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      Judge temporarily blocks Trump’s mass firings at federal agencies

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      A federal judge in California has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US defense department and other agencies to carry out the mass firings of some employees.The US district judge William Alsup said in San Francisco on Thursday that the US office of personnel management (OPM) lacked the power to order federal agencies to fire any workers, including probationary employees who typically have less than a year of experience.Alsup ordered the OPM, the human resources department for federal agencies, to rescind a 20 January and a 14 February email directing agencies to identify probationary employees who should be fired.Alsup said he could not order the defense department itself, which is expected to fire 5,400 probationary employees on Friday, and other agencies not to terminate workers because they are not defendants in the lawsuit brought by several unions and non-profit groups.But he suggested that the mass firings of federal workers that began two weeks ago would cause widespread harm, including cuts to national parks, scientific research and services for veterans.“Probationary employees are the lifeblood of our government. They come in at a low level and work their way up. That’s how we renew ourselves,” said Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee.Alsup handed down the order in a case brought by labor unions and non-profits filed last week.The complaint filed by five labor unions and five non-profit organizations is among multiple lawsuits pushing back on the administration’s efforts to vastly shrink the federal workforce.Thousands of probationary employees have already been fired. Just on Thursday, hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency, learned they had lost their jobs.The plaintiffs say the OPM had no authority to terminate the jobs of probationary workers who generally have less than a year on the job. They also say the firings were predicated on a lie of poor performance by the workers.The Trump administration has maintained that the memo and email from the OPM merely asked agencies to review their probationary workforces and decide who could potentially be terminated, and did not require them to do anything.“An order is not usually phrased as a request,” Kelsey Helland of the US Department of Justice told Alsup during the hearing.But the judge said it was unlikely that virtually every federal agency independently decided to decimate its staff.“How could that all happen with each agency deciding on its own to do something so aberrational? I don’t believe it,” Alsup said.There are an estimated 200,000 probationary workers – generally employees who have less than a year on the job – across federal agencies. About 15,000 are employed in California, providing services ranging from fire prevention to veterans’ care, the complaint says. More

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      Trump administration quietly shutters online form for student debt repayment

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      The Donald Trump administration has taken down the online application form for several popular student debt repayment plans, causing confusion among borrowers and likely creating complications for millions of Americans with outstanding loans.Those seeking payment plans are unable to access the applications for income-driven repayment plans (IDR), which cap what borrowers must pay each month at a percent of their earnings, as well as the online application to consolidate their loans on the US Department of Education website.The quiet removal came after a federal appeals court decision earlier this week that continued a pause on Joe Biden’s Save program, an income-driven plan for loan forgiveness that would have forgiven debts after as few as 10 years of payments.Biden’s Save program has been on hold since last summer after a group of Republican state attorneys general brought forward a lawsuit against the forgiveness features. As a result, about 8 million borrowers who enrolled in Save before it was halted currently have their loans in limbo as the litigation is ongoing.It is currently unclear how borrowers who were already enrolled in income-driven plans are supposed to submit their annual paperwork to certify their incomes. It is also uncertain when or if the payment plan applications will be back up on the website.The continued setbacks in the path towards student loan forgiveness has caused concern among those with debt, and loan forgiveness activists. Critics also point out that removing payment plan options was not a part of the previous litigation.There is also criticism towards the DoE’s decision to quietly remove the applications rather than announcing it, with the department opting instead to post a banner on StudentAid.gov.The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), a non-profit dedicated to eliminating student debt in the US, released a statement in response to the sudden removal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Shutting down access to all income-based repayment plans is not what the 8th Circuit ordered—this was a choice by the Trump Administration and a cruel one that will inflict massive pain on millions of working families,” the statement says.It goes on to say: “President Trump campaigned on lower costs, but once again has chosen a path that will ensure the greatest possible harm to the monthly budgets of everyday working families.” More

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      Social Security Administration could layoff up to 50% of its workforce, source says – live

