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    ‘Hope in my heart’: displaced Afghans in limbo as White House freezes refugee programs

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    View image in fullscreenThe 24-year-old Afghan woman wants to become a surgeon – and she had set her sights on training in the US.She wants to care for other women and girls, so they don’t have to be afraid to visit the doctor – so at least in one crucial aspect of their lives they won’t have to endure the unwanted advances, dismissive comments and blatant disrespect that she’s experienced from many of the men who have always surrounded her, first in her native Afghanistan and now in legal limbo in Pakistan.“I hope a lot that I will be a doctor in the future. I don’t know it will happen, but I hope,” she said. “It means that a woman is powerful, that if she wants to do something, she can.”Yet for the moment, she has no way to attend medical school anywhere. She can barely step outside the apartment in Islamabad where she and her two sisters, her teenage brother, and their mother spend each day terrified that police will arrest and deport them back to face Taliban rule.Simply as a woman in the Taliban’s Afghanistan her lifestyle would be severely restricted, but as Christians the whole family would literally be in mortal danger.Her family has documents from the United Nations Refugee Agency proving that they’re certified asylum seekers, and they were on the verge of getting the green light to come to the US.But to the Trump administration right now, these plans don’t matter – despite volunteer groups in Texas preparing for months to welcome them.To the police in Pakistan, where they are in exile, those UN documents don’t matter either. What matters is that the family is Afghan and is no longer wanted there.“Everywhere is policed. Every day, police come to our house. It’s too difficult for us,” said the woman in an interview over Zoom. The Guardian is withholding the family’s identity while they remain at risk.“In these days, we awake with a fear,” she said of her family. They have already been lying low in Pakistan for three years after fleeing Afghanistan.View image in fullscreenA few months ago, it seemed as though the family was finally on the cusp of relief, soon to fly to east Texas.“They were nearing the finish line. We didn’t have any certainty, they hadn’t actually been approved and travel wasn’t being scheduled yet. But we were right there – everything, all the screening, was done,” said Justin Reese, one member of a group of Texas volunteers who were getting ready to welcome the family.Then, on the first day of Donald Trump’s second term as president, one of his many immigration-related executive orders indefinitely suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) – and with it, the family’s chance at reaching imminent safety.“By every metric, they have played by the rules and they are being treated like this,” said Reese. “It’s very damaging to them individually, and it’s damaging, I think, to the future security of the US, for us to be seen as this mercurial, as this incoherent.”A federal district judge temporarily blocked Trump’s effective ban on refugees coming to the US, offering those on the brink of resettlement a flicker of hope, but a circuit panel has now rolled back that decision, saying only people already approved must be allowed to come. And whether an administration ideologically opposed to refugee resettlement will resume the program at scale – or in any meaningful way – remains an open question, particularly after the state department has tried to terminate essential funding agreements with all of the US’s resettlement agencies for the entire fiscal year. That was even before the prospect of new Trump travel restrictions on Afghans entering the US, and before immigration officials suddenly paused green card processing for refugees already here.“I don’t know how you get to a place of suspending refugee resettlement as policy without a series of ideological turns that I don’t understand how to unwind,” Reese said.Before the ascent of Trumpism, USRAP enjoyed widespread bipartisan support for myriad reasons: its protection of American allies and related benefits to national security; its solidarity with “frontline states” such as Turkey and Colombia that are taking in so many of the world’s displaced people; its signal to other nations that the US cares about human rights.In fact, even before the refugee resettlement program was written into US law, organizations cropped up across the nation in response to the atrocities of the second world war – and the US’s role in rejecting refugees early on who then became victims of the Holocaust. These agencies welcomed displaced people from around the world, many fleeing communism from the Baltic states, Hungary or Vietnam.After Congress established a more universal, standardized refugee framework, general support for resettlement continued, even following the 11 September 2001 attacks that reshaped much of the US immigration system. Sometimes, scandals would arise within the program, but administrations would address them and move on.Then, in 2015, Trump ran for president and soon started trumpeting a narrative that refugees posed a security threat to American communities, despite them being some of the most thoroughly vetted newcomers in the country.“There [was] already a kind of deteriorating bipartisan support,” Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, the humanitarian organization, recalled of that moment.By fiscal year 2020, the first Trump administration had gutted the US’s refugee resettlement infrastructure and set the annual ceiling on refugee admissions at 18,000 – the lowest cap on record.When Joe Biden took office, his administration eventually rebuilt resettlement capacity in the US, with more than 100,000 people welcomed in his last full fiscal year in office.To do so, Biden made innovations, such as an initiative called the Welcome Corps, which invited Americans and green card holders to form private groups and financially sponsor refugees for resettlement in the US.“I think the idea of the Welcome Corps was that it was politically foolproof,” said Schacher, and that “because it relied on private funds and private individuals to step up … that these folks would push back against the Trump administration and make sure that folks still come. And they would step in if government funding was withdrawn. I think it remains to be seen if that’s actually going to work politically.”Reese and his family knew that they wanted to participate in the Welcome Corps. A software developer by trade, he had spent the better part of a decade learning about the politics and policy of offering refuge.Just before the coronavirus pandemic gripped the US, he traveled to Greece to serve in a refugee camp with 20,000 residents representing 40 different nationalities. The corner of camp where he volunteered hosted mostly Afghans, and he returned home to east Texas with new friendships and phone numbers from within that community.So when Kabul fell to the Taliban and the US withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021, his phone started buzzing with alerts from worried Afghans whose loved ones were still stranded in danger. He sprang into action, attempting to cut through red tape to try to get desperate families in Afghanistan on US evacuation flights. It was frantic and exhausting.View image in fullscreen“Everything felt like an inch away and then a mile away at the same time, because you just knew if you just were smart enough or well-resourced enough, then you could make this happen,” he remembered.Simultaneously, the Afghan family of five he would eventually try to resettle through the Welcome Corps was fleeing Afghanistan for Pakistan. The Taliban’s return to power was the final straw that dashed any hope they had for stability in their homeland, though it was hardly their first brush with persecution.As members of the Hazara ethnic community, their people had long been victims of massacres and genocides, including by the Taliban at the turn of the 21st century. Having converted from Shia Islam to Christianity, the family had been targeted by their neighbors, beaten and forced to move many times. And as a household in which the patriarch died about a decade ago, the women had been subject to constant unwanted attention and harassment from unscrupulous men.“We miss, a lot, our country,” one of the daughters said. “We miss our memories that we had. But unfortunately we can’t go back because I have lots of bad memories from Taliban … situations, and it makes me sad.” As she described the family’s experience, she wept.Her family met Reese in person when they were all in Islamabad in late 2023. Until then, they had been names on a list for Reese, names he was still trying to help find refuge. After getting to know the family face to face, he wanted to bring them to his own community, where he thought their life experiences would resonate with people.He found willing volunteers back in east Texas. With 10 members, Reese’s Welcome Corps group is far larger than required and includes a veteran who served in Afghanistan, a missionary’s kid who grew up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a couple whose children work with Afghans abroad, and others uniquely equipped to help.Offers of housing and other support flowed in. And Reese’s commitment to sponsor the Afghan family made a huge difference in their lives, even as they remained in a precarious situation abroad. They suddenly felt as though they were waiting in Pakistan for a reason, and they stopped worrying as much about their future while imagining safety together in the US.“It made my family so happy,” one of the daughters said. In Texas, she hoped, “we can continue our studies and we can continue our lives without any worries”.Now Reese’s garage is full of donated household items from an online wishlist to outfit what would have been the family’s new home in Tyler, Texas. It’s unclear when or if the family will ever arrive – news Reese had to deliver personally.“I have a hard time talking about how it made us feel without being angry because I do feel that it’s not just unnecessary and harmful, but strategically incompetent,” he said. “I don’t believe that anybody involved in turning [USRAP] off had to deliver phone calls like the ones that we had to over the last few weeks.”Despite the setback and the increasingly serious threats of deportation the family faces in Islamabad, one of the daughters expressed gratitude for “brother Justin”, as she calls Reese, and appreciates at least hearing an update on their case.Trump’s actions have made her “sad, but I hope”, she said, adding: “I have hope in my heart that this program will open again.” More

