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      As deportations ramp up, immigrants increasingly fear Ice check-ins: ‘All bets are off’

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      Jorge, a 22-year-old asylum seeker from Venezuela, reported in February to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Portland, Oregon, for what he figured would be a routine check-in. Instead, he was arrested and transferred to a detention center in another state.Alberto, a 42-year-old from Nicaragua who had been granted humanitarian parole, checked in with Ice using an electronic monitoring program that same month. Three days later, he was arrested.Sergei and Marina, a young couple from Russia with a pending asylum case, went into an immigration office in San Francisco in March, thinking they needed to update some paperwork. Agents arrested Sergei and told Marina to come back in a few weeks.For years, immigrants of all sorts with cases in process, pending appeals or parole, had been required to regularly check in with Ice officers. And so long as they had not violated any regulations or committed any crimes, they were usually sent on their way with little issue. Now, as the Trump administration pushes for the mass arrest and deportation of immigrants, these once routine check-ins have become increasingly fraught.Ice does not appear to keep count of how many people it has arrested at check-ins. But the Guardian estimates, based on arrest data from the first four weeks of the Trump administration, that about 1,400 arrests, or about 8% of the nearly 16,500 arrests in the administration’s first month – may have occurred during or right after people checked in with the agency.The Guardian reviewed cases in the arrest data, which was released by the Deportation Data Project from UC Berkeley Law School, where people who had previously been released on supervision were now arrested, as well as cases of people with pending immigration proceedings who were arrested in their communities. According to immigration lawyers, these types of arrests are most likely to match arrests that are occurring during or shortly after check-ins – though the actual number of cases may be higher.View image in fullscreen“Essentially, these people are low-hanging fruit for Ice,” said Laura Urias, a program director and attorney at the legal non-profit ImmDef. “It’s just very easy to arrest them.”Under the Biden administration, immigration officials had been instructed to prioritize detaining and expelling people who posed threats to public safety, and had criminal records. There were arrests during Ice check-ins during the Biden administration, too. A Guardian analysis found there were 821 arrests per month, on average, in 2024 that appeared to have occurred during or right after check-ins. But officials often used their discretion to allow immigrants who weren’t considered a priority for deportation to remain in their communities, on orders of recognizance or supervision.One of Donald Trump’s first actions after he was sworn in for his second term was to broaden Ice’s mandate – now all immigrants without legal status are prioritized for arrest, including those who have been checking in and cooperating with authorities.“Under this new administration, all bets are off,” said Stefania Ramos, an immigration lawyer based in Seattle. “So anyone with an Ice check-in appointment is frantic, looking for a lawyer, trying to figure out what they can do to protect themselves.”Attorneys and advocates cannot advise clients to skip check-ins because doing so would mean violating immigration regulations. And because these immigrants have been complying with Ice requirements, the agency knows their current home and work addresses. Many under Ice supervision had been ordered to wear ankle monitors or use facial recognition apps to check in – and allow the agency access to their real-time whereabouts.But lawyers are advising clients to prepare for the possibility that they could be detained at check-ins, and to bring someone, either a family member or an attorney, along with them.Jorge, the 22-year-old from Venezuela, had been checking in with Ice every three months while awaiting a court date to assess his asylum case. “Truly, I was never afraid I’d be arrested, because I did everything right,” he said on the phone, from the detention center in Tacoma where he is now being held.When an immigration official in Portland summoned him to sign some paperwork on 20 February, he had no reason to think he’d be relocated to a detention center one state over. “The truth is, this is so crazy,” he said. “I have a clean record. That’s why I voluntarily went to Ice.”In detention, he’s seen glimpses of the news that the president has declared war on Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, that Venezuelan men with no criminal convictions were being sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador. “I’m afraid,” he said. He isn’t from the state in Venezuela where Tren de Aragua operates, and he has no tattoos – which the government has spuriously cited as evidence that men are members of a gang. “But I don’t know what to think. It feels like I am being unjustly imprisoned simply for being Venezuelan.”Jorge had himself fled violence back home. He had first escaped to Colombia in 2022, but he had found it impossible to make money and survive there. That year, he continued north, through the Darién jungle, to Panama, but eventually decided to return home to Venezuela when he realized the US was enforcing its “remain in Mexico” policy, sending migrants arriving at the southern border back to Mexico. “I was back for only three months, but I was living a nightmare. I had to leave,” he said. He witnessed multiple homicides and was harassed by local law enforcement. “I was afraid for my life.”View image in fullscreenHe crossed through the Darién Gap again in 2023, and registered an asylum claim and was given a court date in 2025. In the two years since, he enrolled in community college and completed the accredited irrigation program in partnership with Portland Community College, worked as an advocate with the Voz Workers’ Rights Education Project and trained in emergency preparedness. He danced bachata and played on pick-up sports teams in town. “I left my family in Venezuela, but I found my community in Portland,” he said.