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      The Social Security Administration is expected to lay off at least 7,000 people from its workforce of 60,000, the Associated Press reported.The workforce reduction could be as high as 50%, according to a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity. It’s unclear how the layoffs will directly impact benefits of the 72.5 million Social Security beneficiaries, which include retirees and children who receive retirement and disability benefits.Advocates and Democratic lawmakers warn that layoffs will reduce the agency’s ability to serve recipients in a timely manner.King Charles invites Donald Trump for unprecedented second state visit to UKKing Charles has invited Donald Trump to make an unprecedented second state visit to the UK in a letter handed to the US president by Keir Starmer.Queen Elizabeth II hosted Trump on a state visit in 2019. Precedent for second-term US presidents who have already made a state visit is usually tea or lunch with the monarch at Windsor Castle, as was the case for George W Bush and Barack Obama.Trump received the invitation during a meeting at the White House on Thursday, with Starmer presenting the letter from the king.In the letter, which Trump showed to the cameras in the Oval Office, Charles suggested he and Trump could meet beforehand at Dumfries House or Balmoral, which are near Trump’s golf courses in Scotland, to discuss the plans for the much grander visit.The letter, partially obscured by Trump’s hand, read: “I can only say that it would be … pleasure to extend that invitation once again, in the hope that you … some stage be visiting Turnberry and a detour to a relatively near neighbour might not cause you too much inconvenience. An alternative might perhaps be for you to visit Balmoral.“There is much on both estates which I think you might find interesting, and enjoy – particularly as my foundation at Dumfries House provides hospitality skills-training for young people who often end up as staff on your own establishments!”The letter continued: “Quite apart from this presenting an opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues of mutual interest, it would also offer a valuable chance to plan a historic second state visit to the United Kingdom.“As you will know this is unprecedented by a US President. That is why I would find it helpful for us to be able to discuss, together, a range of options for location and programme content.Read the full story:The Social Security Administration is expected to lay off at least 7,000 people from its workforce of 60,000, the Associated Press reported.The workforce reduction could be as high as 50%, according to a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity. It’s unclear how the layoffs will directly impact benefits of the 72.5 million Social Security beneficiaries, which include retirees and children who receive retirement and disability benefits.Advocates and Democratic lawmakers warn that layoffs will reduce the agency’s ability to serve recipients in a timely manner.A federal judge has ordered Trump administration officials involved in Elon Musk’s “opaque” department of government efficiency (Doge) to testify under oath in a lawsuit regarding the agency’s access to sensitive government databases.US District Judge John Bates ruled on Thursday that limited questioning of officials connected to Doge could help clarify the group’s activities and assess whether it poses the data security risks that government employees have raised concerns about.The judge’s order allows unions and liberal groups suing the agency to depose four officials: one from Doge’s White House headquarters and one each from the labor department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Doge’s aggressive push to streamline bureaucracy has triggered over a dozen lawsuits, and this order marks the first time that people involved in the project will be required to answer questions from lawyers outside the government.Here’s where the day stands so far:

      Donald Trump suggested Vladimir Putin can be trusted in the peace talks with Ukraine because “we had to go through the Russian hoax together”. “I’ve known him for a long time now, and I don’t believe he’s going to violate his word,” Trump said during his Oval Office meeting with Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister. For more updates from Trump’s press conference with Starmer, follow the UK politics live blog.

      Trump announced he would move forward with imposing 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada next week, after he initially delayed that policy by one month. In a post on Truth Social, Trump blamed Mexico and Canada for allowing illegal drugs to flow into the US, writing: “We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled.”

      The top Democrat on the Senate finance committee warned that Trump’s tariffs threats are “driving the US economy straight into a wall”. “Slapping tariffs on everything Americans buy from Canada, Mexico, and China will mean higher prices on groceries, gas and cars, with fewer jobs and lower pay when our closest trading partners respond to Trump’s trade war by buying fewer American products,” senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, said in a statement.

      Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee slammed the Trump administration over a decision to eliminate as much as 90% of USAid’s foreign aid contracts. “It is clear that the Trump Administration’s foreign assistance ‘review’ was not a serious effort or attempt at reform but rather a pretext to dismantle decades of US investment that makes America safer, stronger and more prosperous,” the Democrats said in a joint statement.
      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.Senator Ruben Gallego, a freshman Democrat of Arizona, has introduced a resolution condemning the Trump administration’s rejection of a United Nations resolution denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.On Monday, the US joined Russia, Belarus and North Korea in voting against the EU-Ukrainian resolution, which was intrdouced to coincide with the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.“Let’s be clear on this: this is a war that Russia started. Ukraine did not ask for it. They did not ask to go to war with a nuclear superpower, and they did not ask for their cities to be reduced to rubble,” Gallego said in a speech today on the Senate floor.“They didn’t ask for their children to be displaced and families to be torn apart. If Ukraine had its way, this war would have ended years ago.”He warned that the US position on the UN resolution “puts us on the same side as Russia and North Korea,” adding, “That’s not just embarrassing, it is dangerous.”Donald Trump made some eyebrow-raising comments about Russia during his Oval Office meeting with Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, just a few moments ago.Trump suggested that Vladimir Putin could be trusted to follow through on the terms of any peace agreement signed with Ukraine, saying he expected the Russian leader to “keep his word”.“I’ve spoken to him. I’ve known him for a long time now,” Trump said.“You know we had to go through the Russian hoax together [the claim that Russia colluded with Trump to rig the 2016 election]. That was not a good thing …“I’ve known him for a long time now, and I don’t believe he’s going to violate his word.”For more updates and analysis from Trump’s press conference with Starmer, which is expected to get underway soon, follow the Guardian’s UK politics live blog:Kash Patel, the controversial new FBI director, has proposed teaming up with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) as a way to improve agents’ physical fitness, ABC News reported.Patel reportedly floated the potential collaboration on teleconference Wednesday with the heads of the FBI’s 55 field offices. Dana White, the CEO and founder of the mixed-martial arts entertainment company, is a prominent Trump supporter and major booster of his re-election campaign.Kash’s appointment has rattled the agency, amid widespread concern that he would use the historically independent bureau to pursue Trump’s political opponents – something he declined to rule out in his confirmation hearing.Asked about self-styled “misogynist influencer” Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, flying to the US, reportedly after the US urged Romania to lift the travel ban that was preventing them from leaving the country, Trump said he “doesn’t know anything about it”.The pair, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, arrived in Florida from Romania on Thursday by private jet, after prosecutors suspended their travel ban and a court lifted a precautionary seizure on some of their assets. The brothers, are staunch Trump supporters.On Thursday, Ron DeSantis, the state’s Republican governor, said: “Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct in the air.”The Tate brothers were arrested in Romania in 2022 and face trial on charges of rape, sex with a minor, people trafficking and money laundering.Attending the anti-war protest in solidarity with Barnard and Columbia students is Raymond Lotta, a spokesperson for Revolutionary Books in Harlem.“We are here specifically today because we are standing in solidarity with the students here at Barona and Columbia who are being punished severely for standing in support of the Palestinian people and calling out this university for being complicit in war crimes, and now two students have been expelled…they must be reinstated. This is a just and a righteous demand,” Lotta said.He added: “And we are here to stand in solidarity and also to help people to understand that we’re now fighting in a new situation with Trump MAGA fascism in power and their agenda is horrific. I mean, across the board, you know, terrorizing and rounding up immigrants, attempting to erase LGBTQ people. This is fascism and, you know, they are attempting to use the military to suppress protest in dissent, and the struggle here is a struggle that has inspired students across the country.”The protesters have issued a list of four demands to Barnard president Laura Rosenbury.The demands stated are: “Immediate reversal of the two Barnard students’ expulsions…Amnesty for all student students disciplined for pro-Palestine, action or thought…a public meeting with Dean Leslie Grinage, and president Laura Rosenbery and abolition of the corrupt Barnard disciplinary process and complete transparency for current past and future disciplinary proceedings.”“Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will rest,” the students chant.“Barnard College go to hell,” others yell before going into, “1, we are the students! 2, we won’t stop fighting! 3, we want divestment now now now!”NYPD have set up more barricades outside Barnard as a verbal altercation between the student protestors and counter protestors broke out with both sides yelling at each other.Elon Musk again criticized Verizon as the Federal Aviation Administration reportedly considers canceling a $2.4bn contract with the telecommunications company. On deck to supplant Verizon: The tech mogul’s own satellite internet company, Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX.In a post on his X social media platform, Musk said the “Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking down very rapidly”.Musk made the comment in a repost of a tweet linking to the Washington Post’s report that the FAA was “close to canceling” Verizon’s contract in favor of Starlink, setting up a major conflict-of-interest test for the administration as Musk leads its cost-cutting effort. Staff with Musk’s Doge have already infiltrated the aviation agency, according to multiple reports.“The FAA assessment is single digit months to catastrophic failure, putting air traveler safety at serious risk,” Musk said on X. “The Starlink terminals are being sent at NO COST to the taxpayer on an emergency basis to restore air traffic control connectivity. The situation is extremely dire.”On X, Musk said a “total overhaul” of the air traffic control system was needed, an assessment many at the agency would agree with. Handing the contract to Starlink, however, would compound existing conflicts of interest involving SpaceX and the FAA.The Guardian’s Maya Yang is at New York’s Barnard University, where students wearing keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestine are gathered outside on the campus, chanting a series of anti-war slogans amid a heavy New York police department (NYPD) presence.“Free, free Palestine!” the students chant as well as some hold up handwritten signs that read: “No more Zionist occupation”‘and “Amnesty now.”Around 100 or so students appear gathered outside the gated campus of Barnard, where only students and faculty with ID cards are allowed in.Around eight student counter-protestors have gathered across from the Barnard and Columbia students protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza.One student, with a shirt that says “Fuck Hamas, I stand with Israel” started playing Israeli music with others waving an Israeli and an IDF flag. Another student wore a white hoodie with the words: “Columbia University students supporting Israel.”Since Hamas’s 7 October attacks which killed 1,200 Israelis and took over 200 survivors hostage, Israeli forces have waged a deadly war on Gaza, killing over 48,000 Palestinians while forcibly displacing nearly 2 million survivors amid severe shortages in food, fuel and medical supplies due to Israeli aid restrictions. More