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    Trans soldiers served their country. Now the US is rolling back their healthcare

    When Savannah Blake joined the air force at 22 years old, she was looking for stable employment and a way out of poverty. For the last few years of her service, she worked as a cyberdefense operator in the intelligence squadron. But the work, which involved overseeing computers operating drone surveillance, eventually took a toll on her mental health.“If I had to watch any more of this, I was going to not be alive anymore,” Blake said, who says she experienced suicidal ideations. “I just felt like the bad guy. I felt evil.”View image in fullscreenAfter seven years of service, Blake, who is trans, left the air force with PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder and chronic depression. But she also left with the hope she could finally live as herself without fear of harassment from fellow service members. Last year, she began receiving estrogen through the Department of Veterans Affairs. Now she fears for the future of that care.“Every day, I wake up and I don’t know what the rules are anymore in the country I live in,” said Blake. “It’s becoming increasingly hard to see a future where we’re OK.”Blake is one of about 134,000 transgender veterans living in the US. It’s an alarming time to be someone like her. On his first day in office, Donald Trump issued an executive order recognizing only two sexes, stamping out gender identity in federal documents and public spaces. A series of other orders have attempted to restrict trans rights, including participation in sports, access to gender-affirming care for youth, educational materials in schools and military service.The crackdown has sent shock waves through the VA, which functions as one of the US’s largest healthcare providers, offering free or low-cost care to more than 9 million veterans. After Trump’s inauguration, some VA health centers began removing LGBTQ+ affiliated objects, including pride flags, rainbow magnets, stickers and posters.When Mary Brinkmeyer’s medical center ordered the removal of LGBTQ+ patient flyers and other affirming material days after Trump’s executive orders, she refused, and ultimately resigned. For nearly three years, she had worked as a psychologist and LGBTQ+ veteran care coordinator at the VA facility in Hampton, Virginia. Hospital leadership ordered her to stop LGBTQ+ outreach, advocacy and gender-affirming training to departments because it could be considered “gender ideology”.View image in fullscreen“We all have ethics codes in our professions that say that you’re supposed to do no harm, and that if you’re caught between institutional pressure and the ethics code, you’re supposed to resolve it in a way that’s consistent with the ethics code,” Brinkmeyer said.Brinkmeyer fears for the mental health of trans veterans, whom she saw experience “really intense suicidal crises” after Trump announced a ban on trans people enlisting in the military in 2017. After the election last November, some of her patients requested the removal of trans identifiers in medical records, and others withdrew from coverage over fears of being targeted and losing access to care. For many, those fears have become a reality.Rollbacks became official in March when the VA rescinded directive 1341, a policy that ensured “the respectful delivery of health care to transgender and intersex Veterans”, and announced the phasing out of gender-affirming medical care. The agency had been providing gender-affirming treatment including hormone therapy, prosthetics, hair removal, voice coaching and pre-surgical evaluation including letters of support for more than a decade. While cisgender veterans will still be able to access these treatments, veterans diagnosed with gender dysphoria are now excluded. Mental health services for trans patients and existing VA and military coverage for hormone therapy won’t be affected, according to the memo, which also formalizes banning trans patients from using facilities that align with their gender identity.View image in fullscreen“I am scared for the huge amount of people that are about to be forcibly separated, because the VA is not there to actually catch these people,” Blake said, referring to an influx of trans service members who could be forced out of the military under Trump’s transgender military ban. “I hate that the ladder was pulled up behind me.”‘A death sentence’The changes have put trans veterans seeking gender-affirming care in limbo. It has also created a climate of fear for the trans veterans already receiving hormone therapy, who worry it could be pulled at any time.View image in fullscreenThat’s the reality for Kaydi Rogers. While at the moment her hormone therapy will not be disrupted, she is terrified of losing access to estrogen if the VA continues its crackdown.Rogers spent about five decades acquiring estrogen pills through pharmacies in Mexico or friends with prescriptions.“I was desperate,” Rogers said. “I didn’t know any way of doing anything about what was going on with me. It was not a common thing back in the 70s and 80s to come out trans.”She finally switched to VA coverage because of the potential health risks of taking unregulated pills. But Rogers said if the VA ever stopped prescribing her estrogen, the desperation would return and she would again rely on self-medication for survival.Beyond her concerns about continued access to care, Rogers feels the loss of welcoming and safe spaces inside VA clinics. She says she tries to avoid drawing attention to herself during appointments, fearful of being harassed or attacked.“Before last year, every time I went to the VA, I went dressed as Kaydi and no one seemed to bother me or care,” Rogers said. “Now, not so much.”Other veterans share these safety concerns, including Lindsay Church, the executive director and co-founder of Minority Veterans of America. Church, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, has experienced harassment and discrimination inside VA clinics in the past, and began carrying a printed copy of directive 1341 to prove they were entitled to treatment that respected their gender identity. With that directive rescinded and no guarantee of protection, they’ve canceled VA appointments and sought care elsewhere.View image in fullscreenThe veterans affairs secretary, Doug Collins, stated that trans veterans “will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law”. In response to questions about the new policy, the VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, directed the Guardian to the press release from 17 March.Church said the discriminatory climate is having a chilling effect on trans veterans, regardless of whether their care plans have been discontinued under the VA’s new policy. “If I can’t use [my healthcare plan] because I’m scared of being harassed and intimidated, and experiencing physical violence in a bathroom, I can’t use the system,” they said.They called the policy reversal a “death sentence”.View image in fullscreen‘We tell them we will take care of you, and that’s a lie’Trans veterans face higher rates of homelessness, unemployment, PTSD and military sexual trauma compared with cisgender veterans. They are also twice as likely to die by suicide compared with cisgender veterans, and almost six times more likely than the general US population. Advocates and providers say these psychiatric and socioeconomic risk factors, when combined with the loss of an affirming medical environment, places an already vulnerable population even more at risk.One VA clinical social worker, who requested anonymity, said his LGBTQ+ patients don’t feel safe and are experiencing more suicidal ideations than before Trump took office.“I have seen an increase in suicide risk evaluations,” he said. “I’ve done more of those in the last two months than I’ve done the last two years.”View image in fullscreenAnother LGBTQ+ veteran care coordinator said a trans patient attempted suicide at her facility after Trump’s inauguration, and she fears there could be more people who attempt the same. She said notifying trans patients of the policy change has been heartbreaking.“I’ve worked for the past two and a half years to gain people’s trust, and now all of a sudden, I’m pulling out the rug from under them,” she said. “It feels terrible.”She had to tell one patient wanting to start hormone therapy that the VA could no longer help them, and is preparing the same message for trans patients on a months-long waitlist to begin treatment. While she has been looking for ways to provide alternatives, many of her trans patients live in rural areas where accessing gender-affirming care is difficult.Other VA employees see cutting trans healthcare as a betrayal of the benefits promised to service members when they enlist.“We’re asking these 17-year-olds to give their entire bodies to the US government,” said one VA nurse, who requested anonymity over fear of losing her job. “And they’re given one promise, which is that we will care for them. And this is part of care, whether you like it or not.”Gender-affirming medical care has been endorsed by every major medical association in the US, and medical providers say that politicians shouldn’t be allowed to decide how they care for their patients.“You’re giving so much to the military. You give your whole life, you have no say over where you live,” the nurse said. “Then we tell them we will take care of you, and that’s a lie. We’re lying to people – and not just trans veterans, all veterans.” More

