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      Doge shutters federal workplace mediator agency after Trump order

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      The Elon Musk-run “department of government efficiency” (Doge) in effect shuttered a 79-year-old federal agency that mediates labor disputes on Wednesday – saving an estimated 0.0014% of the federal budget.The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), an independent federal agency that works to prevent and resolve work stoppages and disputes in the public and private sector, has shut down most of its services and placed employees on administrative leave with firings to follow.“The administration released an executive order a week and a half ago naming FMCS as one of the agencies to be shuttered, but other than our agency denying it and making a few adjustments, we didn’t hear anything further,” said Jefferson Dedrick, a commissioner at FMCS. “Earlier today our mid-level managers informed each of the commissioners that effective at close of business, we would be put on admin leave with a RIF [reduction in force] letter to follow.”The agency provided mediation for several high-profile strikes, including the Boeing strike last fall.“Doge basically decided to eliminate all but a few people from the agency. We don’t know the final count but maybe a dozen left out of an agency that had almost 200 employees through last year,” said a FMCS employee who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “It is shocking as the agency does not regulate and has always been non-controversial. Even Republicans have always seen the value of an agency that saves the economy far more money in reduced work stoppages in the private sector than the agency spends. It is also a blow to the use of more efficient dispute resolution by federal agencies who have used our services for non-labor disputes. That program has now been entirely abolished.”They noted the cuts were drastic to the point where the agency, in most cases, can no longer be effective and noted it will worsen and prolong labor strikes and lockouts.The FMCS was established by Congress in 1947. Its shuttering comes in the wake of Donald Trump’s executive order, signed on 14 March, to dismantle seven federal agencies, including FMCS.Dedrick added in a LinkedIn post on the dismantling of the agency: “Annually, FMCS saves the US Economy over $500 million by protecting household earnings, safeguarding company revenues and services, and ensuring the continuity of the robust commerce that promotes and underlines our national prosperity.”He noted this savings is achieved with fewer than 150 mediators around the US, accounting for less than 0.0014% of the federal budget.FMCS was contacted for comment. More

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      Newly shared Signal messages show Trump advisers discussed Yemen attack plans

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      The Atlantic magazine has published fresh messages from a group chat among top US officials in which they discuss specific operational details of plans to bomb Yemen, spurring leading Democrats to accuse Trump administration officials of lying to Congress by claiming the messages did not contain classified information.The initial revelations by the magazine and its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to the chat on the messaging app Signal, have sparked a huge outcry in the US.The Trump administration has faced withering attacks over the disastrous leak of sensitive information, including in a House intelligence committee hearing on Wednesday featuring two participants in the chat: the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe.However, the magazine did not initially include specific details of the attack, saying it did not want to jeopardise national security. But as numerous Trump administration officials have claimed that none of the information shared was classified – despite the apparent inclusion of operational details of the US strike on Yemen’s Houthi militia, which has been attacking shipping in the Red Sea – the Atlantic said in a new article on Wednesday it was now releasing that information.It reproduced numerous messages from the text chat between the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth – who said on Tuesday that “nobody was texting war plans” – and top intelligence officials.They included details of US bombings, drone launches and targeting information of the assault, including descriptions of weather conditions.They also mention specific weapons to be used, timings for attacks and references to a “target terrorist”, presumably a Houthi militant. There is further discussion of confirmation that a target had been killed, and the use of several emojis.“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the magazine said.“If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests – or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media – the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds.“The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.”Trump administration officials have repeatedly claimed that the messages contained no classified information. On Tuesday, after the first article was published, Gabbard and Ratcliffe said the leak contained no classified information.The Atlantic also quoted an email response from the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt – after the magazine contacted the Trump administration to say it was considering publishing the entirety of the email chain – in which she said the chat did not include classified information but also that the White House did not want the messages released.“As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat,” Leavitt wrote. “However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation.”Donald Trump, when asked on Tuesday about the leak, also said: “It wasn’t classified information,” while adding that the leak was “the only glitch in two months”.After the latest messages were published, Leavitt claimed on X that “these were NOT ‘war plans’. This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”Waltz, too, wrote on social media: “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS,”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLater , at the White House press briefing Leavitt said Elon Musk’s government team was investigating how the incident occurred. “As for your original question about who’s leading, looking into the messaging thread: the national security council, the White House counsel’s office, and also, yes, Elon Musk’s team,” she told reporters.“Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat again to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again,” Leavitt added.She also said that Signal, on which senior Trump administration officials accidentally shared military plans in a group containing a journalist, was an approved app. Leavitt said it was loaded on to government phones at the Pentagon, Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency.But Democrats used the intelligence committee hearing on Wednesday to demand an explanation of how operational military plans are not classified information.The Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi had an aide hold up the messages in which Hegseth shared exact details of the strikes.“This is classified information. It’s a weapon system as well as sequence of strikes, as well as details about the operations,” Krishnamoorthi said. “This text message is clearly classified information. Secretary Hegseth has disclosed military plans as well as classified information. He needs to resign immediately.”The committee’s top Democrat, Jim Himes, asked Gabbard why she had told senators the day before that no details of timing, targets or weapons had been shared.“My answer yesterday was based on my recollection, or the lack thereof, on the details that were posted there,” Gabbard replied.“What was shared today reflects the fact that I was not directly involved with that part of the Signal chat and replied at the end, reflecting the effects, the very brief effects that the national security adviser had shared.”Ratcliffe, meanwhile, said: “I used an appropriate channel to communicate sensitive information. It was permissible to do so. I didn’t transfer any classified information.”Last week, NPR reported that the Pentagon warned its staff specifically against the use of Signal because of its security vulnerabilities. In a Pentagon “OPSEC special bulletin” sent on 18 March, it warned that Russian hacking groups could aim to exploit the vulnerability.Questions have also been raised about whether some of the participants in the Signal chat might have been using their personal phones.Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, who was in Moscow at the time to discuss Ukraine with Vladimir Putin, wrote on X that while in Russia “I only had with me a secure phone provided by the government” but then explained that the reason he did not make any comments in the chat until after returning to the US was “because I had no access to my personal devices until I returned from my trip”.The messages in the Signal chat were set to be automatically deleted in under four weeks. The Federal Records Act typically mandates that government communication records are kept for two years.The Atlantic said it did not generally publish information about military operations if it could possibly harm US personnel but that accusations from the Trump administration that it was “lying” caused it to believe that “people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions”.“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the magazine wrote. More

