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      The daylight savings debate misses the point: let’s make work hours flexible | Lynne Peeples

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      In a week, we will spring forward to daylight saving time. Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy all recently shared their desires to end the biannual flip-flopping of our clocks. The Republican senator Rick Scott recently reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act, which would lock our clocks on daylight saving time. Scientists, meanwhile, urge us to adopt the opposite: permanent standard time.The DST debate is heating back up. But all this chatter is, once again, largely missing the point–an omission particularly glaring for an administration that claims to be seeking greater efficiency.The time displayed on our walls and wrists carries only the meaning we attach. If we want to rein in our nation’s spending, if we want to make America healthy again, then we should turn attention to our inner clocks. For starters, we should nudge companies and schools to relax or revise rigid schedules – rather than, for example, reverting to pre-pandemic in-office requirements.We are all born with inner clocks, better known as our circadian rhythms. These biological drumbeats sync with our planet’s patterns to drive our bodies to do the right things at the right times: fall asleep, digest food, and fight pathogens, to name a few vital functions. But our internal timekeepers don’t all tick the same. Your 7am might be my 2pm.The upshot: a lot of money could be saved, and illness avoided, if we dropped the traditional one-schedule-fits-all that gives the clock-on-the-wall so much sway.More circadian-friendly schedules mean more people can wake, work, and learn in closer alignment with their inner clocks. They get more sleep. They take fewer sick days. This is especially true for night owls, whose circadian rhythms are most incongruous with the long-established early bird-biased schedules. Sleep loss alone is estimated to cost the US economy upwards of $400bn a year due to absenteeism, accidents, and reduced productivity. That’s around 1.5% of the country’s GDP – and far more than the approximately 1% of the GDP that pays the salaries of all federal civilian employees, whose jobs have been under attack.Impacts on sleep and sickness aside, it also pays to allow people to work or study during their peak hours of productivity and performance. Alertness, cognition, and learning fluctuate across the day. So does our ability to think critically, communicate effectively, and act morally. Risks of costly lapses of attention and reaction ride these waves, too. And, again, the ebbs and flows are unique for every person.A business’s market value is now about 90 percent intangible – tied to assets like IP, relationships and reputation. In other words, companies are investing primarily in employees’ brainpower. A few have begun optimizing those investments by taking advantage of our biological diversity.Magne Skram Hegerberg, secretary general for the Norwegian Association of Lawyers, told me he uses a curious tool to utilize peak brainpower: an army of plush frogs. During their personal power hours, employees will place one of these brightly colored plush animals on their desk or the door to their office. This signals others to “frog off”. Starting times among his workers also now range from 6.30am to 2.30pm. Meetings are held midday, when early birds and night owls overlap. After making these changes, he said, productivity in some areas doubled and, more broadly, innovation, creativity, and problem-solving improved.View image in fullscreenCamilla Kring, founder of the Copenhagen-based B-Society, has advised Hegerberg and other companies including medical giants Medtronic and AbbVie. She has watched job satisfaction rise and sick days plummet. Her end goal, she said, is to create a “new time architecture” that helps everyone better live by their inner clocks. And that includes B-persons, her term for night owls, an often-stigmatized club to which Trump and Musk belong. “You are born with this rhythm,” said Kring. “It’s not something you choose.”Among the few good things to come out of the Covid pandemic was a glimpse into a more sun-synced life. Some studies found that people, especially night owls, tended to get more sleep and maintain healthier circadian rhythms as school and work schedules were relaxed. But much of that greater flexibility is now being reversed. The Trump administration has issued an executive order to end remote work for federal workers, a mandate pushed by Musk, who enforces strict in-office policies at Tesla, SpaceX, and X. Amazon, too, made the move in January. JP Morgan and Dell plan to do the same in March. Emerging policies that restrict where an employee works also tend to define when. And that can result in wasted resources.Sure, there are benefits to having employees in the office. It can reduce loneliness, encourage teamwork, and inspire creativity. But workplaces can still foster flexibility. Business leaders can spread out work hours and schedule meetings, lunches, and other events for the middle of the day. Those gatherings would probably be more pleasant and productive, anyway, with fewer sleep-deprived and circadian-disrupted participants. And who wouldn’t also appreciate a means to stem the recent rebound in traffic congestion?Some secondary schools in Europe similarly offer students the choice of earlier or later electives while concentrating core subjects to midday periods. And a growing number of middle and high schools in the US have delayed their first bell, acknowledging that traditionally early start times are biologically backwards. Rhythms don’t just vary between us; they also change within us, drifting significantly later during adolescence. But overall progress remains slow.The consequences of permanent DST would disproportionately impact teens and other night owls. When required to arrive at a strict time for work or school, DST effectively forces them up an hour earlier than their already-late preference. The later sunrise also means they get less of the morning light that their rhythms rely on to avoid drifting even later. Some early birds, on the other hand, might appreciate the additional evening light with DST. It can nudge their bodies to postpone pumping out melatonin and let them enjoy a night out with friends.But rather than arguing over whether or how to lock the clock, a more efficient use of regulatory resources is to steer society away from strict schedules, as well as non-essential shift work and illogically drawn time zones. (For the record, there is still one wrong answer: Permanent DST would steal an hour of morning light and tack it onto the evening, further blurring the day-night contrast our inner clocks crave.)Neither Trump nor Musk appear conscious of the value and vulnerability of their inner clocks. Trump regularly posts on social media in the early hours of the morning; Musk wore sunglasses throughout last week’s CPAC conference. Still, it is in their power to help themselves and the American people better live and work with–rather than against–their inner clocks, regardless of whether the clock on the wall reads DST or standard time. It is a matter of efficiency that they would be foolish not to embrace.

