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    The case against Kilmar Ábrego García is a study in sadistic absurdity | Moira Donegan

    In a way, you could think of the brief stint that Kilmar Ábrego García spent in a Tennessee jail after his return from a Salvadorian prison camp in June as a kind of protective custody. Ábrego, a Maryland resident who had never been charged with any crime either in the US or in his native El Salvador, became a symbol of the Trump administration’s ambitiously sadistic anti-immigration efforts when he was kidnapped by Ice agents in March and sent without due process to Cecot, an enormous prison in El Salvador from which few detainees are ever released, as a result of what representatives for the Trump immigration authorities called an administrative error. Ábrego became a symbol for the several hundred men who had been deprived of their liberty and deported to the distant foreign prison without due process and in defiance of both American and international law.It was only after extensive public pressure on the issue – including visits to Cecot and demands to see Ábrego from prominent Democratic politicians, including Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland senator – that Ábrego was returned to the US. The Trump administration ginned up a fake, face-saving excuse for his return, claiming Ábrego needed to be tried for alleged crimes in the US. But that was never anything but a cover, a lie to avoid admitting that they were bringing him back under political pressure and that such pressure could make them cave again. Still, Maga does not forgive Ábrego for his innocence; its adherents decided to make an example of him. Now, released from jail on those trumped-up and unproven allegations, Ábrego has been arrested again by Ice. This time, the Trump administration says it plans to deport him to Uganda – a country he has never been to – as part of a new third-country deportation scheme recently blessed by the supreme court.The Trump administration has continued to pursue Ábrego, in spite of his obvious innocence, because they see the outcry over his accidental arrest and deportation as an unacceptably embarrassing stain on their anti-immigrant agenda. His arrest exposed the cruelty, randomness and essential malignant incompetence of Trump’s vast, unaccountable, reckless, violent and now extremely monied anti-immigrant armed corps: that they arrested an innocent man and deported him to potentially eternal exile and imprisonment in a country he had fled without notice, process, or legal authority left many Americans – and not only migrants – terrified of what might happen to their neighbors, their loved ones or themselves. The plain injustice of his case briefly served to unify anti-Trump forces, sway public sentiment against the crackdown and provoke an uncharacteristic degree of visible public action by elected Democrats. To the Trump administration, this could not stand. Now, they have set about punishing Ábrego for his role as proof of their own malignant idiocy.Without proof, and without much plausibility, Ábrego has been alleged by the Trump administration to be the author of various crimes and malfeasances. They admit that deporting him was a mistake but also want us to believe that he is the sort of person who should be deported – a human trafficker, in one fantasy; a gang leader, in another. That there is no proof for these allegations is beside the point: the point is that the Trump administration is claiming authority over reality itself, claiming the ability to decide what is true and what is false, and to reclassify every migrant – and in particular every Latino male – as a criminally dangerous threat that must be eliminated.Ábrego, then, must be guilty because the Trump administration arrested him, and because they can do no wrong. He must be guilty because he is a migrant, and innocence and immigration are mutually exclusive. He must be guilty, too, because his case made them do something that they did not want to do: admit a mistake, face public pressure, reverse an action, and – worst of all – show weakness. And he must be guilty because he has become a symbol of all the immigrants they plan to deport, all the Americans whose rights they plan to trample on, all the past and future victims of their program.Shortly after his rearrest by Ice on Monday, a judge ordered that the Trump administration not deport Ábrego to Uganda, as it planned. Because the Trump administration has willfully defied court orders in order to carry out deportations in the past, the judge who addressed the justice department lawyer representing the White House was explicit. “Your clients are absolutely forbidden from removing Mr Abrego from the United States,” she told them. “You understand this?” The government lawyer said he did, though this does not mean that the order will be followed.Ábrego now finds himself suffering the worst of a Kafkaesque absurdity, in which the law is arbitrary, malignant, unreliable, sadistic and totally divorced, in its rationale or result, from anything he has actually done. His predicament is not a little like that of Joseph K, the protagonist of The Trial, who finds himself arrested and imprisoned for a crime that is not revealed to him, and petitioning endlessly against the unfeeling representatives of a remote, cold and pitiless authority. He was selected for the Trump machine’s sadism at random, by the force of their own racist incompetence; it is still unclear whether he will ever manage to escape it.The injustice of Ábrego’s situation transcends his personal character – indeed, part of the absurdity is how indifferent the Trump administration is to what kind of man Ábrego might be. But from what we can see ourselves, he seems like a man capable of great moral feeling. On the steps of the courthouse on Monday, just moments before he headed inside to what was certain to be his re-arrest by Ice, Ábrego addressed a crowd of well-wishers in Spanish. “Regardless of what happens here today in my Ice check-in,” he said, “promise me this: that you will keep fighting, praying, believing in dignity and freedom. Not only for me – for everyone.”