“Now I feel despair. My future is literally hanging in the balance,” he said. On 20 March, a judge denied his appeal for bond – which means he will likely have to remain in detention until September, unless his lawyers are able to successfully appeal. Meanwhile, his friends have been raising money to cover legal expenses and commissary funds in detention.“I’m trying to keep courage,” he said. “But I don’t know why I’m here.”More than a dozen immigration lawyers, advocates and former immigration officials that the Guardian interviewed for this story said they have been hearing of similar cases across the country.ImmDef, which maintains a rapid response hotline for the families of people who have been detained, has received several calls from people who said their loved ones were arrested at check-ins. But the organization has also seen a number of cases where people went to their check-ins, and encountered no problems.“It hasn’t been consistent,” said Urias. “We haven’t seen much of a pattern, per se.”Ice did not respond to questions about whether its agents are increasingly arresting people at check-ins, or whether the frequency of these check-ins had changed, though the agency acknowledged it received the Guardian’s query.View image in fullscreenUrias was especially worried for one of her clients, a woman who survived domestic violence. She has a removal order but a pending application for a U-visa, which is offered to the victims of certain crimes.“She had been checking in with Ice since 2016, we actually survived the first Trump administration,” said Urias. Normally, Urias doesn’t accompany her to the check-ins but did so earlier this month. But then, the check-in happened without incident – and she was told to come back in a year. “It was a huge relief,” said Urias. “But also it feels like there’s no rhyme or reason why some people are ok, and others are picked up.”Lawyers and advocates said people such as Urias’s client – who have been given prior “orders of removal” by Ice, but were allowed to remain in the US because they had pending cases or appeals, because they had children or family in the US under their care, or because home countries weren’t accepting deportation flights – were among the most vulnerable to deportation at the moment.Ice always had the power to execute removal orders at any time – and now the agency seems particularly poised to wield that power.That’s what worries Inna Scott, an immigration attorney in Seattle, whose client had crossed into the US from Mexico as a teenager, and was issued a deportation order in 1997. But he has continued to live in the US since then. In 2021, he was able to get a permit to work legally in the US after complying with Ice’s orders to regularly check in.When he reported, as usual, in March this year, immigration officials told Scott that they would likely seek to enforce her client’s removal order from the 90s, and instructed them to return in a month. “My client has no criminal history and has been a well-behaved resident of the country for decades,” she said. “But now he’s all of a sudden subject to detainment.” Ice could reinstate his old deportation order without giving him any opportunity to make his case in front of an immigration judge.Scott said she wasn’t particularly shocked because Ice officials made similar arrests during the first Trump administration – which had also issued a broad mandate to deport anyone without legal status. “But it is unfortunate. These are people without any kind of criminal history. These are people who are not national security risks. They’re not fugitives, they are living their lives working lawfully, with their work permits,” she said. “And they’re still being uprooted from their lives and taken to a country they haven’t been to in decades.” More

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      A Nicaraguan asylum seeker checked in with Ice every week. He was arrested anyway

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      It finally happened while he was waiting to get his hair cut.Alberto Lovo Rojas, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, had been feeling uneasy for weeks, worried that immigration officials would arrest him any moment. But he had pushed the worry aside as irrational – after all, he had a permit to legally work in the US, and he had been using an app to check in monthly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).Still, something felt off. The Trump administration had promised mass deportations, and in the weeks since Donald Trump’s inauguration, Ice had asked him to do extra check-ins each weekend. “I even messaged the Ice office through my app, to ask if something was wrong,” Rojas said.His last check-in with Ice was on 5 February – all normal. On 8 February, they came for him.He was outside Great Clips in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. The barbershop had been crowded, so he put his name down for a cut and decided to wait in his car.Hours later, he was moved into the north-west detention center in Tacoma, awaiting deportation to Nicaragua – which he fled in 2018 amid a violent crackdown against nationwide anti-government protests. Rojas fears he’ll be targeted again.“I’m afraid to go back, I’m afraid for my life,” he told the Guardian. “I’m afraid I will never see my children again.”Rojas, 42, is one of potentially hundreds of people who have been detained in recent weeks despite complying with Ice requirements to regularly check-in. Ice does not appear to keep count of how many people it has arrested at check-ins. But the Guardian has estimated, based on arrest data from the first four weeks of the Trump administration, that about 1,400 arrests – 8% of the nearly 16,500 arrests in the administration’s first month – have occurred during or right after people checked in with the agency.View image in fullscreenLawyers and immigration advocates told the Guardian they believe that in order to oblige the president’s demand for mass arrests and deportation, immigration officials are reaching for the “low-hanging fruit” – people that Ice had previously released from custody while they pursued asylum or other immigration cases in a backlogged immigration court system.Most of these people do not have criminal histories and have dutifully been complying with the government’s orders to routinely report to immigration officials. Some have pending asylum cases, or are appealing their deportation orders. Others, like Rojas, had been denied their claims to stay in the US, but were released on supervision.In Rojas’s case, he was allowed to stay in Spokane with his wife and children – who had pending asylum cases – and apply yearly for a permit to legally work.