      Lynne Peeples is a science journalist and author of the new book The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms More

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      Read the signs of Trump’s federal firings: AI is coming for private sector jobs too

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      The Trump administration recently announced that it would be laying off approximately 6,700 workers at the Internal Revenue Service, about 8% of the people employed by the agency. Tens of thousands of federal employees at other agencies are also losing their jobs.The timing could not be worse. We’re in the middle of the tax season with corporations and individuals facing filing deadlines in March and April. Millions of returns will need to be processed. Refunds will be due. Questions will need to be answered. But that’s not all.In just a few short months, Congress will be debating – and probably passing – new rules that will significantly change our tax laws. Republicans are pushing to either extend or make permanent many of the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, most of which expire at the end of this year. There are proposals to eliminate taxes on tips, social security income and overtime wages. The Democrats will be fighting some of these provisions, arguing their effect on future deficits. Regardless, there will be an enormous amount of change to rules, forms and guidance that will need to be made by the IRS.The remaining employees at the agency, already demoralized and now seriously short-staffed, will now be asked to handle this looming workload. Taxpayers and their accountants will need to be patient. I can already foresee my profession’s future frustration as they wait for guidance on a myriad of tax changes that will affect their clients. After barely recovering from all the disruptions caused by the pandemic, these layoffs are sure to set things back.But let’s not pretend this isn’t part of a wider trend.We all know the technology already exists to do much of the work that many IRS employees do now. My clients already use tech platforms to automate their accounts payment and payments. These systems – which leverage AI and optical character recognition – can very accurately (and affordably) scan, read and extract data from any document and ensure that the information is integrated into their accounting systems, where payments are automatically scheduled for review and disbursement. Considering that most of the tax returns filed are done in a similar fashion – and are mostly routine – it seems obvious that similar systems could be doing the same functions, which would probably eliminate a much greater percentage of workers who have already been chopped by the current administration.Look what technology is doing elsewhere. The financing platform Klarna announced last summer it was laying off about 2,000 workers – half of its workforce – as a result of its new AI customer service system that did their work instead. Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, UBS and other Wall Street firms are building AI-based systems that are eliminating the need for investment analysts, wealth managers and other human workers. Google, Ikea, Salesforce and a number of other firms are rapidly replacing their workers with AI systems. Mark Zuckerberg has publicly said that AI applications will be doing the work of mid-level engineers at Meta this year.About $80bn was allocated to the IRS under Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to “modernize” tax collection. Government being the government, I’m sure that progress has so far been slower than it should be. But if you’re working at the IRS, or any federal agency, do you not see the writing on the wall? And if you’re working in customer service, marketing, accounting or any of these jobs in the private sector do you also not see what’s happening?The firing of federal workers is a preview of what’s about to happen in the corporate world. CEOs at numerous companies have already demonstrated that technology can do the work of people and replace them. And they’re just getting started. The tech companies like to say that AI will “work alongside” humans or “increase employees’ productivity” but that’s nonsense. Like the federal workers, many in the private sector are about to be replaced too. More

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      ‘They worship death’: Trump ‘border czar’ reveals extremist views in interview