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      Trump administration launches portal for reporting DEI in public schools

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      The Trump administration has launched a controversial online portal allowing citizens to report diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices in public schools, escalating an aggressive campaign to purge those initiatives from American education.Unveiled on Thursday, the Department of Education’s “End DEI” portal arrived just before the expiration of the administration’s contentious two-week ultimatum for schools and universities to dismantle DEI programs or face funding cuts.The portal explicitly asks for complaints about “discrimination based on race or sex” in K-12 public schools, requiring users to provide personal details, school information and allegations limited to 450 words, with options to upload evidence.Tiffany Justice, the Moms for Liberty co-founder, in a statement posted on the website, urged parents to “share the receipts of the betrayal” in public schools, claiming institutions have “brushed off, mocked, or shut down” parental concerns about “critical theory, rogue sex education and divisive ideologies”.The administration intends to use these submissions to target schools for investigation, according to the website.Critics note the irony that while the administration frames DEI programs as primarily benefiting racial minorities, both private and government research show that white women have historically gained the most from such initiatives in education and employment.Legal resistance to the administration’s policy on schools is increasing. The American Federation of Teachers sued the education department on Tuesday, calling its 14 February memo unconstitutional. Filed jointly with the American Sociological Association, the lawsuit argues the directive violates first amendment and fifth amendment protections and is dangerously vague.“This letter radically upends and re-writes otherwise well-established jurisprudence,” the lawsuit states. “No federal law prevents teaching about race and race-related topics, and the Supreme Court has not banned efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe portal launch follows a significant setback for the administration when a federal judge blocked portions of Trump’s executive orders seeking to terminate DEI-related contracts throughout the executive branch.The education department’s deadline for schools to eliminate these programs expires Friday. More

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      Ice contractor plans for surveillance boom under Trump migrant crackdown

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      The Geo Group, the largest single private contractor to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said it was building out its surveillance business to be able to monitor hundreds of thousands or millions more immigrants than it already does.The Geo Group, a private prison corporation and parent company of BI Inc, has contracted with Ice for nearly 20 years to manage the agency’s electronic monitoring program. It currently tracks approximately 186,000 immigrants using devices such as ankle monitors, smart watches and a facial recognition app, according to public Ice data. Due to increasing demand from Donald Trump’s administration, which has promised mass deportations, company executives said that they expect that number to grow past its previous peak of 370,000 to 450,000 immigrants within the next year. The remarks were made during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday morning.“A little over two years ago, the ISAP contract utilization peaked at approximately 370,000,” George Zoley, the executive chair of the Geo Group, said on an earnings call on Thursday, referring to the agreement between Ice and Geo. “Returning to that utilization level would generate incremental revenues of $250m and even more if the contract exceeds the prior peak of utilization.”While the company is still ramping up its production of additional GPS units in anticipation of an expanded Ice contract, executives said they are able to monitor “several hundreds of thousands” of people and are trying to position themselves to be able to monitor millions of people. Zoley said that the Geo Group, and its competitor in running private prisons and detention centers, Core Civic, are in expedited discussions with Ice to expand current contracts for detention facilities as well as electronic monitoring.“It’s a fluid situation, but it’s picking up pace, if I may say,” he said. “We’ve gone from conceptual proposals … to substantive pricing and operational discussions. But the procurement process is moving at a speed that is unprecedented. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”The company’s vast electronic monitoring program was instituted as an alternative to detention in 2004 and has been entrusted to Geo group subsidiary BI Inc since then. Many of those forced to wear the ankle monitors, designed and produced by BI, have complained the devices can overheat, shock them or have been put on too tightly. The company has pitched its smart watch location tracker and smart phone app, called SmartLink, as a lower-level of surveillance than the monitor. Executives said on Thursday’s earnings call, however, that they expect a return to a reliance on the physical ankle monitors.“I think there is going to be a preference in the beginning for the ankle monitors which represents the high-security level of monitoring,” Zoley said.Though the company has yet to receive an indication from Ice on when the agency expects to reissue a new contract for the electronic monitoring program, called the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, executives say they believe the agency is focused on expanding the number of people being tracked through the existing program. The Geo Group is investing $16m into building out its inventory of ankle monitors in order to “be in a position to scale up the federal government’s utilization of ISAP by several hundreds of thousands to upwards of several millions of participants as required”, according to Zoley.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCompany executives also said they believed that under the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with violent crimes or theft, those detained will be required to be monitored under the ISAP program “indefinitely” if there is not enough capacity in detention facilities. The executives signaled their intent to expand the company’s surveillance program so that it could monitor an estimated 7 to 8 million people on the non-detained docket who entered the US through non-authorized pathways and then are released into the US. They are also building up capabilities to monitor the estimated 9.5 to 10 million people in the US who are otherwise undocumented in anticipation of Ice’s requests.“Given the size of the population our view is in addition to increased detention capacity … the Laken Riley Act will require significant ramp-up of electronic monitoring services to ensure proper trafficking of persons on non-detained docket and their compliance of the requirements of their immigration court proceedings,” Zoley said. More