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    Democrats hail major win as Susan Crawford delivers blow to Trump and Musk in Wisconsin – US politics live

    Susan Crawford’s victory in the race for a seat on the Wisconsin supreme court has been hailed as a major win for Democrats after the contest was framed as a referendum on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s popularity.Crawford, a liberal judge from Dane county, defeated Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general and conservative judge from Waukesha county, after Musk and groups associated with the tech billionaire spent millions to boost his candidacy in what became the most expensive judicial contest in American history.More than $80m was spent on the race, with Musk and affiliated groups spending more than $20m alone. Musk reprised some of the tactics that he used last fall to help Trump win, including offering $100 to people who signed a petition opposing “activist judges” and offering $1m checks to a smaller number of voters.However, two US House of Representatives seats in Florida, vacated by cabinet appointees, went to Republicans on Tuesday, dashing Democratic hopes for an upset victory in the first federal special elections held since the president began his second term.Democratic candidates Josh Weil and Gay Valimont were on track to lose the solidly red districts by much smaller margins than the more than 30 points that Democrats lost them by in November.Elsewhere, Cory Booker, the Democratic US senator from New Jersey, broke the record for longest speech ever by a lone senator – beating the record first established by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” Booker said near the start of his speech. “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our nation is in crisis.” He concluded his speech after 25 hours and five minutes.The result in Wisconsin means that liberals will keep a 4-3 ideological majority on the state supreme court.That majority is hugely significant because the court will hear major cases on abortion and collective bargaining rights. The court could also potentially consider cases that could cause the state to redraw its eight congressional districts, which are now drawn to advantage Republicans.Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, reported “historic turnout” for a spring election, with election officials saying in a statement Tuesday evening that due to the “unprecedented high turnout,” seven polling places ran out of ballots. The city’s elections commission said it was working to replenish resources to voters during the evening rush.Susan Crawford won the race for a seat on the Wisconsin supreme court on Tuesday, a win which the liberal judge said showed “our courts are not for sale”.“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy,” Crawford said in a speech at her victory night event in Madison. “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”With more than 84% of the vote tallied, Crawford led Schimel by nearly 10 percentage points.In remarks on Tuesday night, Schimel said he and his team “didn’t leave anything on the field” and announced that he had conceded the race in a call to his opponent before taking the stage. When his supporters began to boo, Schimel stopped them. “No, you gotta accept the results,” he said, adding: “The numbers aren’t gonna turn around. They’re too bad, and we’re not gonna pull this off.”Musk said hours after the result that “The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary” and that the most important thing was that a vote on the addition of voter ID requirements passed.The UK government will not engage in a “kneejerk” response to any tariffs imposed by Donald Trump, as it warned there will be a “difficult period” ahead in trade relations with the US and called for calm, Alexandra Topping reports.The education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the government had been “working through every eventuality”. “We still have negotiations under way with our US counterparts about securing an economic deal, but we will always act in the national interest and the interest of the British people.”However, others are urging Keir Starmer to take a different approach, as Andrew Sparrow reports in the UK politics live blog. While the main opposition party, the Conservatives, have supported the UK PM’s stance of attempting to curry favour with Trump, other parties such as the Liberal Democrats have urged the UK to form a united front with the EU and Canada to retaliate.Donald Trump is due announce new tariffs at the White House on Wednesday afternoon and is threatening to unleash a global trade war on what he has called “liberation day”.Global stock markets, corporate executives and economists have all been shaken but no details of Wednesday’s plans have been made available ahead of the announcement. The president is set to speak at 4pm ET (9pm GMT, 10pm CET). White House officials said the implementation of the tariffs would be immediate.Trump hopes to bring manufacturing back to the US, respond to what he considers unfair trade policies from other countries, increase tax revenue and incentivize crackdowns on migration and drug trafficking.The implementation of his tariffs has so far been haphazard, with multiple rollbacks and delays and vague promises that have yet to come to fruition. The threats have soured US relations with its largest trading partners. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has called them “unjustified” and pledged to retaliate. The European Union has said it has a “strong plan” to retaliate.Ahead of the announcement, Trump repeated the idea of imposing so-called reciprocal tariffs, where the US would tax imports at the same rates that a country uses for US exports. Trump has specifically mentioned countries like South Korea, Brazil and India, along with the EU, as being possible targets for reciprocal tariffs.“The world has been ripping off the United States for the last 40 years and more,” Trump told NBC over the weekend. “All we’re doing is being fair.”Susan Crawford’s victory in the race for a seat on the Wisconsin supreme court has been hailed as a major win for Democrats after the contest was framed as a referendum on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s popularity.Crawford, a liberal judge from Dane county, defeated Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general and conservative judge from Waukesha county, after Musk and groups associated with the tech billionaire spent millions to boost his candidacy in what became the most expensive judicial contest in American history.More than $80m was spent on the race, with Musk and affiliated groups spending more than $20m alone. Musk reprised some of the tactics that he used last fall to help Trump win, including offering $100 to people who signed a petition opposing “activist judges” and offering $1m checks to a smaller number of voters.However, two US House of Representatives seats in Florida, vacated by cabinet appointees, went to Republicans on Tuesday, dashing Democratic hopes for an upset victory in the first federal special elections held since the president began his second term.Democratic candidates Josh Weil and Gay Valimont were on track to lose the solidly red districts by much smaller margins than the more than 30 points that Democrats lost them by in November.Elsewhere, Cory Booker, the Democratic US senator from New Jersey, broke the record for longest speech ever by a lone senator – beating the record first established by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” Booker said near the start of his speech. “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our nation is in crisis.” He concluded his speech after 25 hours and five minutes. More

