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      I lost my job at USAid. It’s devastating – but I still have hope | Christian Smith

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      When we rang in the New Year, I wasn’t remotely expecting politics to collide with my career, my family and me. In a matter of weeks, I had lost my job, my father and, I felt, my country.I spent a dozen years as a program officer for USAid, serving in countries in South America, Africa and Asia with my family. I loved my job working with governments and NGOs to improve the lives of those in need. Doing good and doing well, we said. I was helping to build an information system to improve aid transparency and efficiency when sudden news arrived.At 5pm on a Friday, we received an email saying our particular contract had been shut down. In all, 10,000 professionals were dismissed from their jobs, while Elon Musk called us a criminal organization and its staff – me included – a “ball of worms”. The wrecking had begun.At USAid headquarters, administrative assistants were ordered to take down all the pictures of the many people the agency helps around the world, as if it had been something shameful. Only clocks were left on the walls. More cravenly, the administration blocked access to the wall of names honoring those who had given their lives to the cause. Trump officials canceled USAid’s building contract and handed it over to US Customs and Border Protection.The same clocks on the walls that had once marked time over Americans helping people in need overseas may now mark time over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents deporting people to those countries and others.The Trump administration is abandoning millions of people around the world and cutting off life-saving services. We are losing goodwill and influence – diplomatic, economic and moral. A good sign that closing USAid was a mistake: China is already moving in to fill the void, and strongly rightwing leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are applauding.The destruction is also almost certainly unconstitutional in a number of ways, and aspects continue to be reviewed, blocked or upheld by courts lagging behind the speed at which laws are being broken. A showdown on the reach of executive power has begun.These changes hit me very close to home. A significant number of my family are conservatives who voted for Trump, fueled by two decades of misinformation promoting hate and anger. Despite this, in the interests of our family integrity, we have learned to talk to one another respectfully. We avoid topics related to politics and focus on our love for each other, jigsaw puzzles and American football (until even that became “woke”).Blindsided at work, I was next blindsided at home. Two days after USAid was lost, my father died unexpectedly. Thankfully, my dad and I had been able to say we loved each other before he died. The kids and I flew out and we spent a beautiful week together with the family grieving his loss.However, in a strange moment at the end of the week, my mother told me that I shouldn’t talk about USAid because I didn’t know what I was talking about (as if I had no idea about the organization where I had spent my career). Armed with details from her trusted websites, she informed me that USAid was performing sex changes on children and funding terrorist groups. We defused the moment, but it demonstrated how unchecked deception fomented by wealthy interests so gravely distorts people’s views.Obviously, all of these sudden losses have given me pause to reflect.Despite some people’s attempts to reshape the US and its place in the world, we have not seen the end of American generosity. Humans are successful because we cooperate. We have obligations to each other as living beings. We also know that we can’t make ideas go away, and the best ones – like kindness and caring for others – are actually what bind us.The dismantling of USAid as an institution does not mean that the US’s generosity of spirit has also been eradicated. USAid was a longstanding independent agency established by John F Kennedy, receiving consistent bipartisan support because it advanced America’s foreign policy objectives by helping others.Such values have not disappeared. We can be certain that, in one form or another, US aid will return.

      Christian Smith is an American citizen and former USAid officer who lives between Dublin and Spain More

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      There are 1,000 grotesque memes of JD Vance – and they’re all more likable than the real thing | Marina Hyde

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      You may well be aware that Backpfeifengesicht is the German word for a face that is worthy of being slapped. Even so, how has this not been internationalised? Or at the very least Americanised, where its dictionary definition would presumably be adorned by a picture of the face of US vice-president JD Vance – already faultlessly playing the role of worst American at your hotel. You can immediately picture him at breakfast, can’t you? Every single other guest on the terrace with their shoulders up round their ears, just thinking: “Where is he now? How unbearable is he being NOW?” Next, imagine breakfast lasting four years.I say the Backpfeifengesicht definition would be accompanied by JD Vance’s face … but then again, what is the face of JD Vance? The internet is awash with people suffering an acute case of not being able to remember it any more, having seen so many hideous comic distortions of Vance that those meme versions are not simply the only results on the first page of your own mental Google search, but stretch deep beyond the second and into the third. Somewhere on page four, where you might as well publish the nuclear codes or pictures of Taylor Swift giving cocaine to babies, is an unmodified snap of what JD Vance actually looks like. Or at least what he looks like with eyeliner.Before you get there – and you don’t, really – your synaptic filing systems throw up every variety of Photoshopped Vancefake: swollen manboy, face wearing a Minion suit, a bearded egg … I’m hoping that sooner or later, an American news