“I just don’t understand,” Rojas’s wife, Dora Morales said. “Why would they want to arrest him now?Rojas had left Nicaragua with his uncle in September 2018.Both men had participated in Nicaragua’s April rebellion of 2018, a movement that started among university students. The movement was incited by unpopular changes to the social security system, but quickly grew into a massive movement calling for democratic reforms.Government forces immediately responded with crushing brutality, shooting at young protesters. “I felt a lot of pain, sadness to see mothers crying for their children,” Rojas said. He felt called to join the cause.Send us a tipIf you are connected to someone who has been deported or is in fear of deportation and have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian, please use a non-work device to call or text immigration reporter Maanvi Singh via the Signal messaging app at 929-418-7275.Rojas was well-known in his neighborhood, and he started to help organize protests and arrange transportation for those interested in attending.But as the demonstrations grew, so did the backlash. Police and pro-government paramilitary groups killed hundreds of students, human rights activists and journalists. His uncle was beaten and shot twice by Nicaraguan paramilitary officers.They had to leave, Rojas said. They went into hiding and eventually made their way out of the country, through Honduras and Guatemala before arriving at the US-Mexico border.“I never broke an immigration law,” Rojas said. He did exactly as he was directed – waiting a week in a notorious hielera – a frigid Customs and Border Protection holding cell where newly arrived immigrants slept on concrete floors. Then he was transferred to Phoenix, Arizona; flown to a detention center in Memphis, Tennessee; then Mississippi, where officials interviewed him to assess his eligibility for asylum in the US; and finally sent to Louisiana while his case was assessed.In July of 2019, a judge denied his asylum application, and he remained in detention while his lawyers appealed. And then – finally – in May 2020, as Covid-19 rapidly spread through the facility where he was held, Rojas’s fate changed. Following a class-action lawsuit, a federal judge ruled that Ice must consider the release of all detainees whose age or health conditions put them at elevated risk of Covid infection.Rojas is missing a kidney – a complication from a car accident when he was a child – and was especially at risk of complications from a coronavirus infection. So they let him go. “It was such a miracle,” he said.View image in fullscreenWhile Rojas was in detention, Morales and the couple’s two young sons, Alberto Jr and Matteo, had managed to escape Nicaragua as well. The family reunited in Spokane. He found work in construction, then on a ranch – and eventually, he was able to get a job as a mechanic at the Corwin Ford dealership in Spokane.“It was almost like some stereotypical, all-American dream. I mean, he was literally working for Ford!” said his friend Lizzy Myers. “He had just gotten this new lease on life, and he was really doing well.”Rojas and Morales had met – years ago – at church. He fell in love with her singing voice, and she managed to chat him up by asking for his help with English. In Spokane, the couple were once again able to attend mass together.Rojas began playing pick-up soccer with a local league. He’s been coaching his eldest in the sport as well. “And they are both improving so much – they are really getting quite good,” Rojas said. Last year, the family welcomed their newest member – baby Santiago – whom they baptized in Spokane’s St Peter church.Rojas’ lawyers reassured him that so long as he complied with Ice’s orders to routinely check in, and applied to renew his work permit each year, he’d be fine.“When the president won the election, he said he would arrest the criminals,” Rojas said. “I was worried. But also, I am not a criminal.”But then, Trump took office and rolled back a Biden-era memo prioritizing the deportation of people with criminal records or who posed threats to public safety. Now, all immigrants in the US without a legal status are subject to arrest, including those who have been checking in and cooperating with Ice. To meet the president’s goal for “mass deportations”, immigration officials have become more indiscriminate in their enforcement, a Guardian analysis last month found.The US arrested more immigrants in February 2025 than any month in the last seven years. Still, no one in his community believed that Rojas would be one of them.“We were all just shocked,” said Susy Glamuzina, his close friend and co-worker. Glamuzina had rushed to Morales’s side as soon as Rojas was arrested and had been driving the family over to Tacoma to visit Alberto in detention. “I just thought, you know, he had a baby who was born here,” she said.View image in fullscreenTheir boss reassured Alberto he’d hold Rojas’s job until he returned, and offered to pitch in for his legal fees. Marcus Riccelli, a Democratic state senator representing Spokane, who played soccer in the same league as Rojas, heard about the case, offered to help find Rojas legal representation and called in a favor to help his family file paperwork to delay his deportation. Meanwhile, friends have jumped in to help Morales with childcare and connect their children – who had been struggling since Rojas’s arrest – with counselors to help them process the trauma.Glamuzina and his friends have already planned a party for when he returns home. “Alberto is really missed. We want him back. And I’ll tell you – if they need any personal testimonies for his case, I can have 20 people in Tacoma in a heartbeat.”A GoFundMe page for his legal fees started by Myers has so far raised nearly $17,000.The family has been using the funds to pay for legal fees, and their lawyers have filed a motion to reopen Rojas’ asylum case. They’re also hoping Rojas will be released soon.He worries about health complications due to his missing kidney if he were to contract any infections while in detention.Morales has chided Rojas for not eating enough. Mealtimes in the detention centre have been irregular, and Rojas has not been in the mood to eat.