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    UK won’t engage in ‘kneejerk’ response to Trump tariffs, says minister

    The UK government will not engage in a “kneejerk” response to any tariffs imposed by Donald Trump, as it warned there would be a “difficult period” ahead in trade relations with the US and called for calm.The US president is to announce his latest round of tariffs on Wednesday – which he has called “liberation day” – sparking concerns over a global trade war.The prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will face questions from MPs in parliament before the anticipated new tariffs that could derail their economic plans.Speaking before the announcement, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said the government had been “working through every eventuality”.“We do recognise this is likely to be a very challenging period,” she told BBC Breakfast. “We still have negotiations under way with our US counterparts about securing an economic deal, but we will always act in the national interest and the interest of the British people.”Phillipson said the government would “always act in the national interest and the interest of the British people”, adding: “I think what they want, and what business and industry wants, is to for us to maintain a calm and quite pragmatic approach during this time and not engage in a kneejerk response, because the last thing that anybody would want is a trade war with the US.”Since taking office, Trump has rattled global stock markets and caused consternation among business leaders by announcing and then delaying plans to impose tariffs on foreign imports.The threats have soured US relations with its largest trading partners. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has called them “unjustified” and said his country would react robustly. The European Union has said it has a “strong plan” to retaliate.Asked whether the UK government would consider abandoning its fiscal rules in the event of exceptional trade circumstances, Phillipson said “fiscal rules do matter”.“They matter because we have to demonstrate that we have a clear sense about how we manage the public finances,” she told Sky News.“I think your viewers will have seen in recent years with the Liz Truss government, what happens when you have a government that doesn’t have a grip on the public finances and isn’t prepared to make choices about priorities. Our fiscal rules are important, and they do matter.”Speaking about the government’s announcement of up to 4,000 new childcare places in new or expanded school-based nurseries, Phillipson said it was the “first step” towards achieving the 100,000 places promised by Labour last year.“We know the difference that early years education makes to children’s life chances, and also your viewers will know how important it is that they can access childcare places,” she said. More

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    Wednesday briefing: What the latest wave of tariffs mean for the US, UK, Europe – and you

    Good morning. According to Donald Trump, it’s “liberation day”: the advent of a new trade order in which Americans reap the benefit of massive tariffs on imports, and the rest of the world picks up the tab.Unsurprisingly, the United States’ trading partners tend to take a very different view. And they are doing everything they can to avoid being passive targets for the White House’s carnivorous vision of American exceptionalism.Trump will announce his plans at 4pm Eastern Time (9pm UK) in the White House’s Rose Garden – but it is still not clear whether a flat rate will be applied globally, or if the charge will vary by country instead. Even at the last minute, countries including the UK are hoping that they might win exceptions; political leaders, and financial markets, are on edge.For today’s newsletter, Guardian correspondents explain what the tariffs mean around the world – and when you can expect to feel the impact in your pocket. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

    Israel-Gaza war | Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz announced a major expansion of the military operation in Gaza on Wednesday, saying large areas of the enclave would be seized and added to the security zones of Israel. Follow the latest here.

    Israel-Gaza war | Some of the bodies of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, killed by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave in Gaza, were found with their hands or legs tied and had gunshot wounds to the head and chest, according to two eyewitnesses. The accounts add to evidence pointing to a potentially serious war crime on 23 March.

    UK news | More than 20 women have contacted police to say they fear they may have been attacked by the serial rapist Zhenhao Zou, with detectives fearing there may be even more victims to come. Zou, 28, was convicted last month of raping three women in London and seven in China between 2019 and 2024.

    US politics | Cory Booker, the Democratic US senator from New Jersey, has broken the record for longest speech ever by a lone senator by spending 25 hours and five minutes inveighing against Donald Trump in the chamber. Booker’s speech was intended to highlight the “grave and urgent” danger that Trump poses to democracy.