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      Donald Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, and far-right media personality Tucker Carlson talked about a bizarre range of extremist and racist conspiracy theories in an interview just weeks before Homan took office and was trusted with implementing a wide-ranging crackdown on migrants.The conversation included Carlson’s claim that Mexican cartels come “from cultures that have practiced human sacrifice for thousands of years”, connected the racist “great replacement” theory to Biden’s immigration policy, and advocated the arrest of elected US leaders who opposed Donald Trump’s policies on migrants.On immigration policy, Homan expressed a desire to get the Department of Defense to assist with “intelligence” and “targeting” domestically and took the view that Immigration and Border Enforcement (Ice) should arrest “a mayor or a governor” that “harbored” immigrants in sanctuary cities.Meanwhile, Homan faces questions over the network of associations he built up in his non-profit work during the interval between his appointment in the first Trump administration and his new White House role.While the interview has been fleetingly reported previously, the details of Homan’s conspiracy theory-laden conversation with Carlson have not.With Trump’s deportation efforts seeing Ice agents attempting to take enforcement actions in schools, colleges and workplaces around the US, Homan’s business dealings and extremist political views have come under scrutiny as the public face of the nationwide crackdown.UN ‘pulling’ Biden’s ‘strings’In the podcast interview, recorded for Carlson’s online show and published to X, YouTube and other platforms on 18 December, Homan painted Biden’s border policy as a “great replacement”-style effort to flood the country with potential Democratic voters, and both men characterized the previous administration’s immigration policy as the outcome of a conspiracy involving NGOs, religious charities and the UN.At one point, Homan accused the Biden administration of having deliberately worked to “unsecure the border”.Carlson asked: “What do you think the goal was?”Homan responded: “I think they see a future political benefit. I think they think these people will be future Democratic voters.“But we don’t even have to get there, Tucker,” added Homan, saying that Biden’s census rules allowed “all these illegal aliens to be counted in sanctuary cities, which is going to result in more seats in the house for the Dems”.While the idea that an elite was conspiring to orchestrate mass immigration for political gain at the ballot box was mostly confined to the white supremacist racist far right for decades, in recent years “great replacement”-style conspiracy theories such as this have increasingly been voiced by mainstream conservatives and Republicans.Later in their conversation, Homan and Carlson sought to extend the purported conspiracy theory well beyond the Biden administration. Carlson suggested a wide-ranging plot involving international bodies such as the UN and NGOs and Homan responded by calling for an investigation.Homan said: “I think under the Trump administration there needs to be an investigation.”He revealed that “I’ve had numerous conversations with Mark Green, who is the head of homeland oversight.” Green is a Tennessee Republican who chairs the House’s homeland security committee and is an ex-officio member of the oversight, investigations and accountability committee, which has oversight over the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.Homan said Green “plans on having some oversight hearings on this when it comes to the NGOs. I think they were complicit.”He then asserted without evidence that “certainly the United Nations were south of our border, working on this global illegal immigration to the United States”.Homan rounded out the conspiracy theory, saying: “This was by design. Do I think Joe Biden had the expertise to do it? No, I think someone’s pulling his strings.“This is something that needs to be investigated, people need to be held accountable,” he added.Cartels ‘have operational control of the south-west border’The two returned obsessively throughout their conversation to the issue of drug cartels, which they claimed had deprived the US of sovereignty over parts of perhaps five US states and the entire south-west border.Early in the conversation, Homan stated his basic position on the cartels: they should be “designated terrorist organizations and wiped off the face of the earth”.Later, Carlson asked Homan about what he said “informed people” had told him: “In parts of New Mexico, Arizona, California, even Florida, Texas, there is real control, in the way they control Mexico.”In those locations, purportedly, “they’re basically a state within a state, they have their own armored personnel carriers, tanks, you know”. He then asked Homan: “Do you think that’s real, do you think they have that kind of beachhead here?”“Absolutely,” Homan answered, continuing that “I’ve seen the intelligence reports, they have military-grade weapons. It’s not just my opinion, they have control, operational control of the south-west border.”‘They worship death’Later in the conversation, Homan and Carlson attributed the cartels’ motivations in part to their worship of “satanic” ideas or “death”, seeking to tie that to their “cultures” which “practice human sacrifice”.Carlson began by claiming to “know that in El Salvador when MS-13 ran the country, before Bukele, there was a religious component of voodoo witchcraft to MS-13 where they were worshipping the devil openly.”Nayib Bukele is the authoritarian, populist president of El Salvador, whose promotion of cryptocurrency and brutal crackdown on gangs in the country have won him fans on the “new right” in the US and beyond.Earlier this month, Marco Rubio met with Bukele in El Salvador, and the latter offered to hold deportees and US citizens alike in its vast network of prisons. That network includes the largest prison in the Americas, built to accommodate 40,000 people, which is around half the number Bukele has locked up since his war on the gangs commenced.Later in the podcast conversation, Carlson claimed that devil worship was a “component of the cartels, you see it in Mexico as well”, and asked Homan: “Have you come across that?”“Yeah,” Homan answered. “They worship death.”“Formally worship it?” Carlson shot back.“Yeah,” Homan answered. “I won’t call it religious, but even Texas [department of public safety] have found some of these places where the cartels are operating, they got statues there and memorabilia worshipping death as a consequence of not letting them do their business.”Homan may have been referring to Santa Muerte, a Mexican “folk saint” whose currency among cartel members has been an intermittent focus of US conservative media coverage of crime at the border, and enforcement actions in Mexico, where “the Mexican army, under orders from the Mexican state, has obliterated thousands of shrines dedicated to the folk saint across the country”.Researchers have found, however, that Santa Muerte devotion is not confined to criminals, and is also found “increasingly [among] police and others involved in law enforcement”.Carlson appeared to assert that there was a connection between cartels and the historical practice of human sacrifice in some pre-colonial Meso-American cultures, saying: “And these are from cultures that have practiced human sacrifice for thousands of years.