    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    ‘You had to fend for yourself’: Hurricane Katrina haunts New Orleans as Trump guts disaster aid

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    View image in fullscreenDarren McKinney grew up in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. When Hurricane Katrina struck 20 years ago this week, he watched his neighborhood wash away. From his second-floor apartment, he saw flood waters rise up to his window.“I had no food at all, no water, no electricity,” he recounted one rainy day this month, while taking a break from his job leading home restoration in the neighborhood as field operations director of the non-profit lowernine.org.After being trapped inside for four days, city officials rescued McKinney in a boat and dropped him off on a nearby bridge. He was told a military truck would bring him to an emergency shelter in the city’s Superdome, but a vehicle never arrived because the shelter reached capacity. He was forced to walk to an evacuation point downtown.“You had to fend for yourself,” he said. “There just wasn’t enough shelter, wasn’t enough support.”Friends helped McKinney evacuate to Houston, Texas. Months later, when he returned to the city, he found his home in “real bad condition”. He eventually settled into a trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).During his stay in the temporary home, he began to hear news reports that some Fema trailers were found to have high levels of the harmful chemical formaldehyde. With nowhere else to stay, he tried to ignore those reports.“What could you do?” he asked.The federal response to Katrina, particularly by Fema, came under intense scrutiny after the hurricane, which killed at least 1,833 people. In New Orleans, residents spray-painted curses at Fema on their boarded-up homes and wore T-shirts around the city that bore the slogan: “FEMA – Federal Employees Missing in Action.”Some on the right have called to shrink the agency or even abolish it. In recent months, the Trump administration has picked up on those calls, defunding key Fema programs, laying off hundreds of staffers, and threatening to dismantle the agency completely. But McKinney believes the administration’s policies will leave New Orleans worse prepared for future hurricanes.“You don’t know when you’re gonna have another disaster like that,” he said. “For people that don’t have money, without Fema, how you going to help them out?”In recent weeks, Donald Trump has walked back promises to abolish Fema. But disaster management experts fear the changes he has made will still leave the US just as underprepared to take on a hurricane like Katrina as it was in 2005.“It has been so demoralizing to realize how closely aligned we have become again to what Fema looked like pre-Katrina, and how quickly we’ve backslid on the progress of the last 20 years,” said Samantha Montano, a disaster response expert at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of the book Disasterology.‘State-led, federally supported’Since re-entering the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly called for states to bear more responsibility for disasters, signing a March executive order saying municipalities should “play a more active and significant role” in national resilience and preparedness.“If they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be governor,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office in June, as he spoke about a plan to “wean” states off Fema assistance.But states have always led disaster response, said Craig Fugate, who directed Fema between 2009 and 2017.“The current administration says states should lead, we should support, [but] that’s what it’s always been,” he said. “The federal government, at the direction of the president, through Fema, supports the governor.”Cuts at Fema could have particularly negative implications for poor, climate-vulnerable states like Louisiana, which received the most direct assistance from Fema between January 2015 and April 2024, according to data collected for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Disaster Dollar Database.“For states that are oftentimes underresourced, Fema gives the support that is needed to navigate disasters, both in the form of financial assistance and providing technical expertise,” said Reggie Ferreira, who directs the disaster resilience leadership academy at Tulane University in New Orleans.But even wealthier states will probably struggle to weather disasters without the agency’s support, said Montano.“The importance of Fema really just can’t be overstated. They’re the last line of defense that we really have in moments of crisis,” she said. “We know that our state and local capacity to respond to disasters in most parts of the country is relatively limited. And we know that our needs related to disasters are increasing in the context of climate change.”‘Brain drain’After Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, the support Fema was able to provide had dwindled due to policies enacted by former president George W Bush.