“I see my husband is getting thinner in detention,” she said. “And I told him, I don’t want to see you thinner, because it would make me sadder than I already am!”It has been difficult, for both of them, not to think about what will happen if he is deported.Morales said news that Rojas has been detained in the US has already spread through their town in Nicaragua, and she worries that government-appointed neighborhood committees will be waiting, ready to alert authorities of Rojas’s arrival. If he isn’t imprisoned or worse, Morales said she worries he could end up exiled – the Nicaraguan government stripped citizenship from hundreds of opponents.“I am preparing for the worst,” Rojas said. “I am praying and I am preparing myself spiritually for what is to come.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s tariffs may be perilous for small, heavily indebted countries in global south

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      “This is very messed up. If Trump wants Cambodia to import more American goods: look, we are just a very small country!”Khun Tharo works to promote human rights in the Cambodian garment sector, which employs about 1 million people – many of them women.“I think they are very concerned about their jobs, and I think they are very concerned about their monthly pay cheque. And that has significant effects on the livelihoods of their dependent family,” says Tharo, programme manager at the Centre for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL), a Cambodian workers’ rights organisation.One of the most wilfully destructive aspects of Donald Trump’s shock and awe trade policy is the imposition of punitive tariffs on developing countries across Asia, including rates of 49% for Cambodia, 37% for Bangladesh, 48% for Laos.For decades Washington had championed economic development through trade. Now, at the same time as slashing overseas aid budgets and retreating from its role in supporting developing nations, it is ripping up that idea entirely.In its place, Trump intends to impose his will on the US’s trading partners. Some are all but powerless to exact concessions, given their small size, and dependence on the mighty American market. Cambodia hastily offered to cut tariffs on US goods on Friday, in a bid to propitiate Washington.Contrary to Trump’s bombast about the US being “pillaged”, the tariffs are not in any sense “reciprocal”.Instead, they relate to the size of the US goods trade deficit with each country, and the value of its exports. (Side note: the 10% paid by the UK has nothing to do with Labour’s negotiating flair – it just came out of the fact that Britain buys about as much stuff from the US as it sells the other way).Ironically, many of the countries in the global south hit by Trump had benefited from preferential schemes offering low or zero tariffs, precisely because building up exporting capacity is an accepted path to development.Alice Oyaro, the chief executive at the charity Transform Trade, which works with producers in some of the worst-hit countries, says: “Our biggest concern is that the additional costs are pushed down to those in the supply chain who are least able to pay. Small farmers exporting everything from green beans to cocoa, and women workers in Bangladeshi factories are already finding it hard to make ends meet. They will see their incomes squeezed even more.”Tiny Sri Lanka, which has an economy 0.3% of the size of the US’s, faces a 44% tariff despite being bailed out by the International Monetary Fund two years ago and continuing to negotiate debt restructuring deals with its creditors.“It’s a highly vulnerable situation,” says Ajith D Perera, the chair of the Asia Pacific Trade Agreement (APTA) Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Sri Lanka will lose export income and see a hit to GDP and employment – and that comes at a time when it is just coming out of bankruptcy.”He fears the scale of the tariffs could compromise Sri Lanka’s ability to meet the conditions of the IMF bailout deal. Trade is meant to be a key prop for growth, as it rebuilds its shattered economy.“I think the fundamentals have been challenged by the US decision,” he says. “25% of Sri Lanka’s exports go to the US and 70% of that is garments. I think the government needs to start discussions with the IMF immediately.”As his warning suggests, there is a risk that a grim side-effect of Trump’s trade war will be to exacerbate the debt crises already hitting heavily indebted poorer nations.Even countries that have escaped the most punitive tariff rates could still be hit hard if the prospect of a global downturn depresses the value of the commodity exports on which many rely.Keir Starmer and other leaders of the developed world have been preoccupied with their own domestic responses since Wednesday’s bombshell briefing in the White House Rose Garden.But the severity of the probable impact for the global south calls for a concerted approach, too – albeit one that will have to bypassWashington.Most of the hardest-hit countries can already trade tariff-free with major markets under projects such as the EU’s Everything But Arms programme and the UK’s Developing Countries Trading Scheme, which are designed to help the poorest nations to develop through trade.But if Trump’s tariffs stick, multinational brands focused on the US are likely to switch production rapidly to countries hit with lower rates. One garment buyer in India told me on Friday she was already hearing of factory owners in Bangladesh being told by US brands that they would now be manufacturing their sweaters in Peru, which has a rate of just 10%.The social dislocation in some of these hardest-hit economies could be profound, if such rapid shifts result in mass layoffs.And the case for debt write-offs, already clear, may become all the more pressing, if the resulting the looming global downturn sweeps vulnerable countries over the edge.The fact that the British government’s deep cuts to the aid budget now sit alongside a probable global economic downturn and heavy US penalties for exporters in developing countries makes that decision all the more shameful.Back in Cambodia, Tharo says: “The industry right now seems to be in a little bit of a hectic situation. The government is also extremely worried because they are not seeing any alternative markets at the moment. And we don’t have significant goods to be exported to any other country.“Trump doesn’t care,” he sighs. More