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      Trump and California don’t see eye to eye, but critique of high-speed train has many on board

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      Californians know their state is a punching bag for Donald Trump’s administration, a “paradise lost” that the president intends to wrest back from the “radical left lunatics”. But when Trump took aim at the state’s much-delayed high-speed rail project earlier this month, saying it was “the worst managed project” he’d ever seen, some of those leftwingers – and more moderate voters – found themselves in the unusual position of conceding he might have a point.California’s beautiful dream of a bullet train whisking passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours has been more than 16 years in the making, approved by voters but dogged by so many delays, broken deadlines and cost overruns that it has only just reached the initial stages of laying down track.Originally the whole 494-mile route – stretching south beyond Los Angeles to Anaheim, home to Disneyland – was supposed to be finished by 2020, at a cost of around $30bn. Now, the state’s high-speed rail authority is refocusing its ambitions on a truncated 171-mile middle section in California’s Central valley, at a cost of more than $35bn and a tentative completion date of 2033. The budget for the entire line has ballooned to more than $100bn, with no end date in sight.“It’s impossible that something could cost that much,” Trump complained to reporters in the Oval Office in the midst of his slash-and-burn campaign to cut government spending across the board. He and his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, have launched an investigation and are threatening to withhold more than $4bn in federal grants previously approved by the Biden administration.California officials from the governor, Gavin Newsom, down have made a show of defending the project, calling it a catalyst for economic development that, after more than $13bn of investment to date, has progressed too far to justify any change of plan. “We just have to accept the responsibility of where we are, and that’s exactly what we are doing,” Newsom said last month at a ground-breaking ceremony for a railhead outside Bakersfield, at the southern end of the truncated Central valley line.With or without federal funding, California will have to come up with the lion’s share of the budget and currently has no plan in place to do so, beyond a study proposed by the state legislature to explore public-private partnerships and the possibility of using revenue from new economic development along the track to keep financing more of it.That comes on top of what supporters and detractors alike describe as years of top-heavy bureaucracy, too much money spent on consultants, and endless negotiating with property owners and public utilities who have felt little pressure to respond to the rail authority’s requests.The inspector general responsible for overseeing the high speed rail authority just issued a pair of reports, one anticipating that the project will keep missing deadlines including the 2033 completion date for the Central valley stretch, and the other detailing long delays caused by the latest negotiations to move water, electricity and gas lines out of the way of the rail route.Republicans, many of them opposed in principle to high-speed rail, have taken to calling the project “the train to nowhere”. But they are not the only ones. David Lazarus, a liberal commentator for the Los Angeles television news station KTLA who is in favor of a bullet train built right, said the state was “in the middle of a boondoggle of bad decisions that is now light years from its original plan and seems to be getting worse”.Elected Democrats who feel similarly have been largely silent since Trump and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, led by Elon Musk, started voicing their criticisms in the wake of last November’s presidential election. In the past, though, many of those Democrats have voiced concern that a botched high-speed rail line in California might spell the death of climate-friendly mass transit in the future.View image in fullscreenFiona Ma, the Democratic state treasurer, told the Guardian in 2023 she thought the government should get out of rail-building and defer to private enterprise because “government is not in the business of being efficient”. That same year, a Democratic state assembly member, Corey Jackson, said: “I don’t think history’s going to judge us well from the decisions we’re making on the project right now.”Newsom, Ma and Jackson did not agree to an interview request or requests for comment.For now, the high-speed rail line retains modest public support. An opinion poll conducted earlier this month for KTLA showed that 54% of California voters still believed it was a good investment, slightly down from a similar survey published by the Los Angeles Times three years ago. Whether those numbers can hold for another decade remains an open question, however, and some Republicans are already smelling blood in the water.View image in fullscreen“This is not the project the voters approved,” Republican assembly member Bill Essayli said in December. “I believe it should go back to the voters to ask them if they want to continue this project and say what it’s actually going to cost and accomplish.”Another Republican assemblymember, Alexandra Macedo, has introduced long-shot legislation to redirect state funding for the rail project to wildfire prevention and water infrastructure projects – both hot topics in the wake of last month’s devastating fires that destroyed whole neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.The high speed rail authority, meanwhile, remains sanguine about the risk of losing federal funding, saying it welcomes the Trump administration’s investigation. “We