are not politically correct and do not necessarily belong always in polite society.” The speech was repetitive and heavy on moments of self-conscious macho posturing. “To our enemies,” Hegseth said at one point “FAFO” – or, fuck around and find out. The defense secretary paused, seeming to wait for applause, but nobody clapped.Trump, meanwhile, also signaled that he seeks to transform the military into a partisan tool of his regime, repeatedly telling the assembled leaders that they would be tasked with missions targeting Americans. “America is under invasion from within,” the president said. “We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out. It’s war from within.” Trump, who just days ago deployed 200 national guard troops to Portland, Oregon, with orders to use “full force, if necessary” offered that he had instructed Hegseth to use American cities as “training grounds”. At other times, Trump meandered, as he often does, into off-script comments that were difficult to parse. “But they’re not going to stand in our way, ever again,” Trump said. “You’re not going to see four years like we had with Biden and that group of incompetent people that ran that should have never been there. Because we have the United States military, the best, the boldest, the bravest, that the world has ever seen, that the world has ever known.”Trump, like Hegseth, sometimes paused, seeming to expect the generals to clap or laugh. But the laughs were not forthcoming; the military audience was largely silent.There is something pathetic about Hegseth and Trump, who have schemed and failed their way into positions of power and prestige that are comically outsized to their character. It is telling that Hegseth is so preoccupied with making the military into a photogenic spectacle of masculine strength – an anxious fixation on surface and spectacle that only highlights the US’s declining influence abroad.It is telling, too, that Trump can barely string sentences together, appearing distracted, sleepy, and barely coherent as he tells the armed forces to train their guns on his own people. There is no pretext that can sustain the delusion that these are serious people, or that their instructions to the military come from any motive other than their own desire for narcissistic gratification.They do not want to be strong to pursue the nation’s interests; they do not want to be strong to pursue any principles; they certainly do not want to be strong so that they can ensure the safety of the innocent. They want to be strong so that they can look big and important on TV. And for that, they flew the generals in from around the world, at tremendous taxpayer expense, to force them to sit as a captive audience for a pair of speeches that sounded like poor imitations of an action movie monologue.But as Hodges suggested, the ostentatious idiocy of these men does not mean that the generals and admirals assembled will not follow their orders. These military leaders have received the signal that their troops are to become whiter and more male; they have received the instruction that their next missions will involve suppressing domestic dissent. They have a choice between following their orders and keeping their jobs, or following an abstract set of principles, and leaving them. Most of them will choose the former.The US military, for all its wreckage and violence it imposes abroad and for all the cruelty and exploitation of the poor that it inflicts at home, has one consistent virtue: it has always been under quite firm civilian control. Most of the time, that’s a good thing.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Portland residents scoff at Trump threat to send military: ‘This is not a war zone’

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      A visit to downtown Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, hours after Donald Trump falsely declared the city “war ravaged” to justify the deployment of federal troops, made it plain the US president’s impression of the city, apparently shaped by misleading conservative media reports, is entirely divorced from reality.There were just four protesters outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in an outlying residential neighborhood that the president had claimed was “under siege” by antifascists and “other domestic terrorists”. Jack Dickinson, 26, wore a chicken costume draped in an American flag and held a sign that read “Portland Will Outlive Him”. Passing motorists honked in appreciation.Dickinson, who is from Portland and has helped organize the small but persistent protest at that location, which is going on three months, said he was not surprised to see Trump focus his attention on the city. But he called the president’s threat to have soldiers use “full force” against the protesters, whose numbers occasionally swell into the dozens, unwarranted.“There’s no justification, no reason for the national guard or military to be using ‘full force’ on people,” Dickinson said, “but they have this narrative about Portland that’s been helped by selectively edited videos to set themselves up for a crackdown.”The Ice field office, which the city of Portland recently accused the agency of illegally using for detentions, is also attractive to protesters because it sits directly next to a Tesla dealership. Another protester held up a sign that read “Tesla Funds Fascism/Stop Buying Teslas”.A third protester, a young man who goes by the nickname Burrito, said that he was “protesting them wrongfully kidnapping random individuals based on their skin color”.He also rejected the president’s characterization of the city and of the anti-Ice protesters. “This is not a war zone and it’s disgusting the way that he talks about us,” he said.The activist said that the point of the protests was to frustrate and wear out the federal agents, who, he said, have been responsible for any violence that has taken place: “As the day progresses, we get more numbers, they start to show more force and our people come out. It’s just a matter of how they escalate things, because they are the escalators, not like the one that Trump took that doesn’t work.”The number of protesters was vastly smaller than the number of people in nearby coffee shops and restaurants, where Portlanders went about their usual weekend business, joking about life during wartime.The city’s downtown blocks, which were the scene of mass protests in 2020, first against racist policing and then against Trump’s deployment of federal agents to guard a courthouse, were similarly placid.View image in fullscreenThe only person on the sidewalk outside the federal courthouse was a street sweeper, wearing a neon-green vest with the words “Clean & Safe” on the back. The fence that surrounded the building five years ago had long since been removed, as had the plywood boards that covered the windows of the adjacent police headquarters, where thousands of racial justice protesters rallied after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.There was also no sign of activity at the nearby Edith Green federal building, with its distinctive facade clad in vegetated screens, one day after a local TV reporter recorded the arrival of a convoy that included masked federal agents in an armored homeland security truck.By contrast, the nearby Portland farmers’ market was packed with residents and tourists buying produce and eating acaí bowls from a thriving local business started by a yoga and meditation teacher.On social media, Portlanders continued to mock Trump’s false claims about the city as they have for weeks, by posting images of themselves enjoying life in the city with audio of the president saying, earlier this month, that it is “like living in Hell”. More