outlet will accidentally use a modified photo, because even the picture editor has forgotten what the vice-president looks like, and then we can have one of those massively self-regarding legacy media-blow-ups, where the entire staff has to resign after a remorseless investigation by the executive editor reveals Vance isn’t actually a big purple grape. “This is a stain on our newspaper’s history. A big purple stain.”Vance is more meme than man, now, and it is, of course, something of a consolation that he is so extremely online that he can’t help but have noticed this. The VP is like a one-man government troll-feeding programme – please don’t cut him, Elon! – which is probably why people have become so heroically committed to taking the piss. The probability of the vice-president seeing you insulting him is basically one.Just as previous holders of his office like Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon once did, Vance spent a notable amount of this week both denying he suggested Britain and France were random countries that hadn’t fought a war in 40 years, and replying to random X posters called things like “Jeff Computers” to counter the suggestion that he wasn’t loved and feted on his recent skiing holiday.View image in fullscreenOver on this side of the Atlantic, it must be said that the latter vignette in particular serves as a helpful reminder of the cultural differences between our great nations – and indeed between our great anti-elitists. British politicians would rather admit they’d sexually harassed an intern than gone skiing. (You can, of course, do both – and many do.) If a British cabinet minister were to sally forth on to social media like Vance did, and honk that actually, he had a great time on the ski slopes, it would probably be the end of him. Let’s face it, our rightwing politicians still make time twice a week to do a drive-by on “latte drinkers”, seemingly unaware that the only thing left in most high streets, and quite a lot of people’s lives, is a hot milky drink at a Costa. Yet in our country, would-be populists treat having the temerity to order a coffee like it’s Marie Antoinette skiing past a workhouse – which is a useful illustration of why we don’t have growth, and why our many political failures speak to near-empty rooms at conservative conferences in the US.Anyway: Vance. On or off skis – and I would prefer him to sod offski – the vice-president can be judged successful in his deliberately adopted mission to become mesmerisingly awful. On British army talkboards this week, I spent some very enjoyable time watching veterans of the US’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offer their thoughts on JD, who I believe was some kind of military journalist for about 15 minutes. Though that wasn’t quite how they put it, naturally. Real soldiers can be hilariously creative with their insults, while Vance is drawn towards the artless, perhaps most neatly embodied in his decision to whine at Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “Did you even say thank you?”Then again, while I’m sure that the memes will keep us warm in the event of an unscheduled nuclear winter, it must be said that other forms of digital manipulation are passing notably without the comment they used to, even until very recently. So perhaps the moral slippage has not been entirely one-sided.I noticed this week that people who only a couple of years ago were hand-wringing about the horror AI deepfakes could wreak upon democracy were now cheerfully sharing synthetic scenes of Zelenskyy slapping Donald Trump in the Oval Office, or Trump crying like a baby, or some other eerie piece of fakery that felt qualitatively different from a still of a lollipop-wielding kiddie Vance. I think people used to think this stuff was bad and corrosive and potentially politically dangerous? Maybe they still do – or maybe only when the other side do it.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      If Britain must rearm, how to pay for it? Stiffen the sinews; summon up the taxes | Polly Toynbee

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      “A new era is upon us.” Ursula von der Leyen was not holding back. This is a world turned upside down, changed beyond recognition. Leaders across Europe are echoing the alarm sent out by the European Commission president, and rippling across the continent, Canada and elsewhere: that we face a “clear and present danger on a scale that none of us has seen in our adult lifetime”. She has proposed a plan that would offer €800bn (£660bn) for immediate rearming, with a European sky shield to protect Ukraine.The hooligan Russian asset in the White House has changed everything so profoundly that it is hard to keep track. The US, whose coat-tails we clung to, whose culture we revelled in, whose cleverness dazzled and stupidity confounded, is now the enemy. The shock feels viscerally personal because American culture is deep in our veins at all ages, from Sesame Street to Marvel, from Philip Roth to Philip Glass, the Oscars to Silicon Valley, like it or not. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we obediently followed their blunders, and 642 British soldiers died, as Keir Starmer adroitly reminded JD Vance in parliament. Our glamorous friend has turned fiend. How do we cauterise that off us? Or reconfigure the map of the world in terms of friends and foes?Former UK ambassadors to Washington ruminated over this “seismic” shift, which has shaken every norm from their Foreign Office days. “This is not a blip in the relationship, something fundamental is going on,” one old knight warned a Lords select committee, while another cautioned that the US giving up on Europe in favour of Russia was likely a “current reality”. Sir David Manning pinpointed Britain’s specific anguish at this moment, the downside of the so-called special relationship: as Europe galvanises to rearm, unlike our continental neighbours, we depend on the US for our defence.With every new shock wave, Britain feels this trauma in its marrow. Yet there is hesitancy in government about addressing the nation with a call to arms, as French president Emmanuel Macron has done, warning: “the innocence of these 