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      American corporations didn’t want to diversify, anyway

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      View image in fullscreenAt Ford Motor Company, the moral stock-taking began with a letter.“This is an extraordinary moment in our history,” Bill Ford, the company’s executive chair, and Jim Hackett, its CEO, wrote to employees on 1 June 2020. It had been three months of upheaval since the coronavirus pandemic began and the company first suspended production at its manufacturing sites. By mid-May, more than 87,000 people in the United States had died from the virus. Then, on 25 May, the video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, ultimately killing him, was seared into Americans’ consciousness.Even in the midst of a global pandemic, as systemic inequities around healthcare and wealth and education were thrown into sharp relief, the world saw how deadly everyday injustices remained. “All at once, we are grappling with a public health crisis that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, an economic shock that has forced us to adapt on the fly, and social upheaval that has challenging all of us to think and act differently,” Ford and Hackett wrote. Globally, people wanted to do something, but they did not know exactly what. There were online gestures: Black squares on Instagram, direct messages of apology to Black friends, well-designed slides with digestible facts about systemic racism. But, as the video spread, millions flooded the streets as well. They rallied in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland and Washington DC; and they protested overseas in London and Sydney and the Canary Islands. The actions were bolstered by calls to finally address the disparities that made the nation so inequitable.C-suites and boardrooms and universities couldn’t look the other way. Colleges and hospitals began renaming buildings; activists toppled statues and busts of traitors and racists, politicians took down others; and across the country, institutions were pushed to evaluate how their policies had locked certain people out of the American dream. But now, as the Trump administration has brought back to the White House its war against a diversifying workforce, the federal infrastructure and a critical history of the US, corporations are dropping diversity and equity programs as quickly as they created them.How did we get here? Why were so many companies – from Walmart to Paramount to Victoria’s Secret – willing to roll over on their diversity goals after the promises they made in 2020 to uproot systemic racism and transform the nation? Were they all just paying lip service? In many ways, the programs were never intended to radically change the workplace in the first place – they were intended to appease workers and dampen discontent. What we’ve seen since 2020 is not new. It’s a reversal rooted in the policies the US created decades ago, when it cast aside the goal of addressing a legacy of discrimination for the vague idea of diversity – an idea that was always destined to fail, and an idea many corporations never truly believed in.Superficial actionsFor employees at Ford, which was founded in Detroit, where nearly three-quarters of the city’s residents are Black, there was nothing academic about the issues highlighted in 2020. The pandemic hit the city as the plague of racism had left it economically distraught for decades; healing the disease systemic discrimination had left would require effort and intention. “There are no easy answers. We are not interested in superficial actions. This is our moment to lead from the front and fully commit to creating the fair, just and inclusive culture that our employees deserve,” Ford and Hackett wrote.Ford’s first step to healing was a series of conversations with staff to better understand how they felt. They would launch employee resource groups to ensure workers believed they could be their whole selves at the office. “We know that systemic racism still exists despite the progress that has been made,” the Ford executives wrote. “We cannot turn a blind eye to it or accept some sense of ‘order’ that’s based on oppression.”If that sounds familiar, it’s because offices across the country were undergoing similar soul-searching efforts. Within a year of Floyd’s murder, companies had pledged at least $50bn to support racial justice and advance equity and by 2023 that number had jumped to more than $340bn, according to a report by the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility. Companies such as Apple, Facebook and Pfizer committed to spending externally. Bank of America pledged $15bn to expanding low- and middle-income homeownership; Netflix, PayPal and Nike deposited millions in Black-owned banks; and other companies gave to organizations such as the Equal Justice Initiative. Corporations committed to internal changes, too: they set diversity goals and launched initiatives to try to meet them; they hired chief diversity officers; they held mandatory – if sometimes clumsy – anti-discrimination trainings. Most of these tools had existed in some form before, but amid public outcry, they were pushed to the foreground.The problem was that even when companies actually wanted to help, they often launched their efforts haphazardly. When companies jump to solutions before understanding the desired outcomes, they make rushed decisions, said Eddy Ng, a business professor at Queen’s University in Canada. “Without a clear plan, we go buy more training. People don’t like that,” Ng said. Company leaders had little idea how to fix the structural issues baked into their DNA, so they went with the things that sounded good. “It’s like you go grocery shopping with 100 bucks, but you don’t have a shopping list. You’re going to buy chips and cookies,” Ng told me.Chips and cookies can