    Cinema | Val Kilmer, the actor best known for his roles in Top Gun, Batman Forever and The Doors, has died at the age of 65. His daughter Mercedes told the New York Times that the cause of death was pneumonia.
    In depth: Concessions, retaliation, ‘friendshoring’ – and a new mood of volatilityView image in fullscreenOn Monday, Donald Trump told reporters that he had “settled” on a tariff plan – but according to CNN, White House officials were still presenting him with options on Tuesday. And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that he was “always up” for a phone call or negotiation with foreign leaders hoping to plead their case.That suggests the satisfaction Trump takes in the power he is able to exert through the United States’ economic might. And whereas in his first term he appeared sensitive to the markets giving his economic policies the thumbs down, he seems genuinely more bullish this time around. Even on the question of whether consumers will pay more, he has so far stuck to the line that the cost will be worth it in the end.“I couldn’t care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American-made cars,” he said of tariffs on foreign cars on Sunday. And last month, of the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, he said: “We may have, short term, a little pain. People understand that.”Here’s what that stance means around the world.UK | What is Downing Street’s strategy?View image in fullscreenLast night, Pippa Crerar, Heather Stewart and Richard Partington reported that the UK is ready to offer a significant reduction in its digital services tax, a 2% levy on UK revenues that applies to big American tech firms including Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, eBay, and Apple.But while business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has insisted that the UK is in “the best possible position of any country to reach an agreement”, Downing Street acknowledges that it is unlikely to get a deal before tariffs come in on a global scale.“They’ve been aiming at an exemption ever since Trump was inaugurated,” Pippa, the Guardian’s political editor, said – one key reason that Peter Mandelson, a trade expert, was appointed as US ambassador. “Trump has talked about ‘being nice’ to countries that ‘haven’t made a fortune’ out of the US – they hope that’s aimed at us.”“They remain hopeful he’ll row back quickly because they say a trade deal is ready to go,” she added. “Despite what they say, the trade deal is as much or more about avoiding tariffs as having a brilliant economic relationship. So it’s a defensive move.”As well as the digital services tax, Trump appears to view VAT as unfair. “I just don’t see how they could change that,” Pippa said. “It’s paid by all companies, not just US ones. And there’s some anger within Labour that the US is trying to interfere with domestic taxation systems.”That speaks to some of the risks of caving to Trump’s demands. “They’re always thinking of the politics of it,” Pippa said. “But they believe that it’s worth a few bad headlines back home about sucking up to Trump to avoid the potential damage of a full blown trade war with the US which could cost our economy billions.”Markets | What kind of impact are we seeing?“We’ve had plenty of volatility already this year, partly because many analysts were complacent about how disruptive Trump would be,” said Graeme Wearden, who runs the Guardian’s daily business liveblog.“Several Wall Street firms have already cut their end-of-year forecasts for the US stock market in recent weeks, which shows that some of the recent drama is being priced in. But, having seen the US president announce tariffs against Mexico and Canada, and then delay them, investors probably won’t assume the Rose Garden announcement will be the end of the story.”MCSI’s index of global stocks showed a 4.5% fall in March, the biggest decline since September 2022. But that impact has not been evenly distributed. “There’s been a clear rotation out of US stocks this year, and into Europe,” Graeme said. “While the S&P 500 index of US shares is down 4.5% during 2025, the pan-European Stoxx 600 has jumped 6%.” The FTSE 100 has enjoyed its best quarter since 2022 as traders have looked for alternatives to US firms.If you’re looking for other signs that this is a nervous moment, the Cboe Volatility Index (Wall Street’s “fear gauge”), has climbed by a third in the last week – and is up 50% on a year ago. That is “a sign that investors expect volatile times”, Graeme said. But he added: “It was three times higher during the 2008 financial crisis, showing that a) investors aren’t in a full-blown panic, and b) there’s room for more volatility.”World | How are other countries responding?The UK is not the only country to seek carve-outs from Trump’s threatened universal tariffs: Japan, for example, has tried to persuade the US its manufacturers should be exempted from the 25% car tariff, and South Korea has sought an exemption from steel and aluminium exports.But the wider pattern is of major economic counterparts seeking to respond in kind. “Certainly the EU is expected to retaliate, and we’ve already seen Canada, for instance, hit back,” said economics editor Heather Stewart. “They’re most likely to try and pick up on specific products that hit the US without screwing up their own supply chains too much … Retaliation will tend to make the economic impact of tariffs worse; but politically, it’s understandable that countries want to look tough.”The other major plank of the global response has been an acceleration in moves towards “friendshoring” – the strategy of reorienting trade policies towards trusted allies with a more reliable approach. China, Japan and South Korea are holding talks over a new free trade deal, for example.“It was already happening to some extent,” Heather said, partly because of “renewed awareness of extended supply chains that came with Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But I would definitely expect more deals that exclude the US.”Cost of living | When am I going to start feeling the impact?It’s still too early for the specific costs attached to tariffs to be felt in a major way by consumers – but “the price impact could already be beginning”, economics correspondent Richard Partington said. “Some economists reckon firms will raise their prices under the cover of tariffs, with the assumption that consumers think prices will rise – even if tariffs on those goods are never actually introduced.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile that is hard to quantify, there is evidence from the US during Trump’s first term – when the cost of clothes dryers went up because of a tariff on imported washing machines – that it is a plausible path. Something similar might happen in the UK on goods sold from the US using components sourced from overseas, Richard said – but it’s also possible that “trade reallocation”, where countries send exports that might have gone to the US to other trading partners, could lead to price cuts.Consumers will be affected in other ways that are less direct – but no less real. There has been a marked impact on consumer confidence surveys, Richard said, and businesses are holding back on their spending plans. “The potential UK impact has been best spelled out so far by the OBR,” Richard said. “In the worst case scenario of global trade disputes escalating to include 20 percentage point rises in tariffs between the USA and the rest of the world, this could reduce UK GDP by a peak of 1%.”That would wipe out all of Rachel Reeves’ storied fiscal headroom by the fifth year of forecasts, making tax rises in the autumn inevitable. Uncertainty is another intangible but consequential factor, he added – “like a slow puncture on the global and UK economy”. You can keep juddering on – but it’s anybody’s guess when you’ll suddenly veer off the road.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

    The daily deluge of news has made many people turn off their televisions, unsubscribe from papers and avoid news websites. This phenomenon of news avoidance is growing across the board. Michael Savage takes a look at how newsrooms are responding. Nimo

    Oliver Wainwright’s writing on architecture is always compulsively enjoyable, and his review of a new student complex in Oxford meets those expectations. With “rhubarb and custard-coloured stonework” and a “bulbous roof of polygonal scales”, the overall effect is a “hallucinatory sense that you might have been swallowed into the belly of a cuddly toy”. Archie

    Reviewing culture has had an outsized influence on my decision-making: less than a 4.5 out of 5 rating and I likely won’t go to a restaurant or buy a product. But how helpful is it really? Chloë Hamilton asks what this level of “mutual surveillance” is doing to our lives. Nimo

    On the one hand, Daniel Lavelle has two degrees and two books to his name; on the other, he left education at 14 and started working life in a cotton mill. So where does he fit into Britain’s suffocating class system? His attempt to make sense of it all has the vital quality of thinking out loud, but no straightforward answers. Archie