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      ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ and the Goldwater rule for psychiatrists | Letter

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      A bill was recently introduced to the Minnesota legislature to categorise “Trump derangement syndrome” as a mental illness. The proposed bill defines the syndrome as characterised by “verbal expressions of intense hostility toward” Donald Trump and “overt acts of aggression and violence against anyone supporting [Trump] or anything that symbolises [Trump].”Such a bill obviously infringes on our constitutional right to freely criticise our elected leaders and can serve as a stepping stone towards labelling and punishing political opponents under the guise of utilising a variety of compulsory psychiatric interventions. However, this bill is reminiscent of anti-Trump mental health professionals who have opined that President Trump poses a great danger because of a severe personality disorder.Clearly, a psychiatric diagnosis can only be made by mental health professionals who are licensed to do so, and only after having examined a patient. It poses great danger to our society both when legislators use their political power to impose a psychiatric label on their political opponents and when mental health professionals misapply their expertise to give a psychiatric label to those whom they fear.In the 1960s, many psychiatrists opined on the mental health of the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. As a result of that controversy, in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association developed the “Goldwater rule”, which applies to public figures. It states that it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a proper authorisation for such a statement.This rule is still in effect, though much too often broken. Perhaps we need to develop a comparable national rule prohibiting political personnel, both elected and appointed, from creating psychiatric diagnoses as a tool against their political opponents.Leon Hoffman Psychiatrist, New York City, US More

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      Trump wants a Nobel peace prize. Here’s how he can earn one | Ken Roth