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall is over.”Look at the remarkable response of Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, lifetime financial conservative and fiscal dogmatist, as he grasps the severity of the times: he will reverse all his previous fiscal policies and his nation’s usual dread over borrowing, breaking their “basic law” with a huge €500bn loosening of debt rules to rearm. This amounts to “one of the most historic paradigm shifts in German postwar history”, according to Deutsche Bank. German borrowing costs shot up, but so have predictions of German growth from a sluggish 0.8% to 2%, with investors sending industrial stocks soaring. But note this: in his fiscal sea change, rearming will not be accompanied by any cuts to German social spending.How about Britain? Our government has announced no change to fiscal policy. Living within our self-imposed straitjacket, our rearming will be paid for by cuts to aid, benefits and most departments, as Rachel Reeves this week sends her plans to the Office for Budget Responsibility to prove the books are balanced. Yet the promises the government has made are impossible to keep: no more borrowing, no more tax rises and no return to austerity. These are terrible choices – the aid cut already breaks a manifesto pledge – destroying trust whichever way Labour turns. But which is the least bad?A copy of Duncan Grant’s portrait of John Maynard Keynes hangs by my desk, a reminder to reach for his 1940 prescription How to Pay for the War, a book that spelled out the necessary financial sacrifices of the time. Emergency action needed then was draconian, rapidly increasing production while drastically reducing consumption, introducing rationing and diverting everything to the war effort. In comparison, what’s needed in this new emergency is a pinprick, to raise the 3% of GDP for defence spending that Starmer is aiming for. Take just this one measure: in a disgraceful (and failed) act of crude election bribery, Jeremy Hunt cut 4p off employees’ national insurance. Restoring that would cover the cost of this extra defence spending alone, says Ben Zaranko of the Institute for Fiscal Studies; so would 2p more on income tax for all.Labour’s Treasury team winces at the very thought of any further tax rises, after the walloping Reeves got for the £40bn tax rise in October’s budget. They are jumpy: remember Liz Truss’s mini-budget, maxi-catastrophe, they say. Look how even small tax changes such as the farmers’ inheritance tax can create a storm; some policies make absolute sense in economic and fairness terms, but crash politically. Besides, tax rises that cut people’s spending money risk stunting growth, they say – but then so do cuts to public spending. Borrow more? That adds to the mammoth £100bn a year we spend servicing existing debt, they say. But we are now on the hunt for the least-worst option – and Britain still pays less tax than similar countries.Starmer has risen to the needs of the hour. But he has yet to address his citizens on what rearming means, and what it requires of them. We like to think of ourselves as warlike, and at the ready. We are good at displays of national pride and national parades, with a four-day celebration planned for the 80th anniversary of VE day in May. But tax and financial sacrifice were essential parts of that victory. The alternative – miserable cuts to benefits for the weakest, and stripping yet more from threadbare stricken public services – is the worst of all the bad options. In our finest hour, Britain shed its traditional tax-phobia. If ever there was a moment to stiffen the sinews and summon up the taxes, it is now: for the defence of the realm.

      Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump administration briefing: Trump changes tack on tariffs – again – as US plans to close consulates

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      Donald Trump has performed another reversal on tariffs, delaying duties on many goods from Canada and Mexico again. Trump said the reversal has “nothing to do” with turbulence in the stock market in recent days, as investors weighed his economic plans. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell 1.8% on Thursday. “I’m not even looking at the market,” he claimed.It was also a day where the focus fell on the power wielded by Elon Musk and the president’s plans for US consulates in Europe. Trump shelves Canada-Mexico tariffs – for a timeDonald Trump pulled back from his trade war with Canada and Mexico on Thursday, temporarily delaying tariffs on many goods from the two countries once again. Two days after imposing sweeping tariffs on all imports from his country’s closest trading partners, the US president announced that duties on a wide range of products would be shelved until April.Read the full storyElon Musk says he isn’t to blame for mass firings of federal workersElon Musk is telling Republican lawmakers in private meetings that he is not to blame for the mass firings of federal workers that are causing uproar across the country, while Donald Trump reportedly told his cabinet secretaries on Thursday that they are ultimately in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies – not billionaire aide Musk.The men appeared to be making parallel efforts to distance Musk from radical job slashing made over the last two months. This despite the tech entrepreneur boasting about cuts, recommending the US “delete entire agencies” and taking questions on the issue alongside the US president, then wielding a chainsaw at an event to symbolize his efforts – all amid legal challenges and skepticism from experts.Trump said on Thursday he has instructed department secretaries to work with Doge but to “be very precise” about which workers will stay or go, using a “scalpel rather than a hatchet”.Read the full storyUS plans to close European consulates and cut state department workforceThe US state department is preparing to shut down a number of consulates that are mainly in western Europe in the coming months and looking to reduce its workforce globally, multiple US officials said on Thursday.The state department is also looking into potentially merging a number of its expert bureaus at its