stand by the progress and impact of this project,” the chief executive Ian Choudri said in a statement.Asked how the authority planned to continue financing the project, with or without federal money, a spokesperson said they were looking at a variety of options including private investment and government loans. “We are building what we can where we can as other funding is identified,” spokesperson Kyle Simerly said. “It is common for major infrastructure projects to be built in phases to spread costs and manage complexity.”View image in fullscreenMany policy insiders, including Ma, favor the private rail-building approach taken by the Florida-based company Brightline, which is building a high-speed line from Las Vegas to the eastern Los Angeles suburbs. In fact, Brightline is considering a branch line to connect its route to the future high-speed LA-San Francisco line.The only problem? The connection point, in the desert town of Palmdale north of Los Angeles, is 95 miles short of the Central Valley high-speed segment and unlikely to be linked up to it for decades.The branch line would mainly serve as a roundabout way for Brightline passengers to reach downtown Los Angeles from Las Vegas, including a slow stretch of commuter rail over the final 60 miles. On the map, the route looks like a giant wiggle around the San Gabriel mountains instead of a much straighter line along the freeway system. Still, in January, the Biden administration awarded a last-minute $1m federal grant to prepare the Palmdale station for high-speed rail traffic – an act of faith the Trump administration looks unlikely to repeat. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, Trump’s first cabinet meeting and confusion over who leads the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).Jimmy KimmelTrump announced another disquieting idea on Wednesday – to allow foreigners to purchase new “gold card” visas for $5m apiece – and Jimmy Kimmel was not happy about it. “What a good idea – I’ve always said our immigration system should run more like the customer rewards program at a casino in Atlantic City,” he joked on Wednesday evening.“Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting,” Kimmel continued. “This is basically what he does at Mar-a-Lago. He’s selling memberships to a country club, but this club is actually our country. The land of the free, and by free I mean $5m bucks.”Trump also said he would consider selling the visas to Russian oligarchs: “I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice people, it’s possible.”“Let me tell you something: he may know oligarchs, but not as well as they know him,” Kimmel quipped.Kimmel also mocked Elon Musk, who tried to defend Doge’s slash-and-burn approach to civil servant layoffs as an organization that owned up to mistakes. During Trump’s first cabinet meeting, Musk conceded that Doge “accidentally” canceled USAid’s Ebola prevention program, but “restored it immediately”.“Oh, well, that’s fine then,” Kimmel joked. “He only canceled our Ebola prevention for a couple of days, calm down, everybody.“That’s not an excuse,” he added. “Just ask the doctor – ‘As soon as I realized I unplugged my mother’s life support to charge my iPhone, I immediately plugged it back in.’”Stephen ColbertOn Wednesday, Trump held his first full cabinet meeting of his second term, “and everybody was there”, said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It was a who’s who of why them?”“As commander in chief, Trump made it immediately clear who is in charge: Elon Musk,” Colbert continued. Musk, who attended the meeting, introduced himself as “humble tech support” because “that is almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is doing”.“Well, of course. I mean, we’ve all had that call with tech support,” Colbert mocked. “Hello? Yes, you’re computer’s frozen? Have you tried turning it off and then firing 4,000 people with an email.”Trump rambled on in nonsense fashion about Doge, somehow landing on the topic of circumcision. “That long, rambling response actually reminds me of circumcision, because somebody really should have cut that dickhead off,” Colbert quipped.While Musk is supposedly head of Doge, the White House continues to insist that he’s not in court filings and through its press secretary. Finally, on Tuesday, for reasons that remain unclear, the White House stated the agency is led by the career civil servant Amy Gleason. “Why Gleason? We don’t know for sure!” said Colbert.At the time of the announcement, Gleason was on vacation in Mexico. When reached by reporters, she declined to comment. “I am not surprised,” said Colbert. “It’s really hard to speak clearly when you’re under a bus.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic mocked Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, which he described as “green card privileges plus”.“Oh? Green card privileges plus? See, I was still getting America with ads,” Lydic joked. “Quick question: if I’m unhappy with America, can I cancel my subscription after seven days?”According to Trump, the gold card visas will be “a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful and they’ll be spending a lot of money.“Did this guy just put a cover charge on America?” Lydic wondered. “It’s $5m to get in, but he’ll waive it if you bring three hot girls with you.“I mean, I guess this beats the old way of becoming a citizen? Which was to marry Donald Trump,” she added.“Now you might be thinking, wait a second, if the US is just going to put citizenship up for sale, doesn’t that mean can any monster can buy one as long as they’re rich? Well, according to Trump, yes,” she continued, pointing to Trump’s comment that he knows Russian oligarchs who are “very good people”.“Seems like Trump watched Anora, and his takeaway from that movie was ‘we need to do more to help out that rich Russian teenager. He’s so good at sex!’” Lydic joked. More