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      Donald Trump’s instinctive deference to the Israeli government is at odds with his self-image as an expert dealmaker. Much as it may seem laughable that the president wants the Nobel peace prize, his quest may be the best chance we have for securing any US government regard for the rights and lives of Palestinians in Gaza.Trump currently seems to endorse the strategy of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of trying to pummel Hamas into accepting defeat. To force Hamas to release its remaining hostages and to disband its diminished military force, Netanyahu has resumed Israel’s strategy of starving and bombing Palestinian civilians. In less than a week, about 600 Palestinians have already been killed.The second phase of the ceasefire was supposed to have led to the release of Hamas’s last hostages in return for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and a permanent end to the fighting. Instead, the Israeli government has unilaterally changed the terms. It wants the hostages released and Hamas dismantled without committing to end the war. Hamas has rejected that one-sided ultimatum, evidently worried that Netanyahu would then resume attacking Palestinian civilians unimpeded.This is not an idle fear. The point of the renewed attacks may not be simply to wrest concessions from Hamas. The vast majority of the hostages freed so far have been released after negotiations rather than by military action, and most families of the hostages, prioritizing survival of their loved ones, want a negotiated solution.Rather, Israel’s aim may be to advance the project of expelling Palestinian civilians from Gaza, the longtime dream of the Israeli far right. Already the defense minister, Israel Katz, is threatening to seize and annex parts of Gaza, and Netanyahu is reportedly planning a new and larger ground invasion. Now that Trump has endorsed the forced permanent deportation of 2 million Palestinians from Gaza – a massive war crime and crime against humanity – Netanyahu may feel he has a green light to pursue that callous strategy.Tellingly, the far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir has rejoined Netanyahu’s governing coalition as police minister now that the temporary ceasefire, which he opposed, has ended. Head of the pro-settler, nationalist-religious Jewish Power party, Ben-Gvir has long been unabashed about his desire to “solve” the conflict in Gaza by getting rid of the Palestinians. And we should recognize that Gaza would most likely be just a prelude to the occupied West Bank.In these circumstances, a deal with Hamas seems unlikely. Why would Hamas capitulate if that would permanently separate the Palestinian people from their homeland?Netanyahu and Trump may calculate that overwhelming military force, if applied with sufficient brutality, would force Hamas’s hand. That has long been the Israeli strategy. Trump has even resumed delivery of the enormous 2,000lb bombs that Joe Biden had suspended because Israel was using them to indiscriminately decimate entire Palestinian neighborhoods.The international criminal court prosecutor has already hinted that this indiscriminate bombardment may be the next focus of his war-crime charges. Trump himself would be at risk of being charged for aiding and abetting these atrocities – an eventuality that would not lead to his immediate jailing but would severely limit his ability to travel to the 125 governments that as members of the ICC would have an obligation to arrest him. (Trump might ask Vladimir Putin about how it felt not to be able to attend the August 2023 Brics summit in South Africa for fear of arrest.)Hamas has so far shown no inclination to succumb to this war-crime strategy, and the surrounding Arab states have rejected becoming a party to another Nakba, the catastrophic forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948. The big question is whether Trump comes to recognize that a deal, not forced surrender, is the most likely way out of the current horrors in Gaza that he had vowed to end.For now, Trump’s deference to Israel seems firm, but one should never take anything for granted with Trump. If there is any constant to his rule, it is that his self-interest overcomes concern for others.That’s where the Nobel prize comes in. If Trump wants to be known as the master of the deal, it won’t be by underwriting more Israeli war crimes.Trump alone has the capacity to force Netanyahu to adopt a different approach. Despite Israel’s dependence on US military assistance, Netanyahu got away with ignoring Biden’s entreaties to curb the starvation and slaughter of Palestinian civilians because the Israeli leader knew that the Republican party had his back. But Trump has become the Republican party. If he pressures Israel, Netanyahu has nowhere to the right to turn.That is how Trump played a decisive role in securing the temporary ceasefire that began shortly before his 20 January inauguration. He could do the same thing now to force Netanyahu toward a more productive, less inhumane path.What might that look like? The best option remains a two-state solution – an Israeli and Palestinian state living in peace side-by-side. The main alternatives would be rejected by Israel (recognition of the “one-state reality” with equal rights for all) or most everyone else (the apartheid of endless occupation).The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has said that he will not normalize relations with Israel, which Trump craves, without a Palestinian state. Both the Saudis and the Emiratis have also insisted on a state as a condition for financing the rebuilding of Gaza.But wouldn’t a Nobel peace prize for Trump be preposterous? No more so than the one granted, however controversially, to Henry Kissinger. He had directed or approved war crimes or mass atrocities in Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Bangladesh and Chile, but the Nobel committee honored him nonetheless for concluding a peace deal with Vietnam and withdrawing US forces. A Trump pivot away from Netanyahu’s endless war would be no more surprising than Kissinger’s about-face.Admittedly, it would be foolhardy to bet on Trump becoming an advocate for a Palestinian state, but it is worth recognizing that his personal ambitions could lead him in that direction. It speaks to the topsy-turvy world of Trump that the Palestinians’ best hope in the face of an Israeli government that respects no legal bounds is to play up what it would take for Trump to secure his coveted Nobel. We must persuade Trump to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

      Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs, was recently published by Knopf and Allen Lane More

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      What the accidentally leaked war group chat reveals about the Trump administration | Moira Donegan

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      Perhaps one of the greatest lessons of the Donald Trump era, for me, has been in learning the difference between being shocked and being surprised. And indeed it was a bit shocking to learn, via an essay published by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, that a high-profile journalist had been included on a chat on the commercial messaging app in which a military strike on the Houthi rebels in Yemen was coordinated – including discussions of the timing of the attack, debates about political messaging, personnel coordination and weapons to be used – seemingly without anyone noticing that he was there.It was shocking that their incompetence was so fortuitous – that the person they included, seemingly accidentally, in their unsecured group chat about war plans was someone so uniquely equipped to broadcast their idiocy to a large audience. But it was in no way surprising that members of the Trump administration are behaving with such recklessness, shortsightedness, indifference to responsibility or peevish sadism. Of course they’re planning overseas bombings in a group chat, I thought when I first read Goldberg’s account. Because we live in an age where the people with the superlative power are those who are least temperamentally suited for it; because the stupidity of this White House outpaces any attempt at parody; and because these guys are exactly as dumb in real life as they look on television.The story goes like this: as part of its backing of Israel’s wars in the Middle East, the Trump administration sought to strike against Houthi rebels, a coalition of Yemeni militants and pirates who have been attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea in an attempt to pressure the west to stop supporting Israel’s war on Palestinians. Trump authorized a military strike on a scale more lethal and less precise than those that had previously been launched by the Biden administration; according to a Signal user identified as JD Vance, the president wanted to “send a message” and convey strength on the world stage. In the chat, no other strategic rationale for the strike was offered.Such operations are supposed to be planned in secret, so that neither the targets, nor foreign governments, nor members of the media are aware of them ahead of time; the secrecy is what keeps the military personnel who carry out these strikes safe from some threats to their lives, and what allows the US to carry out its objectives unprompted. But the planning is also supposed to be documented, as much federal action is, to comply with records-keeping requirements.The resulting measures can be intense: often, to discuss classified matters, high-ranking federal officials enter safe rooms equipped with anti-surveillance technology, in which they are not allowed to take their phones; at other times, they are only permitted to discuss such matters on specially secured government-issued devices. (Signal, according to Goldberg, is not downloadable on these government devices, meaning that the administration officials in the chat were using their personal phones.) These are measures that have been put in place in order to protect interests that are worth protecting: to guard against foreign intelligence agencies (or, for that matter, magazine editors) learning of America’s plans, to keep Americans safe, to comply with records-keeping laws. Abiding by them is a sign of respect – both for the power of the executive, and for the law.And so that’s not what the Trump administration did. Instead, in order to coordinate the military strike, which was apparently greenlit by Trump in an in-person meeting in the White House situation room, the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, created an enormous national security threat by convening a planning group on a commercial messaging app.Why did the Trump officials use Signal for this, of all things? The reality is that they’re probably using it for a lot; the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has become something of a handbook for the Trump regime, recommends using private apps to conduct official business, so as to evade records-keeping laws. Signal is an app that is marketed for its privacy and message-disappearing features: a single member of a chat can mark messages to be deleted, permanently, for all members. (In another seemingly illegal move, Waltz reportedly set the messages in the war-planning group chat to disappear after a matter of weeks.)If the Trump administration’s members are habitually using Signal to conduct official business, the danger is not only that any foreign intelligence agency worth their salt (or any journalist who happens to benefit from their incompetence) could be listening in with relative ease. It’s that the records-keeping apparatus that is meant to preserve such conversations could not reach and document them – meaning that the use of Signal would specifically make such sensitive national security information more accessible to foreign adversaries and less accessible to historians and journalists here in the US.The content of the chats themselves is grim, too, providing an insight into the petty and eager social dynamics within Trump’s inner circle and the administration’s principle-thin commitment to any understanding of policy. Vance pipes up to suggest delaying the strike; he claims to be worried about public opinion on the issue, and complains that an attack on the Houthis would provide economic benefits to Europe, who he wants to punish for some reason. He does not seem to feel he has enough clout to actually oppose the strike, however, undermining his own complaints with caveats that he will defer to others.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, chimes in, clearly thinking he’s supposed to be the center of attention, to eagerly but insubstantially support Vance’s points before pivoting to saying he wants to go ahead with the strike anyway. He has the cringing eagerness of a personality hire: he wants to be seen talking, but doesn’t really have much to say.Stephen Miller, Trump’s surrogate in the chat, says, bizarrely, that Europe will be made to compensate America for the strike at some later date, reflecting the Trumpian vision of all politics as an extortion racket to extract money, favors, or – perhaps more to the point – shows of deference. Everyone defers to Miller immediately. It is a group of very stupid people, trying to create post-hoc justifications for something their boss told them to do, not thinking too hard about what they’re actually doing – which is killing people.There is a risk, in talking about the Trump administration’s decision to plan a military strike over a Signal group chat in which they accidentally included a prominent journalist, of making it seem like the only problem with the administration’s actions was in their breach of confidentiality and decorum.But the controversy that erupted about the Signal chat after Goldberg revealed his inclusion on Monday seemed almost to overshadow the strategic folly and moral depravity of the strike itself: a reckless escalation in a volatile region that risked provoking Iran, the Houthi’s backer and a nuclear state, and which took the lives of 53 human beings, including five children. That the strike seems to have been planned in a way that endangered national security and violated several federal laws should not blind us to the fact that the strike itself was stupid.But there is something in the story of the accidentally leaked war secrets group chat that speaks to the essence of the second Trump administration: its cavalier incompetence, its contempt for human life, its fealty to grievance and resentment, indifference to consequence, and jeering, jocular enthusiasm for violence. It shows us something about the Trump administration that we have previously seen only rarely: what they act like when they think they are in private. It’s not a pretty sight.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump is offended by a painting of himself. For once, I get where he’s coming from | Dave Schilling