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoman answered: “I got a video on my phone showing a member of the cartel skinning a man alive.”He added: “Skinning him alive on video to send a message that if you snitch on the cartels they’re not gonna just kill you, they’re gonna make you suffer immensely.”‘Why can’t I arrest a mayor or a governor?’Homan also asserted Ice’s right to arrest elected officials responsible for so-called “sanctuary cities”, which do not cooperate with Ice operations within their boundaries.He said: “I as an agent … have arrested United States citizens for knowingly harboring an illegal alien in their home.”He continued: “If I can arrest a US citizen for violating those crimes, why can’t I arrest a mayor or a governor who has given their staff explicit instructions to impede us and to hide from us?”Homan added: “We need to prosecute these people and send a message that this is unacceptable.”That is a message Homan has continued to assert since taking office. Last week, Homan warned that the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may “be in trouble” over a webinar about Ice that was hosted by her office.The congresswoman on Wednesday aired a “Know Your Rights With ICE” webinar on her Facebook page which advised attendees of “trends” of arrests by Ice in New York and explained what rights they have. Ocasio-Cortez did not attend it.But Homan told Fox News: “So maybe AOC’s gonna be in trouble now, but I need the [office of the attorney general] to opine on that … Impediment is impediment, in my opinion.”On Friday, Homan and the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, appeared in a joint interview on Fox News, where Adams endorsed a Trump executive order which would allow Ice agents to operate at the city’s Rikers Island jail.In the Fox and Friends studio, Homan said of Adams and his promises of cooperation: “If he doesn’t come through … I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, Where the hell is the agreement we came to?”Adams is at the center of a political firestorm after top justice department attorneys in New York and Washington DC resigned in the face of orders to drop their prosecution of the New York mayor over corruption allegations.Financial entanglementsLike every senior administration appointee to date, Homan is an unstinting supporter of Trump, and a full-throated 2020 election denialist. This, and his espousal of anti-immigrant rhetoric, have led to controversy but also to associations with far-right extremists, and sprawling business relationships that some say present conflicts of interest.Between his departure from the first Trump administration and his appointment as border czar, a White House role, Homan had stints as a Fox News contributor, was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and was credited as a contributor in “Mandate for Leadership”, the central document of Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint for the second Trump administration.Apart from these blue ribbon conservative appointments, Homan has involved himself in several interrelated non-profit organizations.The Border911 Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, was founded in 2023 in Virginia, Homan’s state of residence. At the same time, he also founded Border911 Inc, a 501(c)(4) organization. (501(c)(4)s differ from 501(c)(3)s in that donations to them are not tax-deductible, but they are permitted to engage in electoral advocacy.)Both the Border911 Foundation and Border911 Inc were spin-offs from the America Project (TAP), a Michael Flynn-founded election-denial non-profit that was reportedly funded to the tune of $27m by rightwing overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.Homan was reportedly TAP CEO for part of 2023. His appointment to that role occasioned a fundraising gala at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that year.From early 2024, Homan was out at TAP and focused on the Border911 Foundation and Border Inc, as well as a Trump-endorsed for-profit consultancy Homeland Strategic Consulting LLC, which, Homan boasted, secured “tens of millions of dollars of federal contracts” for his clients.Throughout the campaign season, the Border911 Foundation was a virtual speaker’s agency for a stable of rightwing anti-immigration activists, many of them former law enforcement officials who appeared at rallies organized by the non-profit or by political candidates, such as Arizona’s Kari Lake, throughout south-western border states.Previous reporting has highlighted seeming irregularities in tax filings by the non-profits. Coda reported that in 2023, “both of Homan’s Border911 organizations reported almost the same expenses – about $87,000 – but the 501(c)(4) claimed zero revenue”. Non-profit compliance experts expressed concerns to the outlet that “the tax-exempt charity money may have been passed through” the 501(c)(4).Steve Lentz, an attorney acting as a spokesperson for both Border911 organizations, told Coda that this was due to errors in the filings, “There was an entry in the [501](c)(4) [filing] that shouldn’t have been there,” he said, and said it would be amended.The Guardian’s review of the filings indicates that amendments were subsequently made.The Transparency non-profit Accountable.US, however, has raised concerns about what it says is a potential for conflicts of interest arising from the 501(c)(3) non-profit and its board in newly published research.Partly the worries arise from ambiguities in Homan’s public statements about his relationship with the foundation while he is in office.Accountable.US says that while Homan has said that he will take a “leave of absence” from Border911, he has also appeared to claim that the non-profit will continue to act as “data-mining site” that will provide “real up-to-date data on anything related to the border”, including “apprehensions”, “ICE arrests” and other information.And some of the foundation’s board members work for federal government contractors.Charles Sowell is chair of the Border911 Foundation’s board. He is also the founder and CEO of SE&M Solutions, a security and IT consulting firm that touts its “access to senior leaders in government” and “hopes to secure local and federal contracts using the best experts in the government consulting industry”.The Border911 Foundation’s director, Mark Hall, meanwhile, is currently the US security lead and chief security officer for Dragados USA, a construction contracting firm, where he claims to lead security for “a $6bn international border crossing construction project” whose cost indicates that it is likely the Gordie Howe international bridge between the US and Canada, which is budgeted for that figure.While there is no evidence of wrongdoing from these board members, a mass deportation effort on the scale promised by Trump, Homan and other administration immigration hawks such as Stephen Miller could be a bonanza for US government contractors.Accountable.US fears the worst. Its executive director, Tony Clark, said in a statement: “Homan appears to be using division, fear and chaos in a way to pad his friends’ pockets. Why should anyone believe Homan won’t steer lucrative government contracts to members of his ‘non-profit’ board?” More