headquarters in Washington that are working in areas such as human rights, refugees, global criminal justice, women’s issues and efforts to counter human trafficking, the officials said.Reuters reported last month that US missions around the world had been asked to look into reducing US and locally employed staff by at least 10% as Donald Trump and his billionaire aide Elon Musk have unleashed an unprecedented cost-cutting effort across the US federal workforce.Read the full story‘Not a king’: Trump is told firing of labor chief is illegalA federal court ruled that Trump’s abrupt firing of a former senior official at the top US labor watchdog was illegal, and ordered that she be reinstated. Gwynne Wilcox was the first member of the National Labor Relations Board to be removed by a US president since the board’s inception in 1935.The framers of the US constitution “made clear that no one in our system of government was meant to be king – the president included – and not just in name only”, the judge Beryl A Howell, wrote in the ruling.Read the full storyMusk and Texas governor celebrate after worker fired over pronounsThe Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and, later, Elon Musk showed support on Wednesday for the firing of a state employee who refused to remove his pronouns from his work email signature. Frank Zamora, 31, was let go from his job as a program manager at the Texas real estate commission.Abbott celebrated the move on X. Musk then replied to Abbott’s post with two fire emojis.Read the full storyUS attorney threatens top law school over DEIA Trump-appointed US attorney has told Georgetown – one of the country’s top law schools – to immediately end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, warning that his justice department office will not hire students or other affiliates associated with a university that utilizes DEI.In an extraordinary letter sent to the dean, the recently appointed interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, said he was investigating the academic institution after it had come to his “attention reliably” that they were teaching and promoting DEI.Read the full storyDoJ investigating California universities over alleged antisemitismThe US Department of Justice is investigating the University of California system for possible antisemitic discrimination after demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza took place on campuses last year.Read the full storyDemocrats join in censure of Al GreenThe House voted on Thursday to censure Al Green for disrupting Trump’s joint session address, with a handful of Democrats voting to condemn the Democratic Texas representative along with Republicans.The House voted 224-198, with 10 Democrats voting in favor of the censure, which accuses Green of a “breach of proper conduct”.Read the full storyCanadians protest against US toxic wasteThe proposed expansion of a Quebec landfill that accepts hazardous waste from the United States has ignited a turf war between the Quebec provincial government and local leaders, who say they oppose putting US trash into a local peat bog. Local leaders are protesting against the move – saying the province is capitulating to a US company in the midst of a tariff war between Canada and the United States.Read the full storySmall US agency stands up to MuskMembers of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit were barred from entering a small, independent federal agency promoting economic development in Africa on Wednesday after a tense standoff with federal staff they had been sent to fire.Workers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF), which Donald Trump has ordered to be closed, refused to allow Doge operatives to enter after they arrived at its Washington headquarters.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      In an escalation of his pressure campaign, Trump said the US will not fight for Nato allies who don’t spend enough on their own defense. “I think it’s common sense,” the president said. “They don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them.”

      The state department is hunting for evidence that foreign students who express support for Palestinians under Israeli occupation while studying in the US are “pro-Hamas”, and can have their visas revoked, based on an AI review of their social media accounts, Axios reports.

      Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he will “probably” extend TikTok’s deadline to find a US buyer or face a ban.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 5 March. More

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      Newsom condemned for ‘throwing trans people under bus’ after sports comment

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      Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California believed to be eyeing a run for president in 2028, is facing fierce backlash from LGBTQ+ rights advocates after his suggestion that the participation of transgender women and girls in female sports was “deeply unfair”.In the inaugural episode of his podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, the governor hosted conservative political activist and Maga darling Charlie Kirk. The co-founder and executive director of the rightwing Turning Point USA, a Phoenix-based organization that operates on school campuses, told Newsom: “You, right now, should come out and be like: ‘You know what? The young man who’s about to win the state championship in the long jump in female sports – that shouldn’t happen.’ You, as the governor, should step out and say: ‘No.’”The governor responded: “I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that … it’s deeply unfair.”View image in fullscreenMembers of his own party in California quickly condemned the comments.