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      While his friends are getting messy in the group chat, Donald Trump simply has more important things on his mind. Namely, himself. The United States’ war plans are being divulged to journalists like gossip on a second-rate Real Housewives spinoff, but the focus of the American president is squarely on a painting of himself that he doesn’t care for. Trump posted on Truth Social, his personal squawk box for various grievances, that he takes umbrage with a depiction of his face in the Colorado state capitol.The painting depicts Trump as full-faced, cherubic and without wrinkles. He almost looks younger, like a large baby in a suit. A boss baby, if you will. You might assume that at 78, Trump would jump at the chance to shave a few years off his face, but sadly, it seems he’d prefer to look like he was lit by the director of photography from Nosferatu.If I had to put my art critic hat on, I’d say Trump almost looks regal in the Colorado painting. Squint, and he resembles Henry VIII after a shave. You’d think he’d be flattered by that association. After all, Henry VIII had twice the number of wives Trump has. So far.But no, the ire of Trump came down fully on Sunday – and the painting was swiftly removed. “Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump said in his social media post.The state of Colorado is an easy target for Trump. He lost it by 11 points in 2024. The governor, Jared Polis, is a Democrat. The painting was actually crowdfunded in large part by Republicans, but even then, for Trump, it was a perceived insult. And Trump is the kind of person to perceive insults around every corner.“The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst,” he continued. I’m sure that compliment for Obama was one he typed with stubby-fingered frustration. No one should be getting the royal treatment but him. In a sense, that’s the most relatable thing about the man.Take a photo of me without my consent and chances are I will be horrified by the finished product – angles that make me look heavier, show off my ever-expanding bald spot or generally remind me of what I actually look like. The worst pictures are the ones that capture you in some gruesome motion – chewing your food, preparing to launch into a conversation or scratching some intimate area on your body. We’re used to our reversed image in a mirror, our own personal fantasyland where we can pick and choose how we see our flip-flopped face to ensure we leave the house with some semblance of self-esteem intact. Photos reveal what people – strangers and familiars alike – actually see when they look at us: the facial tics, the gestures, the lumps and bumps and frown lines.Worse yet is a painting or drawing. That anyone submits to one of those exaggerated drawings from carnivals or the beach is beyond me. Why would you want a caricature of you drawn by someone you’ve never met, giving you a giant head and a pair of rollerblades or a large pencil? Maybe someone should get one of these for Trump and see if he prefers it to the Henry VIII boss baby painting. “Sir, we thought you’d like this drawing of you surfing while wearing a backwards baseball hat and carrying a puppy in one hand.”There’s a caricature drawing of me on the wall of a bar in Los Angeles called Capri Club, if you ever find your way out here. My drawing sits among those of other regular patrons and luminaries of the neighborhood. It’s based off of a photo of me in front of said bar, having a martini. The moment captured is a lovely memory for me of a summer night well spent with friends and cocktails. The drawing, on the other hand, gives me deep anxiety. I look puffy, for starters. My substantial, jowly cheeks seem to grow every time I look at it, as though I have Dorian Gray-ed myself inside this bar. It’s very clearly me up there, but it’s not who I see myself to be. Granted, if I drew myself, I’d just be a wobbly stick with a circle for a head. So perhaps I shouldn’t be giving notes to artists.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe very act of existing is to perceive and to be perceived, often without you even knowing it. I am pained when I think about how other people look at me. I know I’m not alone in that self-conscious whinging and navel-gazing. I wish I could blithely ignore the cacophony of doubt, but I can’t manage it, and countless people in the world feel the same way.Perhaps that’s why I’m mildly shocked Trump is so concerned with how he looks in a painting in Colorado. This is a man who tells the world he never doubts himself, that he is resolute in his decision-making and is always in control. The first few months of his second term in office have been almost exclusively about proving how strong he is and that anyone who wrongs him will be punished.So why be so worried about a painting? Perhaps it’s that the painting exposes him, casts him as soft, childlike and ill-prepared to wear the clothes of an adult. His preferred image of himself is a backlit Batman villain rather than the backwards-aging Benjamin Button in Colorado. In that case, maybe the painting did its job.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist More