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      Elon Musk’s quest for power has a new target: Wisconsin’s supreme court

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      He is slashing US government agencies, building electric vehicles and space rockets and running one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. But Elon Musk has still found time – and money – to meddle in a relatively obscure election in a state of 6 million people.The close ally of Donald Trump is spending millions of dollars in an effort to tip the scales in favor of a Republican candidate running for a seat on the highest court in Wisconsin. Critics regard it as a statement of intent by Musk to expand his political power in America by playing an insidious role in key races across the country.“It’s one of the most significant threats to our democracy in the current moment,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “You’ve got money and power in one person who’s been given access to the upper echelon of the federal government. He’s fused the power of the Oval Office with his almost unlimited amount of money to support Republicans, both at the state level and national level.”Musk has grabbed attention during Trump’s first month in office with his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, a team of mostly young male software engineers who have laid waste to the federal government and dismissed thousands of workers in ways that have been challenged in the courts.Musk’s startling ascent was on vivid display when he spoke to reporters alongside Trump in the Oval Office and wielded a chainsaw before a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Earlier this week, he held court at a cabinet meeting, where the president dared any of his officials to express discontent about Musk’s scorched-earth approach. No one did.But away from the TV cameras, Musk is also at work in Wisconsin, which holds an election for its state supreme court on 1 April. The vote will decide whether liberals maintain a 4-3 majority with major cases dealing with abortion, union rights, election law and congressional redistricting already under consideration by the court or expected to be argued before it soon.Such campaigns are now non-partisan in name only. Republicans are lining up behind Brad Schimel while Democrats are backing Susan Crawford. It could be the most significant US election since November, an early litmus test after Trump won every swing state, including Wisconsin.Crawford has received $3m from the state Democratic party, including $1m that the party received from the liberal philanthropist George Soros and $500,000 from the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker.Musk’s America political action committee is spending $1m to back Schimel, a former state attorney general who attended Trump’s inauguration last month. Another group Musk has funded, Building America’s Future, is spending $1.6m on TV ads attacking Crawford, a Dane county circuit judge. It reportedly had to withdraw one social media ad after it featured a photo of a different woman named Susan Crawford.Crawford told a recent meeting of the Wisconsin Counties Association: “Elon Musk is trying to buy a seat on our supreme court so Brad Schimel can rubber-stamp his extreme agenda.”Schimel denies that money would affect his independence on the court. He told reporters: “I don’t have any agenda that I’m working alongside anyone. I’m grateful for our supporters, but they’re getting nothing except me following the law.”But Musk has both business and political incentives to back him. Tesla, the electric car company owned by Musk, has a lawsuit pending in Wisconsin challenging the state’s decision blocking it from opening dealerships. The case could ultimately be decided by the Wisconsin supreme court and Schimel has not committed to stepping aside.Furthermore, in the event of a disputed election in the crucial swing state in 2028, the supreme court could be decisive. Musk tweeted last month: “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!” And as Doge lays siege to the administrative state, the courts have provided the strongest pushback. Tilting them to the right could neutralise that opposition and work to Musk’s advantage.Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic party of Wisconsin, said: “He is not the first far-right billionaire to pour money into a Wisconsin supreme court election but he is spending money hand over fist at the same time the whole world is wondering whether courts will ever be a check on the Musk/ Trump/GOP attack on the rule of law.“While he’s firing veterans with disabilities in Wisconsin from the veterans administration, he’s also working to buy a supreme court majority that could eliminate any possibility of accountability to state law.”Musk exploded onto the political stage last year, spending nearly $300m supporting Republican campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission filings. While most of his efforts went toward electing Trump, a super political action committee he founded also spent millions of dollars on House of Representatives races to keep Republicans in control.Musk also dabbled in state politics in Texas, where he had moved several of his businesses. In 2024, he gave $1m to a tort reform group supporting Republicans in state legislative races and $2m to a political action committee that campaigned to elect Republican judges in the state.Wikler believes there is more to come. “There’s been a question about whether Musk would follow Trump in only caring about elections when Trump is on the ballot. The answer is now clearly no. Musk wants control over every level of government at the same time as he takes control of people’s personal tax information and treasury payments that keep childcare centres open in Wisconsin,” he said.He added: “Musk is trying to execute a uniquely and profoundly grotesque perversion of justice by buying the court system while defying the constitution in order to rip off the poor and the middle class to enrich himself.”Not even Republicans are safe from the world’s richest man, whose fortune is estimated at $426bn. Musk threatened to fund primary election challengers to members of Congress who failed to back Trump’s cabinet picks and legislative priorities.Charlie Sykes, a conservative political commentator based in Wisconsin, said: “Elon Musk’s money is the bullets in the chamber aimed at wavering Republicans: ‘You don’t support us, Elon Musk will come into your state or your district [and] he will spend more money than God has to defeat you in a primary.’”Musk’s control of the X social media platform gives him profound influence over online discourse and the flow of information. His own feed, with 219 million followers, has become like a running commentary on the Trump administration.He has even sought to flex his muscles abroad, backing Germany’s far-right AfD party, calling for Nigel Farage to quit as leader of Britain’s Reform UK party and pushing false claims that white people are persecuted in South Africa.But while he currently appears omnipotent – a Time magazine cover depicted him sitting behind the Resolute desk like a president – there are signs of growing public discontent.In a Washington Post-Ipsos opinion poll, 34% of respondents said they approved of how Musk was handling his job, compared with 49% disapproving and 14% not sure. Protests against the tech oligarch have been held across the country and congressional Republicans have faced the backlash at raucous town halls.Sykes questions how long Musk’s political honeymoon can last: “He’s signalling that, at least for now, he’s going to be Trump’s enforcer and he’s going to be the force multiplier for the right wing. But as he does so, he’s also establishing himself as an independent force. The dilemma for Trump is that Musk is useful until he’s not but he’s not easy to get rid of.“In the end, there can only be one. The dilemma right now is it’s important to keep the focus on what Elon Musk is doing but not forget that the only reason he’s been empowered to do it is because of Donald Trump.” More