make a person feel full, they can hold someone over, but eventually there’s a crash – and that person will be left wondering why they have not actually had a full meal; why they are not satisfied. Within weeks, it seemed, companies had built out their diversity, equity and inclusion plans. But not everyone was convinced by them. “Someone like me might say, ‘let’s wait and see if they mean it,’” said Cedric Dawkins, an associate professor of management at York University who studies business ethics. Marginalized communities have felt the sting of America’s empty promises before.Progress in the US is always met with pushback. During Reconstruction, the so-called “Redeemers” – who sought a return of white supremacy – argued that federal support for recently enslaved African Americans was a threat to their liberty. The civil rights movement was immediately met with lawsuits that would limit its desired effects on voting, education and labor. In that context, the only real measure of an organization’s commitment to justice is whether they keep pushing forward with their reforms in spite of any backlash.When corporations launched their plans, they felt like drastic measures, Ng said: “Instead of actually having clear guidelines and goals and outcomes in terms of what they wanted to achieve over the five-year period.” Now, as we come to the end of the five-year period – and companies begin to roll back their diversity efforts, vindicating those who were waiting for the other shoe to drop – one question remains: what was it all for?The backlash beginsOn 6 March 1961, then president John F Kennedy signed executive order 10925 – which created the president’s committee on equal opportunity. “Americans who are members of minority groups have often been unjustly denied the opportunity to work for the government or for government contractors,” Kennedy wrote in his signing statement. He directed the committee to launch a study of government employment practices that would examine the “status of members of minority groups in every department, agency and office of the federal government”. The report would lay down a marker, Kennedy hoped, by which Americans could measure future progress. “I have no doubt that the vigorous enforcement of this order will mean the end of such discrimination.”View image in fullscreenTypically, Kennedy’s order is where histories of affirmative action or race-conscious employment practices begin – after all, it’s the first time the idea of affirmative action as we understand it today emerged. But federal action to address discrimination in the workforce actually stretches back to at least Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal, and one New Deal policy in particular: the 1935 Labor Relations Act. The act protected the rights of employees at private companies to better working conditions. If a company engaged in unfair labor practices, employees were “entitled to affirmative action as a remedy to make the employee whole”, said D Caleb Smith, a labor historian at Mount Holyoke College. Those remedies could look like job reinstatement or back-pay. Essentially, the provision was a general remedy to employment discrimination.But the Labor Relations Act was also a mixed bag. The National Urban League and NAACP opposed the legislation because it provided for closed-shop provisions that allowed unions and employers to exclude workers from union membership and apprenticeship programs. Union race discrimination had historically limited Black participation in the workforce: in 1930, for instance, just 3% of the 3,392,800 trade union workers in the US were Black.Still, it was a starting point, and over time, additional protections were added. In May 1943, executive order 9346 reconstituted the fair employment practices committee, which processed 8,000 discrimination complaints in its three years of existence. And in 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act prohibited the closed-shop provision from the New Deal policy. By 1960, however, affirmative action still did not have a formal definition. “It is implied that it’s the intent to improve working conditions to create opportunity for underrepresented minority groups,” Smith said. Kennedy helped provide some unity of definition.Kennedy’s order created one of the earliest affirmative action programs, the Plans for Progress Program, which encouraged companies to develop plans that addressed discrimination and underrepresentation of minorities. Within the first few months, the committee on equal opportunity reported that the program was in full swing. Agencies had begun designating compliance officers and developing training seminars; they had studied best practices for compliance reporting; and they had launched outreach to contractors and the general public. But “the Plans for Progress Program is largely seen as a performative publicity endeavor,” Smith said. It was done in good faith, he added, but it was hampered by the same problems other compliance agencies had: it was understaffed, underfinanced and could not exercise its full authority. For its imperfections, though, “some historians will point to it as a positive that provides companies a model for desegregation and implementing equal employment opportunity,” Smith said.By January 1964, after Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson took over the reins and carried out Kennedy’s vision. In a speech to new corporate members of the Plans for Progress program, Johnson announced that it had largely been a success. More than 100 major corporations – representing 6 million workers – had bought into the program, he told those assembled. The ratio of white salaried employees to non-white salaried employees at 91 companies had dipped from 65 to one to 60 to one. “Most significant is the fact that these jobs are not all at the lowest level – Negroes and other minority group Americans are being placed and promoted to positions of responsibility,” Johnson gushed. “This was not accomplished by displacing other workers – rather it was the result of conscious adjustments in personnel practices making merit and ability the only real tests – practices that strengthened the individual companies, and, as a result, strengthen our entire economy.”But some companies and federal contractors began creating measures to subvert the