    I recently started Benjamín Labatut’s novel The Maniac and I have never felt so engrossed in a book that focusses so closely on mathematics and physics. In this disquieting book that spans a century, Labatut examines the dark foundations of our modern world and the extraordinary and troubled minds behind it. Nimo
    SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Bukayo Saka scored the decisive goal in Arenal’s 2-1 win against Fulham seven minutes after coming off the bench on his return from injury. In the night’s other Premier League matches, Nottingham Forest beat Manchester United 1-0 and Wolves beat West Ham 1-0.Cricket | Charlotte Edwards has been named as the new England women’s head coach. The former England captain put her hat in the ring in February, when changes were expected after a disastrous tour of Australia last winter in which England lost the Ashes by 16 points to nil.Rugby | There remains a “high degree of uncertainty” over whether tens of millions of pounds paid to rugby union clubs and other sports teams during the Covid-19 pandemic will ever be repaid, a House of Commons committee has warned. The committee said that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been “overly optimistic” about loans worth £474m.The front pagesView image in fullscreen“PM offers US tech firms tax cut in return for lower Trump tariffs” says the Guardian’s splash headline, while the Telegraph’s version is “Starmer’s 11th-hour bid to halt trade war”. It’s “Trump trade madness” and “CARnage” on the front of the Mirror while the Times has “Firms told to brace for impact of Trump tariffs”. The Daily Mail finds reason to be cheerful: “Trump’s tariffs threaten crisis for Reeves” and the Express runs with “Don’t provoke new trade war that ‘makes UK poorer’,” saying Kemi Badenoch doesn’t want Starmer to retaliate. In the i they’ve gone with “UK told to ‘prepare for the worst’ as Trump begins his global trade war”. In times like these, trust the Financial Times with your money: “Investors flock to gold as fears mount on eve of Trump tariff announcement”. “Student rapist: 23 more victims” is the top story in the Metro.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenCould Marine Le Pen’s guilty verdict help fuel the far right?The parliamentary leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, has been banned from public office for five years for embezzlement, ruining her chance of a presidential run. Angelique Chrisafis reportsCartoon of the day | Pete SongiView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenJoy Ebaide, a Nigerian solo traveller, has embarked on many journeys across Africa, which all came with their own challenges. A heart-stopping encounter with a black mamba while riding her motorbike in Tanzania was terrifying, but it did not put her off travelling. Instead, it fuelled her desire to keep exploring. Ebaide embarked on a five-month solo journey from Mombasa to Lagos in 2024, riding a Tekken 250cc motorbike across Africa’s rugged terrains. Her travels, shared on social media, not only highlight the fun experiences but also shed light on the challenges faced by those with “weaker” passports.Ebaide is not alone in her pursuit of adventure despite these obstacles. Alma Asinobi, after facing visa refusals, set out to break a world record for visiting all seven continents. “The trip itself is a victory. Because historically, travelling as a black woman has an additional layer of complexity … I just want more women to know that you can do things, and it’s OK whether it works or not: just do things,” she says.Bored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

    Quick crossword

    Cryptic crossword

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    Wisconsin supreme court race: liberal Susan Crawford beats Musk-backed candidate

    Susan Crawford won the race for a seat on the Wisconsin supreme court on Tuesday, a major win for Democrats who had framed the race as a referendum on Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s popularity.Crawford, a liberal judge from Dane county, defeated Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general and conservative judge from Waukesha county, after Musk and groups associated with the tech billionaire spent millions to boost his candidacy in what became the most expensive judicial contest in American history.“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy,” Crawford said in a speech at her victory night event in Madison. “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”With more than 84% of the vote tallied, Crawford led Schimel by nearly 10 percentage points.In remarks on Tuesday night, Schimel said he and his team “didn’t leave anything on the field” and announced that he had conceded the race in a call to his opponent before taking the stage. When his supporters began to boo, Schimel stopped them. “No, you gotta accept the results,” he said, adding: “The numbers aren’t gonna turn around. They’re too bad, and we’re not gonna pull this off.”Musk said hours after the result that “The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary” and that the most important thing was that a vote on the addition of voter ID requirements passed.The result means that liberals will keep a 4-3 ideological majority on the state supreme court. That majority is hugely significant because the court will hear major cases on abortion and collective bargaining rights. The court could also potentially consider cases that could cause the state to redraw its eight congressional districts, which are currently drawn to advantage Republicans.View image in fullscreenMilwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, reported “historic turnout” for a spring election, with election officials saying in a statement Tuesday evening that due to the “unprecedented high turnout,” seven polling places ran out of ballots. The city’s elections commission said it was working to replenish resources to voters during the evening rush.A combined more than $80m was spent on the race, topping the previous record of some $51m that was spent in the 2023 Wisconsin state supreme court race. Elon Musk and affiliated groups spent more than $20m alone. Musk reprised some of the tactics that he used last fall to help Trump win, including offering $100 to people who signed a petition opposing “activist judges” and offering $1 million checks to voters.Pointing to the potential to redraw House districts, Musk had said the race “might decide the future of America and western civilization”.Democrats seized on Musk’s involvement in the race to energize voters who were upset about the wrecking ball he and his unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, have taken to federal agencies. They raised the stakes of an already high-stakes contest by holding out Wisconsin as a test case for Musk, saying that if he succeeded, he would take his model across the country.“Growing up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, I never thought I would be taking on the richest man in the world for justice,” Crawford said on Tuesday night. “And we won.”After Musk’s involvement became public, Democrats saw an explosion in grassroots donations and people “coming out of the woodwork” to get involved in the race, Ben Wikler, the state’s Democratic party chair, said last month. When the party tested its messaging, Wikler said, messages that highlighted Musk’s involvement in the race motivated voters who were otherwise disengaged from politics.Jeannine Ramsey, 65, voted in Madison on Tuesday for Crawford because she said the “Elon Musk-supported Brad Schimel” wouldn’t rule fairly on the issues most important to her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think it’s shameful that Elon Musk can come here and spend millions of dollars and try to bribe the citizens,” Ramsey said. “I don’t think it should be allowed. He doesn’t live in our state, and I don’t think he should be able to buy this election. It makes me angry.”Trump won Wisconsin in the presidential election in November by less than 1 percentage point – the closest margin of any battleground state.Because turnout in a state supreme court election is lower than that of a typical election and those who vote tend to be highly-engaged, experts have cautioned against trying to read too much into the election results for national political sentiment. Still, there were encouraging signs for Democrats.“The hard work of reaching the voters who pay the least attention to politics is going to take years for Democrats to build that kind of communications strength that can puncture the Republican propaganda bubble,” Wikler said in March. “But for laying the groundwork for flipping the House and the Senate in 2026 and winning governorships and state legislative majorities, the supreme court race can really point the way.”Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, also celebrated the result.“Tonight, the people of Wisconsin squarely rejected the influence of Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and billionaire special interests. And their message? Stay out of our elections and stay away from our courts,” he said in a statement.In Madison, Crawford said she was ready to turn from the campaign trail, which she described as a “life-altering experience,” to the bench, where she promised to “deliver fair and impartial decisions”. Concluding her remarks, Crawford wished her mother, watching from home, a happy birthday and quipped: “I know how glad you are to see the TV ads end.”Jenny Peek contributed reporting from Madison, Wisconsin More