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      Trump signs executive order designating English as official language of US

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      President Donald Trump has signed an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States.The order on Saturday allows government agencies and organisations that receive federal funding to choose whether to continue to offer documents and services in languages other than English.It rescinds a mandate from former president Bill Clinton that required the government and organisations that received federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.“Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values, and create a more cohesive and efficient society,” according to the order.“In welcoming new Americans, a policy of encouraging the learning and adoption of our national language will make the United States a shared home and empower new citizens to achieve the American dream,” the order also states. “Speaking English not only opens doors economically, but it helps newcomers engage in their communities, participate in national traditions, and give back to our society.”More than 30 states have already passed laws designating English as their official language, according to US English, a group that advocates for making English the country’s official language.For decades, lawmakers in Congress have introduced legislation to designate English as the official language of the US, but those efforts have not succeeded.Within hours of Trump’s inauguration last month, the new administration took down the Spanish-language version of the official White House website.Hispanic advocacy groups and others expressed confusion and frustration at the change. The White House said at the time it was committed to bringing the Spanish-language version of the website back online. As of Saturday, it was still not restored.The White House did not immediately respond to a message about whether that would happen.Trump shut down the Spanish version of the website during his first term. It was restored when president Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021. More

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      Trump administration briefing: pro-Ukraine rallies across US as Trump officials fume at Zelenskyy