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      Donald Trump says he is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon

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      Donald Trump said on Saturday he is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary”, ignoring pleas from local officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who suggested that the president was misinformed or lying about the nature and scale of a single, small protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.Trump made the announcement on social media, using references to antifascists and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). He claimed that the deployment was necessary “to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists”.Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, rejected the president’s characterization. “There is no national security threat in Portland. Our communities are safe and calm,” she wrote on social media. “My office is reaching out to the White House and Homeland Security for more information. We have been provided no information on the reason or purpose of any military mission.”A visit by the Guardian to downtown Portland on Saturday morning confirmed that the city is placid, the farmers’ market was packed and the protest against immigration enforcement in an outlying residential neighborhood remained small. There were just four protesters on the sidewalk near the Ice field office Trump claimed was “under siege”. One, wearing a chicken costume and draped in an American flag, held up a sign that read: “Portland Will Outlive Him.” Passing motorists honked in appreciation.The White House did not provide details in connection with Trump’s announcement, including a timeline for the deployment or what troops would be involved.Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said at a hastily assembled news conference on Friday night that the city had become aware of “a sudden influx of federal agents in our city. We did not ask for them to come. They are here without clear precedent or purpose.”“The President has sent agents here to create chaos and riots in Portland, to induce a reaction, to induce protests, to induce conflicts. His goal is to make Portland look like what he’s been describing it as,” Oregon’s junior senator, Jeff Merkley said. “He wants to induce a violent exchange. Let us not grant him that wish. Let us be the force of orderly, peaceful protest.”The senator also drew attention to video evidence from the local newspaper, the Oregonian, which showed federal agents using force against a small number of protesters outside the Ice facility, who remained peaceful.Although a spokesperson for the Oregon national guard told the Oregonian that no official request for troops had been made yet, convoys of dozens of federal agents, in marked and unmarked SUVs, were seen on Friday entering a federal building downtown and an Ice field office in a residential neighborhood that has been the scene of regular protests by dozens of protesters.“The President of the United States is directing his self-proclaimed ‘Secretary of War’ to unleash militarized federal forces in an American city he disagrees with,” Representative Maxine Dexter wrote in a social media statement on Saturday, referring in part to the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth. “This is an egregious abuse of power and a betrayal of our most basic American values. Authoritarians rely on fear to divide us. Portland will not give them that.”Both of Oregon’s US senators and three of its House representatives had in recent days strongly rejected Trump’s claims about mass anarchy in the city as a fiction intended to justify the unnecessary deployment of federal troops as part of an “authoritarian” crackdown.Ron Wyden, the state’s senior Democratic senator, told reporters on Friday: “It’s important to recognize that the president’s argument is a fable – it does not resemble the truth.”“If he watches a TV show in the morning and he see Portland mentioned, he says it’s a terrible place,” Wyden added.During an Oval Office event on Thursday to announce that the administration intends to investigate and disrupt what it claims is “organized political violence” funded by leftwing groups, Trump made several wild claims about Portland, which was a center of racial justice protests in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. But life has long since returned to normal, and barriers around the federal courthouse and police headquarters downtown have been removed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe president, however, apparently deceived by video of a handful of protesters gathered outside the Ice facility in a south-west Portland neighborhood broadcast by conservative outlets, insisted that the city has been in non-stop “anarchy” since 2020 and is barely livable.“Portland is, I don’t know how anybody lives there, it’s amazing. But it’s anarchy out there,” Trump said. The president then claimed, falsely, that most of the city’s retail stores had closed, due to arson attacks, and “the few shops that are open” were covered in plywood.Describing the small number of protesters who have gathered outside an Ice facility that has been illegally used for detentions in a residential neighborhood, Trump claimed, without evidence: “These are professional agitators, these are bad people and they’re paid a lot of money by rich people.“But we’re going to get out there and we’re gonna do a pretty big number on those people in Portland that are doing that.”Representative Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, said on Friday: “This proclaimed ‘war on Antifa’ is completely a fallacy. Antifa is an ideology, it is not a group, and so we’re extremely concerned with what he’s going to try to do with that pronouncement.”“Donald Trump does not care about safety. If he cared about safety he would not have released 1,600 convicted insurrectionists into the streets. He cares about control and authoritarianism,” she added, referring to Trump’s clemency for those who carried out the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. “Portland does not need the military. We do not want them, we do not need them, we do not welcome them to come here under his orders.”Trump, a Republican, has sent military troops to the Democratic-controlled cities of Los Angeles and Washington DC so far in his second presidency. He has discussed doing the same in Memphis and New Orleans, which are also Democratic strongholds. More