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      ‘It’s been a lifesaver’: millions risk going hungry as Republicans propose slashing food stamps

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      During a recent grocery store visit, Audrey Gwenyth spent $159.01 on items such as eggs, Greek yogurt, edamame snaps, bagels, chia seeds, brownie mix, oatmeal, milk, cilantro rice and pork sausage. The entire bill was paid via her electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, card, which is how recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), pay for groceries at participating stores, farmers markets and restaurants.“Because I’m a single mom and I don’t receive child support, I don’t have a lot of help in the world,” said Gwenyth, a mother of two toddlers, whose food budget is around $100 per week. She shares many of her EBT purchases on social media to help others make the most of their benefits. “I could not pay for food if it wasn’t for EBT. It’s been a lifesaver.”In the US, more than one in eight households say they have difficulty getting enough food. Snap, formerly known as food stamps, helps more than 42 million people fill those gaps, and is considered the country’s most effective tool to fight hunger. But now, the USDA-run program is facing attacks from House Republicans who see deep cuts as a way to pay for an extension of the 2017 tax bill that benefits the very wealthy.On Tuesday night, the House narrowly passed a budget resolution that called for $4.5tn in tax cuts and a $2tn cut in mandatory spending, which includes programs such as Snap and Medicaid.While it is unknown exactly how much would be slashed from Snap, some estimates say funding could be reduced by at least 20%. The House budget resolution enables committees to cut $230bn from the agriculture committee over 10 years in order to help extend tax cuts for the top 1%, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.This means the millions who rely on Snap would receive less help, and many of them could lose assistance altogether, even amid rising food costs and inflation.“Hunger and poverty aren’t going to stop because you cut a program,” said Gina Plata-Nino, Snap’s deputy director at the Food Research & Action Center (Frac). “The price of food keeps going up, things are more expensive, people are concerned about tariffs in terms of consumer goods and people relying on these benefits will not have any recourse.”Cuts could be made by limiting how people use Snap, removing benefits from those who lose their jobs and arbitrarily capping maximum benefits. Congress could also convert Snap into a block grant and have states pay a portion of benefits, which could limit access to assistance at a time when families are struggling already.Anti-hunger groups are especially alarmed about proposed alterations to the Thrifty Food Plan, which the USDA uses to determine benefit amounts and the annual cost of living of living adjustment, or Cola. One Republican proposal would cut $150bn from the program by limiting Thrifty Food Plan updates, which means benefits would be slashed for every American using Snap, affecting one in five kids in the US.Republicans have sent mixed signals. The House agriculture chair GT Thompson (Republican of Pennsylvania) said last week there would be no Snap cuts in reconciliation or the upcoming farm bill. But other Republicans have signaled openness to this, and critics of the budget resolution question how lawmakers could possibly chop $230bn without affecting Snap.Even before cuts, the current average Snap benefit is only around $6 a day per person, which means that they often fall short of what people actually need. “When you think about the rising cost of food, that is such a small amount of food,” said Rachel Sabella, the director of No Kid Hungry New York, a non-profit that works to end childhood hunger. “People are making tough choices in the grocery store.”Six dollars doesn’t get you much these days at food retailers. This year, the average price of eggs hit a record high of $4.95, and is expected to keep climbing as the US deals with the ongoing bird flu outbreak. A gallon of milk costs more than $4 and a pound of ground chuck costs $5.50, according to the consumer price index.To get by, families often hide food to save so it lasts later into the month. Caretakers report eating less or cutting their portion sizes and mothers say they sometimes forgo food at the end of the month so their kids can eat. People also reduce protein and produce in favor of cheap filler foods like rice. For people already making concessions, these proposed cuts would be devastating.“I live in poverty, not ignorance, so I keep a monthly budget and watch my spending very closely, which requires precision,” said Brytnee Bellinger, who is visually impaired and receives around $80 per month in food assistance. Bellinger usually spends her Snap dollars on grass-fed bison, which she says helps combat her iron deficiency, and fresh produce from farmers markets. If her benefit amount was reduced, she would likely be unable to afford either.