“We woke up profoundly sickened and frustrated by these remarks,” assembly member Chris Ward and senator Caroline Menjivar, of the California legislative LGBTQ+ caucus, said in a statement. “All students deserve the academic and health benefits of sports activity, and until Donald Trump began obsessing about it, playing on a team consistent with one’s gender has not been a problem since the standard was passed in 2013.”California law has long protected trans youth’s rights to participate in school activities that match their gender.The governor’s remarks also earned him scorn from national LGBTQ+ rights leaders, with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) president, Kelley Robinson, saying in a statement: “History doesn’t remember those who waver – it remembers those who refuse to back down.”Newsom’s comments saw him agreeing with one of the central anti-trans talking points of Republicans and rightwing activists, who have fueled moral panics about trans women in public spaces and trans youth healthcare in recent years. Out of more than 500,000 college athletes, there are fewer than 10 who are trans and out, officials recently said.Proponents of anti-trans restrictions for K-12 students have often struggled to find examples of trans girls playing in school sports.The few openly trans athletes who are in the public eye have faced intense harassment and scrutiny. Civil rights advocates argue that for youth, their ability to play sports that align with their gender is a matter of basic dignity and equal protection under the law.Izzy Gardon, the governor’s communications director, said in a statement on Thursday evening: “The governor rejects the right wing’s cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids.” His office earlier pointed out that in the podcast, the governor noted the high rates of suicide and anxiety among trans people, saying: “The way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with. So, both things I can hold in my hand.”Bamby Salcedo, a longtime Los Angeles-based activist and president of the TransLatin@ Coalition, said it was devastating to hear Newsom fail to even correct Kirk when he appeared to be referring to trans women as men.“For someone who says he is supportive of our communities to come out and say these awful things, he’s using us as political pawns,” she said.“Denying the opportunity for young people to participate in sports is denying them the opportunity to be who they fully are. It is really damaging.”Scott Wiener, a state senator and proponent of trans rights, said in an interview that he considered Newsom a longtime ally of LGBTQ+ people and that it had been “brutal” to hear the governor’s comments. He noted there has been a “decades-long strategic plan by the right wing to demonize trans people”, adding: “They’ve done it very methodically. It’s disgusting, but it’s had some success.”Trans youth in the public eye have faced national ridicule, Wiener noted: “If they’re out as trans, they’re so courageous and they’re putting themselves at risk. It’s really important for people who know better to have their backs.”Wiener, who has introduced legislation to strengthen the state’s trans refuge law, said Newsom has had a good track record on trans civil rights bills, and he hoped that wouldn’t change.State assemblymember Alex Lee, another LGBTQ+ caucus member, said Newsom’s remarks were “shocking and offensive” and that it would hurt his future ambitions: “Throwing trans people under the bus will alienate lots of people who are LGBTQ+ and allies across the nation … If you’re running to be a Republican nominee, this is a great strategy. But if you want to run as a Democrat and someone who is pro-human rights, this is a terrible look.”Some California Republicans were dubious of Newsom, a longtime champion of LGBTQ+ rights who drew national attention when, as the mayor of San Francisco, he defied state law and began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is stunning,” the California assemblymember Bill Essayli wrote on X. “Talk is cheap @GavinNewsom. Why don’t you support my bill AB 844 to reverse CA’s law allowing boys to compete in girls sports? You’re the Governor, not a commentator!”Donald Trump made the issue of trans women in sports a central pillar of his campaign and as president has tried to erase trans and non-binary Americans from public life.He signed an executive order declaring that the federal government would only recognize two sexes, male and female, and another titled Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, which threatens to withhold federal funds from schools that do not comply. Meanwhile, the US state department has ordered officials worldwide to deny visas to transgender athletes attempting to come to the US for sports competitions, including the Olympics, which Los Angeles will host in 2028.During his joint speech to Congress this week, the president spotlighted the story of a volleyball player who was injured by a trans athlete on the opposing team and threatened to pull federal funding from any school that defied his executive order.Earlier this week, Senate Democrats banded together to block a Republican bill that would have barred transgender women and girls from playing on female sports teams.“What Republicans are doing today is inventing a problem to stir up a culture war and divide people against each other and distract people from what they’re actually doing,” the senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat of Hawaii, said in a floor speech during debate over the bill on Monday. Instead of addressing the most pressing issues of the day, such as rising grocery costs and a growing measles outbreak, Schatz said, Republicans were instead focused on an issue that was “totally irrelevant to 99.9% of all people across the country”.Since Kamala Harris’s 2024 loss, Democrats have been embroiled in a debate over what went wrong, ostensibly the reason for the governor’s podcast in which he will “talk directly with people I disagree with”. Desperate for answers, some Democrats have pointed to the party’s support for trans rights as a reason for their defeat.In the interview, Newsom conceded Trump’s signature campaign ad – “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” – was both “brutal” and effective.“She didn’t even react to it, which was even more devastating,” the governor told Kirk.“It’s not just that this was like the Willie Horton ad of the 2024 [cycle]. It wasn’t just like Lee Atwater brilliance. It’s that it reflected truth that the voters felt,” Kirk said. “Yeah, I appreciate that,” Newsom interjected, as Kirk continued: “Because voters felt as if their country was slipping away.”As Democrats search for a way out of the political wilderness, and grapple with their position on the issue, LGBTQ+ rights advocates are warning the party not to play into Republicans’ hands.“Our message to [Governor] Newsom and all leaders across the country is simple,” Robinson, of the Human Rights Campaign said. “The path to 2028 isn’t paved with the betrayal of vulnerable communities – it’s built on the courage to stand up for what’s right and do the hard work to actually help the American people.” More