“When Katrina happened, it’s really important to remember that Fema had just gone through a shock of their own,” said Montano. “Going into Katrina, Fema was deeply unprepared as an agency, which is a huge reason for the failure in the response.”In the wake of the 2001 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched a government-wide reorganization to focus on the threat of terrorism, cutting disaster programs and, in 2003, stripping Fema of its independent, cabinet-level status. The agency was then absorbed into the newly created Department of Homeland Security.“The attention was only on terrorism at the expense of anything else,” said Fugate.The shifts at Fema led to a mass exodus of staff. Some – including senior leadership – were relieved of their duties and reassigned to terrorism-related posts, while others who were reportedly frustrated with the restructure resigned.That “brain drain” was a key reason that Fema was not able to provide an adequate response to Katrina, said Montano.Fugate said what is happening at the agency today was “very similar” to that moment. Under Trump, an estimated one-third of Fema’s workforce has been eliminated due to layoffs, firings and voluntary buyouts.In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also reportedly sent some remaining Fema staff to help speed the hiring of immigration enforcement agents. Lt Gen Russel Honoré, who led the military response to Hurricane Katrina, had choice words about the decision. “That adds insult to injury,” he said. “I really think these fucking people are stuck on stupid.”The staffing cuts threaten the relationships between state and federal officials, said Stephen Murphy, former planning section chief for New Orleans’s homeland security and emergency preparedness office. That could make disaster response less efficient.“When you have a strong team, a network, everybody has built trust in one another because they’ve been out there together, they’ve bled for one another,” said Murphy, who now leads Tulane University’s disaster management program. “When you disrupt that, you’re playing with fire.”View image in fullscreenThe federal changes are difficult to witness, said Murphy, who said Katrina inspired his career in disaster response. When it struck, he had moved to New Orleans only six weeks earlier to pursue a graduate degree in bioterrorism. Classes had not even started when, as Katrina was gaining strength over the Gulf of Mexico, he decided to evacuate his new home.“As I was pulling out of my neighborhood, some new friends that I’d met in town said: ‘Hey, where are you going? We’re going to have a party,’” he remembered from his New Orleans office. “I had my kayak in my truck, and I asked: ‘OK, you want me to leave this for you?’ I didn’t realize how terrible a joke that would be.”In its aftermath, Murphy decided to devote his life to better managing disasters like Katrina, as did many others in the field.“There’s been tremendous improvements and growth since then,” said Murphy. “To dismantle a lot of what has been done does feel like a little bit of a gut punch.”Cutting funding, undercutting progressAfter Katrina, Fema also increased funding for disaster relief and mitigation. But under Trump, billions of those dollars have dried up.“A lot of the federal grants and money that helped fortify some of the most vulnerable areas, including New Orleans, are getting clawed back,” said Murphy. “You can’t just turn the spigot off and expect the system to still work.”View image in fullscreenSome of the Trump administration’s actions at Fema directly violate policies enacted by lawmakers to prevent future botched disaster responses, said Honoré. That includes the president’s January appointment of a new administrator for the agency.The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which Congress passed in 2006, requires all Fema administrators to have experience in disaster management. The provision was inspired by Bush’s Fema administrator, Michael Brown, who was critiqued for his limited background in the field.In the 19 years since the bill’s passage, only “seasoned emergency managers” have succeeded Brown, said Honoré. But that all changed when Trump picked David Richardson – who appears to have no disaster management experience – for the post, he said.Before leading Fema, Richardson oversaw a Department of Homeland Security program focused on weapons of mass destruction. In a June briefing, Richardson told personnel he was unaware that the US had a hurricane season, which the White House later said was a “joke”.The 2006 policy also empowered Fema to act with greater flexibility and clearer authority in emergency management, and designated its administrator as a principal presidential adviser. Trump does not appear to be following those provisions, Honoré said.As deadly floods overwhelmed Texas last month, Fema officials told CNN they were not able to pre-position search and rescue crews in the region because Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, insisted upon personally approving all agency contracts and grants over $100,000 before funds were disbursed.