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      For the sake of US democracy, it’s time for Chuck Schumer to step down | Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin

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      In just two months, Donald Trump has launched an assault of staggering ferocity on America’s values, laws and people. The Democratic party faces a choice: does it lead the fight against authoritarianism and billionaire capture, or does it hunker down and hope the president implodes on his own? After last week’s legislative debacle, we’ve concluded that if Democrats want to fight, they need to replace the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, with someone who understands the stakes.Since November, our grassroots movement, Indivisible – led by regular people organizing nationwide – has been fighting back. Indivisible groups have pushed members of Congress, attended town halls, protested Elon Musk, and organized locally against Trump’s agenda. Everywhere we go – red, blue or purple – people ask why Democratic leadership doesn’t share their urgency.For months, we urged Senate Democratic leadership to use every tool at their disposal to fight back and raise the alarm. We asked them to stay unified against Trump’s nominees – a cabinet of billionaires and extremists who openly flout the law. We asked them to organize against Maga bills such as the Laken Riley Act, which expands Trump’s mass deportation powers. We asked them to use every procedural tool to halt business as usual. All too often the response has been: “We’re in the minority, we don’t have the votes.”This argument collapsed with the passage of a funding bill packed with Maga priorities. The funding bill required 60 votes to pass, giving Democrats rare leverage. They could have demanded safeguards against Musk’s raid of the government or at least stopped Republicans from making things worse. This was perhaps their only real chance to take a stand this year.Under Hakeem Jeffries’ leadership, House Democrats overwhelmingly united to oppose the bill, forcing the House speaker, Mike Johnson, to pass it with Republican votes. Then it reached the US Senate, where Schumer initially vowed to block it – but reversed course within 24 hours and gave Republicans the votes they needed.This was bad policy and worse politics. History shows that the party demanding new concessions in a funding fight loses public support – and Republicans were the ones making demands. Republican leaders and Trump himself were openly thrilled with Schumer. House Democrats felt betrayed. Nancy Pelosi, a master legislative strategist, put it bluntly: “I myself don’t give away anything for nothing. I think that’s what happened.”Schumer’s defense was that avoiding a shutdown would prevent further damage and stop Trump’s rise. But those with the most at stake disagreed. Litigators fighting Trump’s legal battles said passing the continuing resolution hurt their cases more than a shutdown. The federal employees’ union acknowledged that while a shutdown would be painful, a blank check for Trump to continue his rampage was worse. Yes, a shutdown would be an opportunity for Trump to wreak havoc on federal agencies – but he is doing precisely that already while all the lights are on. From the Center for American Progress to House Democrats to Never Trumpers, a broad coalition agreed: Democrats needed to take a stand.Even if one accepted Schumer’s rationale, his lack of strategy was indefensible. He knew for months this would be the Democrats’ only leverage point. There was no excuse for entering the week without a plan or for undercutting House Democrats after they took a tough vote.The real reason for Schumer’s surrender was a mystery until this week. In an interview with Chris Hayes following the backlash, he was asked if we were facing a constitutional crisis. His response: “We’re not there yet.”It was a stunning admission. The problem isn’t just Schumer’s strategy – it’s his perception of reality. He is conducting business as usual while the country burns.After the Senate Democratic collapse, we called an emergency meeting with over 1,300 Indivisible leaders across the country. The reaction was near-universal: shock, despair and rage. Our leaders – who are holding “empty chair” town halls to pressure Republican lawmakers hiding from constituents – couldn’t understand why Schumer wouldn’t fight as hard as they are. They felt betrayed. Ultimately, 91% of local leaders across blue, red and purple states voted for Indivisible to call on Schumer to step down.We made this call in sorrow, not anger. We’ve worked closely with Schumer over the years. We appreciate his achievements. We like him personally. But the events of the last four months have made painfully clear that the Democratic party is not going to climb out of this hole by relying on the same people who led us into it. We need a leader who understands we’re in an emergency and acts like it. We need our leaders to match the fervor of the people rising up in defense of America.That leader can emerge if we create the opening. Schumer’s fate is no longer in his hands. The Democratic senators who can demand a new leadership election answer to us – their constituents. They will act if we speak up. We get the party we demand – and for the sake of our democracy, we must demand more.