new federal rules, Smith told me. They implemented new tests for employees and had segregated seniority lines – white people occupied positions of power; contrary to the pronouncement, Black people were still often consigned to the lower rungs of industry. After Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act – and executive order 11246 a year later, which created the office of federal contract compliance to ensure contractors and subcontractors were complying with requirements to “safeguard equal employment” through affirmative action programs – the backlash was almost immediate.White people began claiming the programs were reverse discrimination and sued in federal court over college admissions, hiring and promotion practices. The supreme court upheld certain provisions of affirmative action programs – such as diversity as a compelling interest – but argued that quota systems designed to account for a legacy of discrimination in the US were a bridge too far. The Reagan administration sought to eliminate affirmative action altogether, and was surprised when corporations fought back. Companies such as Merck had begun to believe in their affirmative action policies – a new crop of workers brought new ideas and introduced products to new markets. It was great development philosophically – for those who cared about addressing a legacy of discrimination – and financially, for those who were more ambivalent. As Julian Mark noted in the Washington Post, a survey of 128 Fortune 500 companies revealed that an overwhelming majority, 95%, would keep their affirmative action policies regardless of Reagan’s policy.Reagan was ultimately unsuccessful – in part because he was largely alone in his efforts, even among Republicans. Still, his push to eliminate affirmative action programs led many corporations to settle for policies aimed at promoting a diverse workforce rather than addressing injustice. Such policies, they believed, had less legal exposure. The result was a new crop of watered-down programs that were a far cry from those that preceded them.Some conservatives agreed with Reagan, and as the decade wore on, became a loud contingent of the Republican party. Through the 1980s and the 90s, Republicans began using judicial appointments to transform the federal bench and pursue litigation to reshape civil rights law – warping its meaning. They argued that even watered down affirmative action programs and civil rights measures had gone too far; they wanted them eliminated altogether. Conservatives lionized the leaders of California’s Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action in public education and employment in 1996. The California Civil Rights Initiative “is the beginning of the new civil rights revolution in America; a revolution that promises to unite all America under a banner of hope and freedom”, Gay Hart Gaines, the former president of GOPAC, the Republican donor group, said at the time. Philanthropic organizations such as the Bradley Foundation, Scaife Foundations and Searle Freedom Trust bankrolled challenges to race-conscious admissions at universities and efforts that ultimately gutted the Voting Rights Act. Reagan lost his initial battle, but conservatives saw it as the first shot fired in a longer war – a war they believe, in 2025, is paying off.The capitulationLess than two months after Hackett, the Ford CEO, sent the letter lambasting systemic racism to the company’s employees, he stepped down from his position. Jim Farley, an executive from within, replaced him. In August 2024, ahead of the election, Farley wrote a letter of his own to the staff about diversity, equity and inclusion.“As we work to build an even brighter future, we are mindful that our employees and customers hold a wide range of beliefs, and the external and legal environment related to political and social issues continues to evolve,” Farley wrote. It was a very elaborate way of telling staff that they would be walking back diversity policies because the political winds had shifted. George Floyd’s murder had receded from the national consciousness. The Republican party had seized upon the language of DEI and turned it into a catch-all symbol for the ways the US was diversifying and becoming less tolerant to sexism, racism, ableism and homophobia.The company would no longer comment on “polarizing issues”. Its philanthropic arm’s mission changed from “[providing] access to resources and opportunities that build equity and empower underserved and underrepresented communities to reach their highest potential” to “[partnering] with communities to move people forward and upward”. And Ford would stop contributing to external culture surveys such as the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. The fresh look at Ford’s policies said nothing – save for vague allusions to the benefits of diversity – about systemic racism. Hackett’s earlier declaration that Ford would not “turn a blind eye” to systemic racism seemed but a memory.Within days of taking office, Donald Trump signed an executive order that would eliminate Johnson’s civil rights order. The order directed the office of federal contract compliance to stop “promoting diversity” and holding contractors responsible for “affirmative action”. To Smith, the administration’s early actions amount to “a blatant effort in order to not only uphold the white power structure, but to remove any government responsibility to uphold the rights of individuals of color, specifically Black people”. It is the fruit of a conservative movement that has been trying to reverse course ever since the government began taking seriously efforts to protect the rights of Americans regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.In 2020, hundreds of private companies pledged to change their culture – to use their power and influence and, most importantly, money, to re-shape American society toward more just ends. Now, the three largest employers in the nation – Walmart, Amazon and the federal government – have all rolled those policies back. Dozens of other corporations have turned back the clock on even pretending to care about equality in the workplace as well.To businesses’ credit, they had a difficult task ahead of them in 2020. “They’re faced with putting a policy in place quickly that’s responsive and doesn’t sound