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    Cory Booker’s anti-Trump speech on Senate floor enters 21st hour – live

    Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, has now spoken for 21 hours on the Senate floor in opposition to the Trump administration.Booker has used his speaking slot to decry the Trump administration’s spending cuts, its attempt to abolish the Department of Education, the president’s attempts to bypass the judicial system and the removal of people from the US who speak out against the administration.He began his speech at 7pm ET on Monday night and will pass the 21-hour mark at 4pm on Tuesday. Booker has had help from Democratic colleagues, who have been asking him questions that have allowed him to have a break without yielding the floor.Booker is getting close to the all-time Senate record. In 1957, Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of the same year.During a Fox News interview this afternoon, Elon Musk made a last-minute appeal to Wisconsin voters in support of state supreme court candidate Brad Schimel.“A judge race, election in Wisconsin will decide whether or not the Democrats can gerrymander Wisconsin in order to remove two House seats from Republican to Democrat,” Musk said. “If you know people in Wisconsin, call them right now.”Republicans including Musk and President Donald Trump have backed Schimel, a former state attorney general, in hopes of turning the 4-3 supreme court conservative. Musk traveled to Wisconsin over the weekend, where he handed out $1m checks to two voters.A Pennsylvania man has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk claiming the billionaire reneged on payments promised to canvassers during the 2024 election, the New York Times reports.Filed as a class action against Musk and his super PAC, the suit alleges Musk failed to pay the claimant $20,000 he was owed for collecting signatures.Musk told Pennsylvanians he’d pay $100 to those willing to sign petitions supporting free speech and gun ownership rights, and $47 for each signatory recruited, an amount raised to $100 in the final days of the election.Thousands are tuning in to watch Cory Booker hold the Senate floor as his marathon speech against the “grave and urgent” danger posed by the Trump administration closes in on the 22-hour mark.Just before 5pm ET more than 71,500 were watching along from Booker’s live feed on Youtube. Meanwhile, several news organizations, including AP, PBS, CBS – and of course the Guardian – had feeds of their own. Others tuned in through C-SPAN.Booker began speaking on Monday evening, vowing to remain on the Senate floor as long as he was “physically able”. His speech has already become one of the longest in Senate history.“These are not normal times in our nation,” Booker said as he launched into his speech. “And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”National security leaders, including White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, the Washington Post reports.The Post cites documents it reviewed and interviews with three US officials that showed members of Donald Trump’s National Security Council had used the commercial email service, which is less secure than Signal, the service Waltz and other Trump administration officials used to coordinate a bombing attack on Yemen last week.“A senior Waltz aide used the commercial email service for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict,” the Post reports. “While the NSC official used his Gmail account, his interagency colleagues used government-issued accounts, headers from the email correspondence show.”It continues: “Waltz has had less sensitive, but potentially exploitable information sent to his Gmail, such as his schedule and other work documents, said officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe what they viewed as problematic handling of information. The officials said Waltz would sometimes copy and paste from his schedule into Signal to coordinate meetings and discussions”We’ve been watching today as New Jersey senator Cory Booker enters his 21st hour of speaking during a marathon address designed to “disrupt” the “normal business of the United States Senate for as long as” he is physically able. Here’s what else is going on across the country.

    Voters are casting their ballots in Wisconsin and Florida in elections that may prove a symbol of Donald Trump’s popularity and Elon Musk’s clout.

    Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” is finalizing its shuttering of the US Agency for International Development, ordering the firings of thousands of local workers and US diplomats and civil servants assigned to the agency overseas.

    Thousands of Health and Human Services (HHS) employees across the country are being dismissed as the Trump administration began implementing its controversial workforce reduction plan. The plan could see 10,000 staff removed from the department.

    The firings at HHS have included staff who were working on the Food and Drug Administration’s bird flu response, Reuters reports.

    Congressman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, has issued a statement strongly condemning the Trump administration for cancelling $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia Universitybecause of what it alleged was the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.

    US attorney general Pam Bondi announced that she has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel in December.