“Genius,” Honoré said sarcastically.This week, Fema employees wrote to Congress warning that the Trump administration’s changes at the agency could lead to another “catastrophe” on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. “The agency’s current trajectory reflects a clear departure from the intent” of the 2006 legislation, they wrote.View image in fullscreenDaniel Llargués, Fema’s acting press secretary, dismissed the criticisms voiced in the letter telling the New York Times the Trump administration “is committed to ensuring Fema delivers for the American people” and to cutting “red tape, inefficiency and outdated processes” in the agency. Fema did not respond to questions from the Guardian for this article.Equity threatenedIn the absence of federal support after Katrina, many advocacy groups worked to fill the gaps, particularly in the low-income communities of color that found it disproportionately difficult to rebuild.Even those non-governmental efforts have been undermined by Trump’s policies, said McKinney, the field operations director of lowernine.org.The organization has for years hosted international volunteers, but fewer want to travel to the US amid Trump’s immigration crackdown, he said.In May, the president also gutted AmeriCorps, leaving lowernine.org with fewer hands to help with their home construction efforts.“They cut the AmeriCorps funding [one] afternoon in the middle of a workday,” said Laura Paul, executive director of lowernine.org. “Our team had just taken a wall down on someone’s house that they were living in, and they just put their tools down and walked off site.”View image in fullscreenTrump has also ended grants to some environmental justice groups, including in New Orleans, further threatening efforts to promote equitable disaster recovery, while gutting Biden-era equity-focused government initiatives, including within Fema.“Fema, obviously, was not perfect in any way after Katrina,” said Montano. “But a lot of the progress on equity is just gone.”‘More support, more help’The scrutiny federal disaster response has received since Katrina is warranted, but Trump has moved in the wrong direction, said Betina James, a resident of New Orleans’s Hollygrove neighborhood.View image in fullscreen“We want more support, more help, not for them to take all that help away,” she said.From a senior citizens community meeting at the Hollygrove-Dixon Neighborhood Association’s Life Transformation Community Center this month, James recounted her experience after Katrina destroyed her house: Fema denied her request for a temporary shelter for two months, and when they finally approved it, the agency provided her with a trailer that had “no floor in the bedroom”.“It was just covered with carpet with nothing under it, so if you stepped on it, you’d go straight through to the ground,” she said.Officials provided a replacement, but living in it made her feel nauseated with burning eyes and itchy skin. She believes it was contaminated.At the senior citizens meeting, a dozen other residents chimed in with their harrowing Katrina experiences: stepping over human corpses in the streets and being left without shelter and financial aid. Some said they had even failed to receive adequate assistance during more recent disasters such as 2021’s Hurricane Ida.View image in fullscreenBut those experiences should push officials to improve Fema, not gut it, said Terry Caesar, another senior attending the meeting.“It used to be when things broke, we took it to the shop to fix it,” he said. “You’re not supposed to throw it out.” More

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    Republicans are trying to ensure we’ll never have another fair election | Judith Levine

    “Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” Donald Trump exhorted the audience at a campaign event organized by the conservative Turning Point Action in July 2024. “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”Since his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, Trump has been building toward delivery on that promise, first by fomenting suspicion of widespread election fraud, then by trying to overturn the results via legal challenge and intimidation, and finally, on 6 January 2021, by force. Now the White House and Republicans both in Washington and the states are colluding more brazenly than ever to “fix it” – “it” meaning free and fair elections they might lose.Republicans’ aim is permanent control of the US government. Trump’s is the crown. As their assaults on voting rights – and the institution of elections itself – escalate, their success begins to look, if not inevitable, alarmingly possible.Trump’s tactics are working.The 2020 election was the cleanest and most efficient in memory. Claims of rampant fraud are lies – the big lie, as the 2021 House impeachment committee put it. But not among Republican voters. A Pew survey taken before the 2024 election found that Trump supporters were “deeply skeptical about the way the election will be conducted”, especially compared with Harris supporters. Whereas over 85% of Democratic voters believed in 2024 that absentee ballots would be counted accurately, and ineligible voters prevented from voting, among Trump supporters only 38% and 30%, respectively, felt the same.Buoyed by the big lie – and liberated by the supreme court’s 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act – voter suppression attempts reached a peak after the 2020 elections, when legislators introduced more than 400 restrictive bills. Signing Georgia’s 98-page Election Integrity Act in 2021, Brian Kemp, the Republican governor, was unambiguous about its partisan aim. “After the November election last