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      The disastrous meeting between US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday has catalysed a series of pro-Ukraine protests across the US.Protesters took to the streets in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, with hundreds gathering to express support for Ukraine and Zelenskyy.Hundreds of protesters also gathered in Waitsfield, Vermont, on Saturday to oppose vice-president JD Vance’s visit to the state for a ski trip with his family.The demonstration had been planned earlier in the week by the Mad River Valley chapter of Indivisible, a grassroots group, but additional protesters said they were motivated to join after watching Vance and Trump’s combative Oval Office meeting.Pro-Ukraine rallies in multiple US cities after chaotic White House meetingVideos posted on social networks showed hundreds of demonstrators gathered in New York’s Times Square, many carrying the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine on their backs. In Los Angeles county, a pro-Ukraine crowd rallied in front of a SpaceX’s facility, and protesters in Boston held an “emergency rally” for “fair peace” for Ukraine at Boston Common.Read the full storyTrump officials fume at Zelenskyy for disregarding advice before meetingInside the Trump White House, officials blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, for the meltdown in the Oval Office on Friday, and expressed frustration that he pushed for security guarantees even though the US had made clear they wanted to negotiate that later, according to people familiar with the matter.Read the full storyFiring of watchdog agency chief illegal and would give ‘license to bully officials’, court rulesA US judge on Saturday declared Trump’s firing of the head of a federal watchdog agency illegal in an early test of the scope of presidential power likely to be decided at the US supreme court.Read the full storyKennedy Jr backtracks and says US measles outbreak is now a ‘top priority’Two days after initially downplaying the outbreak as “not unusual”, the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, on Friday said he recognized the serious impact of the ongoing measles epidemic in Texas – in which a child died recently – and that the government was providing resources, including protective vaccines.Read the full storyAndrew Cuomo announces run for mayor of New York CityFormer New York state governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Saturday he would run for New York City mayor, an attempt to come back from a sexual harassment scandal that forced him to resign more than three years earlier.Read the full storyEmail shows Musk ally is moving to close office behind free tax-filing program at IRSAn Elon Musk ally installed in the US government said in a late-night email going into Saturday that the office behind a popular free online tax-filing option would be shuttered – and its employees would be let go.Read the full storyMedicaid recipients fear ‘buzzsaw cuts’ for Trump’s agendaRepublicans are considering a rollback of the federal social safety net, particularly Medicaid, which has nearly 80 million enrollees in all 50 states. The budget plan proposes an $880bn reduction in funding for the insurance over the next decade, an amount experts warn would hollow out the program.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration on Saturday to prevent it from transferring 10 undocumented immigrants detained in the US to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

      A FedEx cargo airplane caught on fire after striking a bird shortly after the plane’s departure from Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday morning, according to officials.

      A decision by regulators to extend the life of two of the oldest reactors in the US decades beyond their original permits has elevated the risk of a nuclear disaster in heavily populated south Florida, environmental groups are warning.

      Singer Angie Stone, known for her hit Wish I Didn’t Miss You, has died in a car crash at the age of 63. More

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      Pro-Ukraine protests erupt across US after Trump and Vance ‘ambush’ Zelenskyy

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      Protests against the Trump administration erupted across the US on Saturday following an unprecedented Oval Office clash, wherein Donald Trump and JD Vance escalated tensions with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Hundreds of protesters gathered in Waitsfield, Vermont, on Saturday morning to oppose the vice-president’s visit to the state for a ski trip with his family.The demonstration had been planned earlier in the week by the Mad River Valley chapter of Indivisible, a grassroots organizing group, but additional protesters said they were motivated to join after watching Vance and Trump’s combative White House meeting with Zelenskyy on Friday.Protesters held signs reading “Vermont stands with Ukraine” and “International embarrassment”, while many waved Ukrainian flags in solidarity. Fox aired video of the protesters, but blurred out signs displaying messages against Vance and in favor of Ukraine.“After what he did yesterday, he crossed the line,” protester Cori Giroux told Vermont Public Radio.On Thursday, the governor, Phil Scott, a Republican who refused to vote for Trump in any of his three runs for the White House, issued a statement calling on Vermonters to be respectful of Vance and his family during their visit.“Please join me in welcoming them to Vermont and hoping they have an opportunity to experience what makes our state, and Vermonters, so special,” he said.While Vance, who admitted Friday he has never been to Ukraine, fled to an undisclosed location to evade protesters, some commentators noted that Zelenskyy, who stayed in Ukraine during Russia’s invasion, was returning to a Kyiv still under attack.The protest followed a contentious confrontation in the Oval Office, where the US president told the Ukrainian leader to make a deal with Russia “or we’e out”. At one point, Trump accused Zelenskyy of not showing enough gratitude for US military and political aid, warning that he was “gambling with world war three”.Zelenskyy countered that he had repeatedly thanked the American people and their leaders for their support, that but Ukrainians did not want to accept a ceasefire with Russia without security guarantees, since Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, had repeatedly broken a previous ceasefire agreement.Following the exchange, European leaders, along with the prime ministers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, posted messages of support for Ukraine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLeading Democratic lawmakers also rallied to Zelenskyy’s side, with one, the senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, calling the Oval office meeting an “ambush” of the Ukrainian president by Trump and Vance.The aggressive meeting led to protests in cities and towns across the US, including New York, Los Angeles and Boston, where hundreds gathered to express their support for Ukraine and Zelenskyy.Videos posted on social networks showed hundreds of demonstrators gathered in New York’s Times Square, many carrying the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine on their backs. In Los Angeles county, a pro-Ukraine crowd rallied in front of a SpaceX’s facility, and protesters in Boston held an “emergency rally” for “fair peace” for Ukraine at Boston Common.“Ukraine wants fair peace. Ukraine wants the war to end,” the group Boston Supports Ukraine wrote on Facebook. “Ukraine wants all of this on fair terms with security guarantees.”For his part, Zelenskyy posted video of his warm reception in London on social networks, showing crowds of supporters lining the street outside Downing Street, where he was embraced by the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer. More