      Leah Greenberg is the co-executive director of Indivisible

      Ezra Levin is the co-executive director of Indivisible More

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      How to protect your phone and data privacy at the US border

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      Welcome to Opt Out, a semi-regular column in which we help you navigate your online privacy and show you how to say no to surveillance. The last column covered what to do with your 23andMe account after the company filed bankruptcy. If you’d like to skip to a section about a particular tip, click the “Jump to” menu at the top of this article.If you’re a visa or green card holder with plans to travel to the US, reports of people being turned away at airports over messages found on their devices might be prompting you to second-guess your travel plans. You might be asking whether Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can search your phone, whether you can opt out and what you should do to minimize your risks.The short answer is that yes, CBP can search your devices. Constitutional protections are generally weaker at US borders, including airports. You can try to opt out, but depending on your specific circumstances, you might not be willing to risk the potential ramifications of not complying, which can include the confiscation of your devices.Privacy experts say everyone should conduct a personal risk assessment – which should include your immigration status, travel history and what data you might have on your phone. There’s not a one-size-fits all solution because data that may seem sensitive to some may not be to others, depending on your circumstances. That assessment might affect your calculus of whether to push back if CBP attempts to search your phone, for instance, or how much you want to lock down your devices before heading to the airport.While CBP said it only searched about 47,000 devices of the 420 million people who crossed the US border in 2024, experts the Guardian spoke to say border enforcement has been unpredictable under the Trump administration, so figuring out whether you’re at risk of a device search is not as straightforward as it once was. French officials said a French scientist was recently turned away at an airport in Texas because immigration officers found texts that were critical of Trump on his phone.“The super-conservative perspective is to assume they are completely unhinged and that even the most benign reasons for travel are going to subject non-citizens to these device searches,” said Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit digital rights group.If you’re a US citizen, you must be admitted into the country. That said, some jurisdictions allow CBP to work with the FBI or local police to advance domestic investigations, so there are still some risks of your devices being searched for domestic reasons.There are steps you can take to make it harder for CBP officers to access your device and the data on it. So what should you do to protect the data on your phone from being searched? The main thing is to prepare ahead of heading to the airport. Here is what you should be thinking about:Decide if you will comply with a phone searchBefore you travel, start to prepare for the possibility of being pulled into secondary screening. First, you should decide if you’re going to comply if an immigration officer asks if they can search your device. They may ask for your phone password or for you to unlock the device. Ideally, you would unlock the device yourself and not share your password. You can decide not to give your consent, but that does come with its own risks.From a guide to the border from the EFF: “This presents a no-win dilemma. If a traveler complies, then the agents can scrutinize and copy their sensitive digital information. If a traveler declines, then the agents can seize their devices and subject the traveler to additional questioning and detention.”It’s possible that, if you refuse the search, the officer might decide that you are not worth the trouble because you do not present a high risk. They might let you go. On the flip side, though, declining could make the process longer or could result in border agents confiscating your device. If they do confiscate your device, make sure you ask for a property receipt so you can document that they have your device when you try to get it back. Even if you don’t give up your password, immigration officials can use various tools on your device to unlock it themselves. They can also try to guess your password, so make sure you have a strong and long password.There are a lot of reasons you might not want to risk being held back longer than you already have been or risk having your device confiscated – including that you don’t know how long border agents will keep your phone.If you plan to comply with a phone search to avoid any further complications, your phone might be searched either manually or with forensic tools. It is worthwhile to prepare for both types of searches.Turn your phone and Face ID off before entering the USThe EFF recommends turning your devices completely off before entering the US. This could return your phone or laptop to a heightened security state and, as a result, could make it harder for anyone to break the encryption on your device.Privacy advocates also recommend making sure your device requires a password to decrypt or unlock. If you use Face ID or a fingerprint to unlock your phone, for instance, it would be easier for an officer to use it to gain access to your device.Do not wipe your phoneYou might think the most protective options are to completely wipe your phone before traveling, use a burner or travel without a phone. But the EFF’s Cope said that could actually raise suspicions.