    Republican House speaker Mike Johnson failed to block a bipartisan effort to change House rules to allow new parents in Congress to vote remotely after the birth of a child. The proxy vote resolution has been led by Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Democratic congresswoman Brittany Pettersen of Colorado.
    Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, has now spoken for 21 hours on the Senate floor in opposition to the Trump administration.Booker has used his speaking slot to decry the Trump administration’s spending cuts, its attempt to abolish the Department of Education, the president’s attempts to bypass the judicial system and the removal of people from the US who speak out against the administration.He began his speech at 7pm ET on Monday night and will pass the 21-hour mark at 4pm on Tuesday. Booker has had help from Democratic colleagues, who have been asking him questions that have allowed him to have a break without yielding the floor.Booker is getting close to the all-time Senate record. In 1957, Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of the same year.First lady Melania Trump spoke at the International Women of Courage Award ceremony on Tuesday where she spoke about courage as “a strength that is based in love”.Trump, during a rare public appearance at the state department, recognized eight women from around the world for bravery, including an Israeli woman who was held hostage by Hamas. She said:
    I have harnessed the power of love as a source of strength during challenging times. Love has inspired me to embrace forgiveness, nurture empathy and exhibit bravery in the face of unforeseen obstacles.
    Congressman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, has issued a statement strongly condemning the Trump administration for cancelling $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia Universitybecause of what it alleged was the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.The administration announced on Monday that a federal antisemitism taskforce is also reviewing more than $255m in contracts between Harvard University and the federal government, as well as $8.7bn in grant commitments to Harvard and its affiliates.“I strongly condemn former President Trump’s latest attacks on higher education cloaked under the guise of fighting antisemitism,” Nadler said in his statement on Tuesday.
    Withholding funding from Columbia and, potentially, Harvard will not make Jewish students safer … Make no mistake. Trump’s actions are not rooted in genuine concern for combatting hate.
    Nadler noted that the president’s record “is stained by praise for neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and white nationalists”, adding:
    I call on our nation’s universities to reject President Trump’s demands and to fight back against these hostile acts. If necessary, these issues must be litigated in federal court to put an end to the illegal and unconstitutional actions taken by the Trump Administration.
    From Sam Levine in New York and Ashley Spencer in Daytona Beach, Florida:Andrew Julius, a veteran, cast his vote for Josh Weil, a Democrat, at the John Dickerson Community Center on Tuesday in a special election to determine who will replace Mike Waltz, the US national security adviser.
    I’m actually a fan of Josh Weil. I listened to him talk. I actually went to one of his town halls a couple of weeks ago at the church and I was like, all right, he seems like an educated person. He’s a teacher, level headed, doesn’t have those crazy conspiracy thoughts.
And so I felt comfortable saying, okay, I can vote for this guy instead of not voting at all.
    A former sonar technician in the navy, Julius said he was concerned over the recent disclosure that top Trump administration officials had used Signal to communicate about sensitive bombing plans in Yemen. He said:
    I had a top secret security clearance with my job in the Navy because I was a sonar tech. So we had to have a security clearance, and if I would have done just a fraction of a mistake or what was done with this whole Signal-gate fiasco, I would have been court martialed. I would have been court martialed, kicked out of the Navy, lost rank, lost pay.
    “It’s really concerning that no one has even taken responsibility like, hey, we messed up. That was a mistake. We shouldn’t have done that,” he added.The district is solidly Republican, and the GOP candidate, Randy Fine, is still the favorite to win. But recent polling has shown that the race may be closer than expected, prompting some Republican skittishness.Republican House speaker Mike Johnson tried – and failed – to block a bipartisan effort to change House rules to allow new parents in Congress to vote remotely after the birth of a child.The House, in a 206-222 procedural vote, fell short of the votes needed to adopt a rule that included language blocking a proxy vote resolution led by Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Democratic congresswoman Brittany Pettersen of Colorado.“If we don’t do the right thing now, it’ll never be done,” said Luna, who gave birth to her son in 2023.Pettersen, with a diaper over her shoulder and her four-month-old son in her arms, pleaded with House colleagues. “It is unfathomable that in 2025 we have not modernized Congress,” she said. “We’re asking you to continue to stand with us.”Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team is finalizing the dismantlement of the US Agency for International Development, ordering the firings of thousands of local workers and US diplomats and civil servants assigned to the agency overseas, two former top USAID officials and a source with knowledge of the situation said on Tuesday.On Friday, Congress was notified that almost all of USAID’s own employees were being fired by September, all of its overseas offices shut, and some functions absorbed into the state department.The latest move by Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” will in effect eliminate what is left of the agency’s workforce.The Trump administration has fired staff who were working on the Food and Drug Administration’s bird flu response as part of its mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services, Reuters reports.Among those fired today were leadership and administrative staff at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, the news agency writes, citing a source.The center’s Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network tests raw pet food for bird flu. In recent weeks, the FDA has issued several pet food recalls after detecting bird flu contamination.The move will bring operations at the laboratory network to a halt, the source told Reuters.As egg prices have reached record highs, about a third of American consumers have stopped buying them in response to the rising costs, a new study suggests.According to research from Clarify Capital, 34% of Americans have stopped purchasing eggs as prices for the breakfast staple are becoming less affordable. On average, these consumers say they won’t begin buying eggs again until costs come down to $5 or less for a carton.The report compared the average price of eggs across all US states, observing a significant jump in 2018, when the average was $1.49. In 2025, that figure is sitting at about $5.18.The study found that nearly 95% of Americans have noticed the significant rise in egg prices, with shoppers reporting their perceived average as $7 a dozen. The average American said they would stop buying eggs when prices hit $8 a dozen.A comedian whose skit for White House reporters was canceled for fear of upsetting Donald Trump skewered the journalists who dropped her in a biting late-night talk show routine mocking their perceived subservience to the president.“I thought when people take away your rights, erase your history and deport your friends, you’re supposed to call it out. But I was wrong,” Amber Ruffin said during a brief appearance Monday on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers.
    Glad to find that out now, because if they had let me give that speech, ooh baby… I would have been so terrifically mean.
    Ruffin was dropped at the weekend from the 26 April White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner when the group decided its “focus is not on the politics of division”.As a comedy writer for Meyers and host of her own chat show on Peacock, Ruffin has frequently mocked or criticized Trump and his actions.When asked about more possible dismissals in the federal government, White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said:
    “The President has given the responsibility to his Cabinet secretaries to hire and fire at their respective agencies, and they reserve that right. You saw the Secretary of Health and Human Services announced more layoffs today. This is all part of the administration’s effort for a mass reduction in force in the federal bureaucracy here in Washington DC, to save American taxpayers money.”
    Ashley Spencer reports on the ground from Florida:At the Church of Christ in Daytona Beach, voters lined up to vote in Florida’s special election to replace Rep. Mike Waltz after he was appointed Trump’s national security advisor. At the church, Trump bumper stickers dotted the parking lot. But the campaign for Democratic candidate Josh Weil had a more robust table set up with flyers and resources than that of Republican Randy Fine, who is favored to win.“Calling all immigrants or noncitizens ‘illegal’ or calling them ‘criminals’ is insane,” said Victor Valentin, who volunteered for a political campaign for the first time and on behalf of Weil. “I’m a Hispanic man from Puerto Rico, and those are my fellow Hispanic folks also. These are great people that come here to work hard. They come here to educate their kids.”Meanwhile, a Fine campaign volunteer wore a shirt with Trump’s mugshot that said Never Surrender. The former Democrat said he supported Trump and key ally Elon Musk. “I want him to do what he’s trying to do,” he said of Musk. “Anybody who’s not happy with him is either brainwashed or a crook.”California attorney general Rob Bonta sent letters to 15 insurance companies reminding them that under AB 571, they cannot deny, cancel, or increase premiums on malpractice insurance for medical providers who offer abortion, contraception, or gender-affirming care in California.The letter sent to insurers requests proof of compliance, and Bonta also issued a general industry alert.“California has been and remains committed to protecting the right to choose and the right of individuals to access necessary medical care,” said Bonta. “Licensed providers that offer reproductive and gender-affirming care too often face significant obstacles in securing malpractice insurance — the California Legislature passed, and the Governor signed into law, AB 571 to tear down those barriers.”Leavitt was asked about the error regarding a Salvadoran national with protected legal status who was deported to El Salvador last month, despite his legal protections. The Trump administration acknowledged in court that his deportation was due to an “administrative error”.
    “The error you’re referring to was a clerical error,” Leavitt said on Tuesday. “It was an administrative error. The administration maintains the position that this individual, who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country, was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang.” More