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      Elon Musk tells Republicans he isn’t to blame for mass firings of federal workers

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      Elon Musk is telling Republican lawmakers in private meetings that he is not to blame for the mass firings of federal workers that are causing uproar across the country, while Donald Trump reportedly told his cabinet secretaries on Thursday that they are ultimately in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies – not billionaire aide Musk.The two powerful figures appeared to be making parallel efforts to distance Musk from radical job slashing made over the last two months. This is despite the tech entrepreneur boasting about cuts, recommending the US “delete entire agencies” and taking questions on the issue alongside the US president, then wielding a chainsaw at an event to symbolize his efforts – all amid legal challenges and skepticism from experts.Musk said in private talks with lawmakers who are experiencing blowback from constituents angry over the firings of thousands of federal workers, including military veterans, that such decisions are left to the various federal agencies, the Associated Press reported.Despite copious evidence that Musk has acted as if he has the authority to fire federal workers, the representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who leads the House Republicans’ campaign arm, said on Thursday: “Elon doesn’t fire people.”“He doesn’t have hiring and firing authority,” Hudson said after a meeting with Musk over pizza in the basement of the US Capitol in Washington DC. “The president’s empowered him to go uncover this information, that’s it.”That came as Trump told his cabinet that Musk’s authority lay in making recommendations to departments about staffing, not making unilateral decisions on that, Politico reported.The new Trump administration created and then expanded the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and put the unelected Musk in charge of it, with a mandate to slash jobs and costs across the federal government despite critics’ outcry about a growing US oligarchy.Trump reiterated earlier this week in a joint address to Congress that Musk was the head of Doge, which was quickly introduced as evidence in one lawsuit against the job cutting, and despite recent claims to the contrary from Musk and the administration.It’s a remarkable shift of emphasis away from the chainsaw-wielding tech entrepreneur whose vast power has made him an admired, revered and deeply feared figure in the second Trump administration.Trump said on Thursday that he had instructed department secretaries to work with Doge but to “be very precise” about which workers would stay or go, using a “scalpel rather than a hatchet”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe later told reporters at the White House: “I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut.”Then, after suggesting that cabinet and agency leaders would take the lead, he said Musk could push harder down the line.“If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting,” Trump said.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump exempts many Canadian goods from tariffs after giving same delay to Mexico – US politics live

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will temporarily exempt Canadian goods covered by a continental free trade agreement from his tariff plan.Goods imported to the United States under the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement will be exempted from Trump’s 25% tariffs for one month, according to the order Turmp just signed in the Oval Office, which will also do the same for goods from Mexico.However the president said he was still ready to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on both Canada and Mexico next month, which could further disrupt trade relations across the continent.“During this interim period between now and April 2, this makes it much more favorable for our American car manufacturers,” Trump said.As he signed executive orders in the Oval Office this afternoon, including his on-again, off-again tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump was asked by Peter Doocy of Fox News about the sharp decline in the stock market since he started his trade war.Trump said that he blamed “globalists”, a term that is often used as code for Jews by antisemites.“What’s your thought about why the markets are so spooked? Do you think they don’t like the tariffs, or do they not like the uncertainty with some of the changes and the carve-outs?” Doocy asked.“Well a lot of them are globalist countries and companies that won’t be doing as well because we’re taking back things that have been taken from us many years ago”, Trump replied. “We’ve been treated very unfairly as a country. We protect everybody; we do everything for all these countries”, he added, “we just weren’t treated right; we were ripped off.”The term “Globalist” is an entry in the Anti-Defamation League’s glossary of extremism and hate. According to the ADL:
      White supremacists and other antisemites frequently use the term as an antisemitic dog whistle, wielding it as a codeword for Jews or as a pejorative term for people whose interests in international commerce or finance ostensibly make them disloyal to the country in which they live, or who are willing to undermine the financial security of their neighbors in order to benefit transnational interests. …
      Antigovernment extremists also use the term globalist, usually without the antisemitic connotations, in references to conspiracy theories about the “New World Order.”