“People are damned if they do and damned if they don’t,” Cope said. “If you cross the border with no data on your device, that itself can be seen as suspicious.”Instead, if you want to seem cooperative but do have data or texts stored on your phone that you wouldn’t want to be accessed, Cope suggests deleting that information selectively rather than wiping your whole device.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEncrypt your data and use a strong passwordThe most important step to take before you travel is to encrypt the data on your device, which is different than using encrypted messaging services like Signal. Device encryption can make it harder for CBP officers to access files on your phone or laptop or recover deleted files, even if they confiscate the device and subject it to sophisticated forensic tools.Fortunately, all recent models of both iPhones and most Android phones come with full-device encryption automatically turned on. On an Android, double check that yours is on in the “advanced settings” tab of your “Security” menu. You will want to choose a strong password that is not easy to guess so CBP can’t walk in the front door to your device. Here’s a good primer on how to make a strong password.“This encryption is only as good as the encryption passphrase someone uses on their device, though,” said EFF senior staff technologist Bill Budington. “So the best advice is to choose a strong, nine- to 12-random-character (or four- to five-word) passphrase for the device, and make sure that biometric unlocks like Face ID or Touch ID are turned off when going through sensitive areas like checkpoints or somewhere your device could be confiscated.”Laptops, on the other hand, do not all come with full-device encryption. You can use the encryption tools some of them offer to encrypt your data. MacOS has a tool called FileVault, which you can access by searching for it in the top right corner of your screen, and some Windows computers come with a tool called Bitlocker, which can be used to encrypt your device. The EFF has a full list of tools you can use on various operating systems here.For those of you traveling with a device owned by your employer or someone else, you will want to make sure to have a conversation with them before you travel to ensure your device is sufficiently protected.How to securely delete your dataIn addition to encrypting your devices, you should delete any specific texts, apps, photos, etc that you feel are sensitive or you wouldn’t want a government agent to see.Securely deleting this data requires a few steps and comes with limitations. If you are not wiping your phone entirely, as that may raise suspicions, you will probably opt to delete specific files. That more practical option may be effective for a manual or cursory search but may not be sufficient in the event of a more advanced search by US immigration personnel. Files may not be fully deleted, or there may be references to these files that remain on your device.On top of ensuring your device is encrypted, you will want to make sure that you’ve deleted your files from any trash folders as well. On iMessage, for instance, if you click on “filters” in the top left corner you’ll find a “recently deleted” folder. Make sure you’ve cleared texts from there as well. On iPhones, once a file is deleted from both the main iMessage interface and the “recently deleted” file, it is permanently deleted, according to the company.Cope suggests pre-emptively deleting some apps your don’t want to be searched. This protective method is imperfect because an advanced search could reveal that an app was installed, but it would be a way to avoid having your WhatsApp messages searched, for instance, in the case of a manual search.Move things on to a cloud storage serverDuring law enforcement searches inside the boundaries of the US, a cloud storage server is not more protected than your devices. At the border, however, there are currently policies in place that prohibit CBP from searching online cloud services. In practice, that means that immigration officers will have to put your phone in airplane mode before searching it.“They do specifically say officers are only authorized to look at data that are ‘resident on the device’,” Cope said. “So that is data that is actually on the hard drive of your phone, laptop or camera. They’re supposed to disconnect it from the internet, if it’s an internet-connected device.”If you have data that you don’t want to or can’t delete permanently for any reason, you can delete it off your device and store it on your cloud storage like iCloud, Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive.This is a high-level guide that may not touch on the specifics of your situation. For a full comprehensive guide on how to protect your devices at US borders, please visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. More