year” –when record turnout in the reliably red state yielded victories for Biden and two Democratic US senators, and the secretary of state resisted Trump’s shakedown to “find 11,780 votes” to reverse the outcome – “I knew, like so many of you, that significant reforms to our state elections were needed,” he said.By September 2024, 31 states had enacted 114 such laws.In May 2024, Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he would accept the results of the election only if “everything’s honest” – that is, if he won. This definition of honesty took hold. According to some polls, before election day, fewer than a quarter of Trump supporters believed the election would be fair. After it, their confidence rates more than doubled. And while Republican concerns about fraud were pervasive in 2020, they were – surprise, surprise – virtually nonexistent when the 2024 results came in.With their man in the White House, congressional Republicans set about preparing for his coronation. Three days into Trump’s term, the Tennessee representative Andy Ogles introduced a bill to amend the constitution to allow presidents to serve three terms. At Trumpstore.com, you can buy a red “Trump 2028” cap for $50.On 25 March Trump issued the executive order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” which melds his xenophobic paranoia-mongering with his desire to “fix” elections. Its mandates range from requiring proof of citizenship to vote (an answer to the spectral threat of undocumented people stuffing the ballot boxes) to a ban on the bar codes that expedite vote counting.The executive order itself is illegal. The constitution gives the states, not the president, the power to regulate elections.On 4 April, the House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, requiring registrants and voters to document citizenship.The GOP’s election-interference campaign is accelerating. On 7 July, the justice department’s civil rights division wrote a letter to Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, and Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, alleging that four of its majority-minority “coalition districts” are illegal under the Voting Rights Act and directing the state to redraw its electoral map. Voting rights experts dispute this interpretation. In fact, the law prohibits the dilution of the electoral power of voters of color either by packing them into one district or spreading them out by gerrymandering–which is what the new map would do.In mid-July, the justice department issued broad requests to state election officials to turn over their election data and voter rolls. In Colorado, where Biden won by 11 points in 2020, a guy called Jeff Small – chief of staff to the Colorado Republican representative and Save Act cheerleader Lauren Boebert – began contacting officials claiming he was working with the Trump administration on election “integrity” and asking if they would kindly let the feds, or somebody, inspect their voting machines, according to Washington Post reporting. After one such request, the Department of Homeland Security called to follow up.Officials of both parties were outraged, especially when it came to monkeying with the equipment, an illegal act. “Anybody who is asking for access to the voting machines outside of the law” is suspicious, the Republican executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association told the Washington Post. “That automatically raises red flags in terms of their intent.”Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state made the larger point: “This all is part of a bigger ploy to further undermine our voting in this country,” she said. “They are actively in a power grab.”Meanwhile, the White House was leaning on Texas’s governor and legislative leaders to redraw their electoral map according to Trump’s specifications, dismantling Democratic strongholds to create five more Republican House seats – to which the president averred his party was “entitled”. When Texas got onboard, on 3 August the state’s 51 Democrats left the state, risking fines and arrest, to thwart the effort.To cover all bases, on 7 August, Trump ordered the commerce department to prepare a new US census leaving out undocumented immigrants. Under the constitution, the census counts the number of “persons”, not citizens; it must be conducted “within every … ten years”, and states must redistrict to concur with new data. In a post on Truth Social, the president described a bespoke tally “using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024”.The same day, the vice-president, JD Vance, descended on bright-red Indiana with a trio of Trump appointees to strong-arm its leaders to redistrict as well. Afterward, on X, Indiana’s lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, genuflected to Vance: “Your bold leadership and unwavering support for President Trump’s mission to expand the conservative majority in Congress is exactly what America needs right now.”On Fox News, the vice-president echoed Trump’s contention that counting undocumented immigrants in the census unfairly gives the advantage to Democrats, whom he also charged with “aggressive” gerrymandering. “We’re just trying to rebalance the scales,” Vance said.After two weeks, Democrats returned to the Texas state house. Republican