      Trump’s claim that the United States is foolish for providing military protection to allies is one of his oldest and most consistent beliefs. In 1987, as he reportedly weighed a run for the presidency, Trump paid to publish an open letter to the American people as a full page ad in the New York Times in which he claim that US military allies and trade rivals were scamming the US and, as a result, “The world is laughing at America’s politicians”.At the end of the press availability, Trump reiterated the comment when he was asked again about the plunging value of stocks that make up a large share of many Americans retirement plans.“I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country is going to be, and they don’t like it”, he said. “They’ve been ripping off this country for years and now– and they’re going to do great, everyone’s going to do great, but we can’t let this continue to happen to America”.US district judge Beryl Howell ruled on Thursday that Donald Trump’s firing of a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board was illegal and ordered that she be reinstated to her post.The decision restores a quorum of three members at the labor board, which had been paralyzed and unable to decide cases involving private-sector employers after Trump removed Gwynne Wilcox in January.As our colleague Michael Sainato reports, Wilcox was the first member of the NLRN to be removed by a US president since the board’s inception in 1935.The framers of the US constitution, the judge wrote in the ruling, “made clear that no one in our system of government was meant to be king – the President included – and not just in name only”.Read the full story here:In an escalation of his pressure campaign, Donald Trump said the US will not fight for Nato allies who don’t spend enough on their own defense.“I think it’s common sense,” the president said. “They don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them.”He went on to accuse Nato allies of not being willing to defend the United States, if the roles were reversed:
      If the United States was in trouble, and we called them, we said we got a problem, France, we got a problem, couple of others, I won’t mention –you think they’re going to come and protect us? They’re supposed to, I’m not so sure.
      It’s worth noting that after the September 11 attacks, Nato allies rallied to the US’s defense and participated in the invasion of Afghanistan, remaining in the country for two decades.All that said, Trump reiterated that he did not intend to leave Nato:
      I view Nato as potentially good, but again … it’s very unfair what’s been happening.
      Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he will “probably” extend TikTok’s deadline to find a US buyer or face a ban.On the day he took office, the president gave the popular social media app a 75-day exemption from a law Congress passed that was intended to force its China-based owned to divest. Speaking to reporters, Trump said that if necessary, he was willing to allow TikTok to continue operating while the search for a buyer continues.“We have a lot of interest in TikTok. China is going to play a role, so hopefully China will approve of the deal,” Trump said.He declined to say how long of an extension he would be willing to give.Donald Trump also confirmed that cabinet secretaries and agency heads will take the lead in determining where to make cuts in the federal workforce, with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” in a supporting role.“I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut. I want the cabinet members to keep the good people and the people that aren’t doing a good job, that are unreliable, don’t show up to work, etc, those people can be cut,” Trump said.“We’re going to be watching them, and Elon and the group are going to be watching them and if they can cut, it’s better,” Trump said. “And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”It was confirmation that Trump was cutting back on the mandate he had given Musk to dramatically downsize the federal government.Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will temporarily exempt Canadian goods covered by a continental free trade agreement from his tariff plan.Goods imported to the United States under the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement will be exempted from Trump’s 25% tariffs for one month, according to the order Turmp just signed in the Oval Office, which will also do the same for goods from Mexico.However the president said he was still ready to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on both Canada and Mexico next month, which could further disrupt trade relations across the continent.“During this interim period between now and April 2, this makes it much more favorable for our American car manufacturers,” Trump said.Most Democrats opposed censuring congressman Al Green, who heckled Donald Trump during his speech to a joint session of Congress and was thrown out of the House chamber for it.But 10 Democrats went along with the Republican-backed resolution, with several explaining that they felt they had no option if they want to hold their opponents to account in the future. Here’s Connecticut’s Jim Himes, encapsulating the sentiment:
      Years ago, I voted to hold Joe Wilson accountable for yelling ‘you lie’ at Barack Obama. Today, I voted to censure Al Green for a larger disruption. Unlike Republicans, I believe that rules, accountability and civility should not be torched. And certainly not just because the other side does so. If we cannot act with the principle and seriousness our nation deserves, our government will continue to devolve into a MAGA cesspool.
      Perennially endangered Washington congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said it was a matter of respect:
      Today, I voted to censure a fellow member of Congress. When you knowingly break House rules, as Rep. Green did, it shouldn’t be surprising to face consequences. Congress should respect the co-equal office of the Presidency, regardless of who holds the job, do our constitutional duty, and stop with the theatrics at these events.
      Pennsylvania’s Chrissy Houlahan says she thinks many more people in the chamber should be censured, and told House speaker Mike Johnson as much:
      I did indeed have a heated conversation with Speaker Johnson on the House floor after I voted yes to censure my colleague. I called Speaker Johnson out on his and his party’s hypocrisy and reminded him of the many instances in which Republicans have blatantly broken the rules of conduct without consequence. He told me if he punished each instance, he’d have to censure half the House. I suggested he do just that. Rules are rules.