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      ACLU sues to block White House from sending 10 immigrants to Guantánamo

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      Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration Saturday to prevent it from transferring 10 undocumented immigrants detained in the US to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, their second legal challenge in less than a month over plans to hold up to 30,000 people there for deportation.The latest federal lawsuit so far applies only to 10 men facing transfer to the naval base in Cuba, and their attorneys said the administration will not notify them of who would be transferred or when. As with a lawsuit the same attorneys filed earlier this month for access to people already detained there, the latest case was filed in Washington and is backed by the American Civil Liberties Union.At least 50 people are known to have been transferred already to Guantánamo Bay, and the civil rights attorneys believe the number now may be about 200. They have said it is the first time in US history that the government has detained non-citizens on civil immigration charges there. For decades, the naval base was primarily used to detain foreigners associated with the 11 September 2001 attacks.Trump has said Guantánamo Bay, also known as “Gitmo”, has space for up to 30,000 people and that he plans to send “the worst” or high-risk “criminal aliens” there. The administration has not released specific information on who is being transferred, so it is not clear which crimes they are accused of committing in the US and whether they have been convicted, or merely charged or arrested.“The purpose of this second Guantánamo lawsuit is to prevent more people from being illegally sent to this notorious prison, where the conditions have now been revealed to be inhumane,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney and lead counsel on the case. “The lawsuit is not claiming they cannot be detained in US facilities, but only that they cannot be sent to Guantánamo.”The 10 men are from nations including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Venezuela, and their attorneys say they are neither high-risk criminals nor gang members. In a 29 January executive order expanding operations at Guantánamo Bay, Trump said that one of his goals was to “dismantle criminal cartels”.Their attorneys described their latest lawsuit as an emergency filing to halt imminent transfers and challenge the Trump administration’s plans. They contend that the transfers violate the men’s right to due legal process, guaranteed by the fifth amendment to the US constitutionThe latest lawsuit also argues that federal immigration law bars the transfer of non-Cuban migrants from the US to Guantánamo Bay and that the US government has no authority to hold people outside its territory, and that the naval base remains part of Cuba legally. The transfers are also described as arbitrary.The men’s attorneys allege that many of the people who have been sent to Guantánamo Bay do not have serious criminal records or even any criminal history. Their first lawsuit, filed 12 February, said people sent to the naval base had “effectively disappeared into a black box” and could not contact attorneys or family. The US Department of Homeland Security, one of the agencies sued, said they could reach attorneys by phone.In another, separate federal lawsuit filed in New Mexico, a federal judge on 9 February blocked the transfer of three immigrants from Venezuela being held in that state to Guantánamo Bay. Their attorneys said they had been falsely accused of being gang members.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe migrant detention center at Guantánamo operates separately from the US military’s detention center and courtrooms for foreigners detained under George W Bush during what Bush called the post-9/11 “war on terror”. It once held nearly 800 people, but the number has dwindled to 15, including accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, who was assigned to Guantánamo when he was on active duty, has called it a “perfect place” to house undocumented immigrants, and Trump has described the naval base as “a tough place to get out of”.A United Nations investigator who visited the military detention center in 2023 said conditions had improved, but that military detainees still faced near constant surveillance, forced removal from their cells and unjust use of restraints, resulting in “ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law”. The US said it disagreed “in significant respects” with her report. More