leaders forced them to sign “permission slips” to leave the chamber and assigned police escorts to monitor them. After refusing to sign, one Democrat spent nights in the chamber. While speaking on the phone with Gavin Newsom, the California governor, from the bathroom, she was informed the call constituted a felony, she said.On Saturday, the Texas senate approved legislation creating the new map, which Abbott says he will sign “swiftly”. The move had already set off an avalanche of mid-decade redistricting, led by California. Other states, controlled by both parties, may follow.Last week on Truth Social, Trump announced he would “lead a movement” to eliminate mail-in ballots – an idea he apparently picked up from Vladimir Putin – and also “inaccurate” voting machines. He said he would sign an executive order to this effect soon. “Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump fantasized. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”Maybe the following order will eliminate voting altogether – for the good of our country, of course.

    Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist and author of five books. Her Substack is Today in Fascism More

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    What Trump’s move to fire Fed governor means for central bank’s independence

    Donald Trump has said he is firing Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, in a move viewed as a sharp escalation in his battle to exert greater control over the independent institution.Trump said in a letter posted on his Truth Social platform that he is firing Cook because of allegations she committed mortgage fraud. The allegation was made last week by Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee to the Federal Housing Administration, an agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.Cook previously said she would not leave her post.Trump has repeatedly attacked the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, for not cutting its short-term interest rate, and even threatened to fire him. Powell, who has previously warned that tariffs will push up inflation, told the Jackson Hole economic symposium in Wyoming last week that the Fed could soon change its policy stance.Powell’s caution has infuriated Trump, who has demanded the Fed cut borrowing costs to spur the economy and reduce the interest rates the federal government pays on its debt. Trump has also accused Powell of mismanaging the US central bank’s $2.5bn building renovation project.Firing the Fed chair or forcing out a governor threatens the Fed’s venerated independence, which has long been supported by most economists and Wall Street investors. Here’s what to know about the Fed:The Fed wields extensive power over the US economy. By cutting the short-term interest rate it controls – which it typically does when the economy falters – the Fed can make borrowing cheaper and encourage more spending, accelerating growth and hiring. When it raises the rate – which it does to cool the economy and combat inflation – it can weaken the economy and cause job losses.Economists have long preferred independent central banks because they can more easily take unpopular steps to fight inflation, such as raise interest rates, which makes borrowing to buy a home, car, or appliance more expensive.The importance of an independent Fed was cemented for most economists after the extended inflation spike of the 1970s and early 1980s. Arthur Burns, former Fed chair, has been widely blamed for allowing the painful inflation of that era to accelerate by succumbing to pressure from Richard Nixon to keep rates low heading into the 1972 election. Nixon feared higher rates would cost him the election, which he won in a landslide.Paul Volcker was eventually appointed chair of the Fed in 1979 by Jimmy Carter, and he pushed the Fed’s short-term rate to the stunningly high level of nearly 20%. (It is currently 4.3%). The eye-popping rates triggered a sharp recession, pushed unemployment to nearly 11% and spurred widespread protests.Yet Volcker didn’t flinch. By the mid-1980s, inflation had fallen back into the low single digits. Volcker’s willingness to inflict pain on the economy to throttle inflation is seen by most economists as a key example of the value of an independent Fed.An effort to fire Powell would almost certainly cause stock prices to fall and bond yields to spike higher, pushing up interest rates on government debt and raising borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans and credit card debt. The interest rate on the 10-year treasury is a benchmark for mortgage rates.Most investors prefer an independent Fed, partly because it typically manages inflation better without being influenced by politics but also because its decisions are more predictable. Fed officials often publicly discuss how they would alter interest rate policies if economic conditions changed.If the Fed was more swayed by politics, it would be harder for financial markets to anticipate – or understand – its decisions.The supreme court in a ruling earlier this year suggested that a president can’t fire the chair of the Fed just because he doesn’t like the chair’s policy choices. But he may be able to remove him “for cause”, typically interpreted to mean some kind of wrongdoing or negligence.It’s a likely reason the Trump administration has zeroed in on the building renovation, in hopes it could provide a “for cause” pretext. Still, Powell would likely fight any attempt to remove him, and the case could wind up at the supreme court. More