      There appears to be more to Donald Trump’s meeting with cabinet secretaries than he let on. Politico reports that the president told them that they are in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies, not Elon Musk.The president’s message came after signs of tensions between his secretaries and Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) flared. Doge was linked to an email sent to federal workers demanding details of their work that many agencies told their employees not to respond to, while some Republican lawmakers have said it should be up to agency heads to decide who to hire and fire.Here’s more on the meeting, from Politico:
      President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet in person on Thursday to deliver a message: You’re in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk.
      According to two administration officials, Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. Musk was also in the room.
      The meeting followed a series of mass firings and threats to government workers from the billionaire Tesla founder, who helms the Department of Government Efficiency, that created broad uncertainty across the federal government and its workforce.
      …
      The president’s message represents the first significant move to narrow Musk’s mandate. According to Trump’s new guidance, DOGE and its staff should play an advisory role — but Cabinet secretaries should make final decisions on personnel, policy and the pacing of implementation.
      Musk joined the conversation and indicated he was on board with Trump’s directive. According to one person familiar with the meeting, Musk acknowledged that DOGE had made some missteps — a message he shared earlier this week with members of Congress.
      Trump stressed that he wants to keep good people in government and not eject capable federal workers en masse, according to one of the officials. It is unclear whether the new guidance will result in laid off workers getting rehired.
      The timing of the meeting was influenced by recent comments from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who said on CNN Tuesday that Cabinet secretaries should retain the full power to hire and fire, according to one official. The official said Trump has been flooded with similar concerns from other lawmakers and Cabinet secretaries.
      Donald Trump restated his support for Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, and vowed to continue helping him cut down federal agencies.The president’s comments came as judges nationwide consider challenges to Trump and Musk’s moves, including their attempts to shutter USAid. Yesterday, the supreme court ruled that the Trump administration must abide by a judge’s order for the aid agency to pay $2b to its partners, a sign that the conservative-dominated court may not be entirely onboard with the unorthodox downsizing campaign.“DOGE has been an incredible success, and now that we have my Cabinet in place, I have instructed the Secretaries and Leadership to work with DOGE on Cost Cutting measures and Staffing,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.He continued:
      We just had a meeting with most of the Secretaries, Elon, and others, and it was a very positive one. It’s very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people. We’re going to have these meetings every two weeks until that aspect of this very necessary job is done. The relationships between everybody in that room are extraordinary. They all want to get to the exact same place, which is, simply, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
      Doge continues to face substantial, though not necessarily durable, pushback as it spreads its campaign across the federal government:The Republican-majority US House Judiciary Committee has reportedly issued a subpoena to tech company Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google.Reuters is reporting that the committee is seeking the company’s internal communications as well as those with third parties and government officials during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.A day after the supreme court denied a request from the Trump administration to continue freezing nearly $2bn in foreign aid, US foreign aid contractors and grant recipients are set to go before a federal judge today to try to restore the halted funding.The hearing is scheduled to take place in Washington today at 2 pm ET.When Donald Trump took office on 20 January, he ordered a 90-day freeze on all US foreign assistance, while his administration reviewed whether aid was consistent with his “America first” foreign policy, temporarily ending thousands of programs worldwide.Several aid organisations that had received grants or contracts with the US government sued the administration, and a US District judge ordered that the funding be temporarily restored.But, the Trump administration then filed an emergency request with the supreme court and Chief Justice Roberts initially paused the deadline to allow the court more time to review the request and hear from both sides.Until this week, when the supreme court rejected the administration’s bid to continue freezing nearly $2bn in foreign aid, leaving in place the ruling from the district judge, which ordered the administration to unfreeze the nearly $2bn in aid, for work already completed by the organizations and that had been approved by Congress.Tim Walz, Minnesota governor and 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, said in an announcement today that he wants fired federal workers to consider jobs in his state.“In Minnesota, we value the experience and expertise of federal workers, even if Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE do not,” Walz said in a statement. “Government workers provide services each of us relies on — from park rangers to firefighters to medical personnel who care for our veterans. If the Trump administration turned you away, Minnesota wants you.”Walz said that fired federal workers in his state can visit Minnesota’s careers website for resources to help with their job searches and to apply for unemployment benefits. He also said it will include resources for fired veterans.There are around 18,000 federal employees in Minnesota.Fox News’ senior White House correspondent is reporting that a meeting between Ukraine and the US is scheduled to take place on Tuesday next week.“Rubio, Witkoff, Waltz headed to Riyadh on Tuesday to meet with Ukrainians, including Yermak” Jacqui Heinrich posted on X today.Follow along in our Ukraine live blog here:Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that “virtually all” of Mexico’s trade with the US is under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as USMCA, which will be exempt from tariffs until 2 April. “Practically all the trade we have with the United States is within the Mexico, United States, Canada Agreement” Sheinbaum said at a news conference on Thursday, as reported by CNN. “There is a part that has to do with rules of origin, but everything is practically within the trade agreement.” More