“How are people supposed to balance making healthy food choices with spending wisely if their Snap benefit amount doesn’t accurately reflect the current cost of a healthy diet?” she said. “Poor people buying food isn’t the cause of federal overspending.”After being founded in 1964 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty, Snap has been targeted by both Republicans and Democrats. Cutbacks to the program were first made in the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which set time limits, reduced maximum allotments and eliminated eligibility of most legal immigrants for food stamps. During his first term, Donald Trump unsuccessfully attempted to cut Snap by 25 to 30%.While the Biden administration has been lauded for updating the Thrifty Food Plan to boost the amount of money people have to buy food, Republicans have made reversing the increase a major priority.GOP lawmakers and conservative thinktanks have falsely criticized the program as having high administrative costs and being rife with fraud and abuse. (In 2023, around 6% of Snap spending went to state administrative costs and few Snap errors are due to fraud on the part of recipients.) They’ve also attacked recipients for using Snap on things such as sweetened drinks. Trump officials have said that they want to ban sugary beverages, candy and more, although similar efforts have failed in the past.And the USDA secretary, Brooke Rollins, signaled on Tuesday that she plans to target Snap under the guise of keeping undocumented immigrants from receiving benefits even though they are already generally prohibited from receiving food assistance.When Snap benefits are cut, researchers have found that children were more likely to be food insecure, in poor health and at risk for development delays. Since Snap is part of a larger ecosystem, advocates say cutting the program will increase healthcare costs, poverty and hardship.Retail giants such as Walmart, Albertsons, Costco, Sam’s Club and Kroger would also be severely affected since Snap dollars are most often spent there. More than 25% of all Snap dollars are spent at Walmart and nearly 95% of the program’s recipients say they shop at the retailer.Food banks and pantries would also be massively affected by cutbacks. “If Snap is cut at the levels they’re talking about, food banks are not going to be able to fill that gap – we’re meant to be an emergency system,” said Jason Riggs, the director of policy and advocacy at Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico. “A cut to Snap at this time, when food costs are continuing to rise, the timing is horrifying. We can’t food bank our way out of this.” New Mexico has the eighth highest hunger rates in the nation and Riggs said many of their clients already use Snap.In Los Angeles, 25% of households face food insecurity, far higher than the national average of 14%, and rates are expected to increase due to the effects of the recent wildfires. “If cuts to Snap are enacted, we would need to further draw on philanthropic and community support to try to meet the increased demand for our services,” said Chris Carter, senior policy and research manager at Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which has distributed $14.2m pounds of food and personal care products through their network, which is a 37% increase compared with last year.Advocates of Snap say there are still countless people who qualify for assistance but do not apply for it due to administrative burdens, social stigma and deeply ingrained myths about welfare and poverty in the US. Food insecure veterans are consistently less likely than nonveterans to be enrolled in Snap and data from the National Council on Aging shows that while nearly 9 million older adults are eligible for Snap, they are not enrolled. Immigrants who are permanent residents or green card holders are only able to apply for Snap after a five-year waiting period, although there are a few exceptions for children and disabled people receiving other benefits.Since being diagnosed with lupus, pancreatitis and gallbladder stones, Michele Rodriguez has been unable to work and had to change her diet to include daily servings of fresh vegetables for juicing to help with her health conditions. If her benefit was reduced, she said she would have to prioritize feeding her two children and rely on food pantries, which would have long lines, or free giveaways for produce.“It’s just devastating because people like myself and seniors and children need help with food,” said Rodriguez, who sees the proposed cuts as being unfair and contrary to what Trump said while campaigning. “The price of food has not gone down. It’s really sad to see he’s only fighting for and helping people like him, but the people in the middle and lower class, what about us? Don’t you want to protect all of us?” More