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    Judge rules Utah’s congressional map must be redrawn for the 2026 elections

    The Utah legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries after a judge ruled on Monday that the Republican-controlled body drew them in violation of voters’ rights.The current map, drawn in 2021, divides Salt Lake county – the state’s population center and a Democratic stronghold – among the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins. District court judge Dianna Gibson declared the map unlawful because the legislature circumvented a commission established by voters to ensure districts aren’t drawn to favor any party.New maps will need to be drawn quickly for the 2026 midterm elections. Lt Gov Deidre Henderson, the state’s top elections official, asked the courts for the case to be finalized by November to leave time for the process before candidates start filing in early January. But appeals promised by Republican lawmakers could help them run out the clock to possibly delay adopting new maps until 2028.The ruling creates uncertainty in a state that was thought to be a clean sweep for the GOP as the party is preparing to defend its slim majority in the US House. Nationally, Democrats need to net three seats next year to take control of the chamber. The sitting president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterms, as was the case for Donald Trump in 2018.The US president has urged several Republican-led states to add winnable seats for the GOP. In Texas, a plan awaiting governor Greg Abbott’s approval includes five new districts that would favor Republicans. Ohio Republicans already were scheduled to revise their maps to make them more partisan, and Indiana, Florida and Missouri may choose to make changes. Some Democrat-led states say they may enter the redistricting battle, but so far only California has taken action to offset Republican gains in Texas. More

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    Trump administration to restore $6.8bn in education funds after multi-state suit

    After a multi-state lawsuit over Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to freeze more than $6.8bn in education funding to US schools, the Trump administration has agreed to restore the funds for a range of educational services, including after school and summer learning, teacher training, and support for English-learners.The administration did not give a clear explanation as to why it had withheld the congressionally-allocated funds, though a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget had indicated that review found instances of federal education money being “grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda”.Following a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of California and 22 other states, as well as the governors of two states, the administration released some funding. On Monday, California attorney general Rob Bonta announced that the states secured an agreement to have the funding fully restored.“The Trump administration upended school programs across the country when it recklessly withheld vital education funding just weeks before the school year was set to begin,” Bonta said. “Fortunately, after we filed our lawsuit, the Trump Administration backed down and released the funding it had previously withheld … Our kids deserve so much better than what this anti-education administration has to offer, and we will continue to fight to protect them from this president’s relentless attacks.”In their lawsuit, states accused the administration of holding back money illegally, as the US constitution gives congress the rights to appropriate funding, and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 bars the president from unilaterally withholding funds designated by congress.The delayed funds, which were frozen just weeks before the start of the school year this year, had left many communities and school districts uncertain if they would be able to sustain programs. The withheld funds affected after-school and other programs attended by about 1.4 million children nationwide, according to the nonprofit group Afterschool Alliance. Most of the programs benefit low-income families.The funds also covered programs to retain teachers, especially in low-income school districts.Since taking office, Donald Trump has pushed to reshape public education in the US to fit more closely with his rightwing political and social beliefs.He had repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funds from states over policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports. It has also separately threatened or cancelled for sex ed over mentions of transgender people from educational materials.The administration has also pushed states to disqualify immigrant students from discounted in-state tuition reserved for state residents. More

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    Fema staff warn Trump’s cuts risk exposing US to another Hurricane Katrina

    Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) risk exposing the US to another Hurricane Katrina, staff at the agency have warned Congress in a withering critique that also takes aim at its current leadership.Writing in the run up to this week’s 20th anniversary of the devastating 2005 storm that killed 1,833 people and caused widespread destruction in New Orleans and the Gulf coast, more than 180 current and former Fema employees say the Trump administration’s policies are ignoring the mistakes that led to it.The letter, sent to members of Congress and a council formed to examine the agency’s future, follows months of criticism of Fema from Trump and senior administration officials, who have threatened to close it, prompting more than 2,000 staff – about one-third of its permanent workforce – to depart, leaving it short of institutional expertise in key positions.It comes after last month’s deadly flooding in Texas that left at least 135 – including 37 school children – dead. Experts said the death toll may have been inflated by the upheaval at Fema, claiming it diminished its capacity to respond quickly.The letter, entitled The Katrina Declaration, accused the Trump administration of disregarding the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act (PKERMA), passed in 2006 with the intention of absorbing the lessons of the disaster.“Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster, but a man-made one,” the signatories wrote.“The inexperience of senior leaders and the profound failure by the federal government to deliver timely, unified, and effective aid to those in need left survivors to fend for themselves.“Two decades later, Fema is enacting processes and leadership structures that echo the conditions PKERMA was designed to prevent.”It is also scathing about Kristi Noem, who as homeland security secretary, has overall responsibility for Fema, and about two administrators who have been placed in charge of the agency since Trump’s inauguration.“Since January 2025, Fema has been under the leadership of individuals lacking legal qualifications, Senate approval, and the demonstrated background required of a Fema administrator,” the signatories said.The letter identifies the current Fema acting administrator, David Richardson, who has no previous experience in disaster management, and his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, who was appointed by Trump only to be fired after publicly saying he opposed plans to abolish the agency.“Decisions made [by Noem, Richardson and Hamiltion] … hinder the swift execution of our mission, and dismiss experienced staff whose institutional knowledge and relationships are vital to ensure effective emergency management,” it said.Noem has angered seasoned officials by demanding that contracts worth more more than $100,000 be personally approved by her – a stipulation specialists say significantly slowed the response to the Texas floods.Richardson’s suitability was questioned after he told staff that he did not know the US had a hurricane season – which lasts from the start of May till 30 November. His office later insisted he was joking.The letter states: “Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration.”Six statements of opposition in the letter include condemnation of “the ongoing failure to appoint a qualified FEMA administrator, as required by law”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt also includes criticism of the administration’s “censorship of climate science”.“This administration’s decision to ignore and disregard the facts pertaining to climate science in disasters shows a blatant disregard for the safety and security of our nation’s people and all American communities regardless of their geographic, economic or ethnic diversity,” the signatories write.A petition at the end of the letter demands that Fema be given full cabinet level agency status and defended from interference from the Department of Homeland Security. The department recently ordered Fema agents to assist Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents in immigration raids, threatening to fire those who refused.Trump, who has set up a review council headed by Noem to consider Fema’s future, has repeatedly said he favors its abolition, though he softened his rhetoric following the Texas floods, amid suggestions that it could be “rebranded” with more of its functions being devolved to the states.Thirty-six of the signatories – including some currently working at the agency – attached their names, leaving them open to possible retribution. Another 144 withheld their identities.One signatory, Michael Coen, a former Fema chief of staff under Joe Biden and Barack Obama, told the Guardian in a statement: “I am proud of the current and former FEMA employees for having the courage to speak up. Lessons were learned from Katrina and Congress took action. Those lessons and actions are being disregarded by the Trump administration.”Daniel Llargués, Fema’s acting press secretary, dismissed the criticisms voiced in the letter.“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” he told the New York Times. He said the Trump administration “is committed to ensuring Fema delivers for the American people” and to cutting “red tape, inefficiency and outdated processes” in the agency. More