like lip service to frustrated people,” Dawkins said. But in doing so, they made an admission: they had not been taking diversity seriously before – and the capitulation to the administration’s demands since has betrayed that truth. And they made clear their efforts were always lip service.When corporations pushed back against Ronald Reagan in the 80s, they had the public on their side – and even a significant chunk of the Republican caucus – for at least the valence of effort. Most of the pressure was coming from Reagan himself. But when they felt the united political pressure from conservatives this time around, in the absence of near-universal public support, they had a choice to make.For companies whose values course through everything they do, the choice was easy. As Dawkins, of York University, explained: “A company like Patagonia – which challenged the first Trump administration over environmental regulations – or Ben and Jerry’s, they’ve been in this for the long haul so it doesn’t change as much.” But organizations who opted for expediency – programs to pacify rather than any transformational interrogation of institutional culture and values – capitulated.Values are only as good as their durability under pressure; and many of America’s largest companies proved an equitable, inclusive workplace was never one of their core values to begin with. More

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      Trump’s third term trial balloon: how extremist ideas become mainstream

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      It is noon on 20 January 2029. In the biting cold of Washington DC, thousands of people are gathered on the national mall to witness the swearing in of a new US president or, more accurately, an old US president: Donald Trump, aged 82, starting his third term in office.The scene is the realm of fantasy or, for millions of Americans, the stuff of nightmares. But in the president’s own mind it is apparently not so far-fetched at all. Last weekend he told an interviewer that he is “not joking” about another run and there are “methods” to circumvent the constitution, which limits presidents to two terms.For longtime Trump watchers it smacked of a familiar playbook of the American right and the Maga movement. Float a trial balloon, no matter how wacky or extreme. Let far-right media figures such as Steve Bannon make the case it’s not so outlandish because, after all, Democrats are worse. Stand by as Republicans in Congress avoid then equivocate then actively endorse. Watch a fringe idea slowly but surely normalised.“One of the most important lessons of the last decade is the way that ideas have migrated from the fever swamp into the mainstream,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster. “How Steve Bannon will say some crazy thing only to see it become Republican orthodoxy a few years later. We’ve seen that migration of ideas that seem absurd and are perhaps dismissed but develop a constituency.”This one is a long shot. The constitution’s 22nd amendment, ratified in 1951, clearly states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” Legal experts and constitutional scholars firmly reject any credible legal basis for a third term.Yet for months Trump, who began his first term in 2017 and his second in 2025, has been testing the water by suggesting that he could run again anyway. Initially treated by some as jokes or political manoeuvering, the comments have recently moved beyond veiled suggestions to become more explicit.Asked whether he wanted another term, Trump told NBC News: “I like working. I’m not joking. But I’m not – it is far too early to think about it.” Pressed on whether he has seen plans to enable him to seek a third term, the president replied: “There are methods which you could do it.”None of these “methods” is straightforward. Trump could try to whip up political support to repeal the 22nd amendment. But the procedural and political difficulties of amending the constitution make this extremely unlikely. Democratic-led states could also refuse to put Trump on the ballot.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island: “The technical hurdle is very high. Given the political configuration now, and the control of state legislatures now, it would be impossible not only to repeal the 22nd amendment but to get him on the ballot in all 50 states.”Some argue that a constitutional loophole allows JD Vance to run for president with Trump as vice-president. Once elected, Vance would hand over power, much as Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev handed back the keys to the Kremlin to Vladimir Putin. But experts say this would violate the 12th amendment’s requirement that the vice-president be constitutionally eligible for president.Alternatively and most simply, Trump could run for president again and gamble that the supreme court, which contains six conservatives including three Trump appointees, would not stop him. Time and again over the past decade, he has crashed through barriers through brute willpower.None of it seems likely, but then nor did a reality TV star with no political or military experience winning election, nor did the instigator of the January 6 insurrection maintaining his grip on the Republican party, and nor did a man with 34 felony counts of falsified business records returning to the White House.Sykes, the author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, commented: “My instinct is to to regard it as a distraction but that’s a mistake because the opposition has suffered from a lack of imagination on occasion of what Donald Trump is capable of doing and what he intends to do. Clearly he’s putting this out to soften the ground.”Once unthinkable ideas have a habit of becoming very unthinkable in the Trump era. In the immediate aftermath of the US Capitol riot, Republican leaders moved to distance themselves from Trump and his “big lie” of a stolen election. Senator Lindsey Graham declared: “All I can say is count me out, enough is enough.”But Bannon and other rightwing influencers worked tirelessly to promote Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. Before long Republicans were rallying around Trump again, suggesting that he was right to raise concerns over election integrity and dismissing a congressional panel that investigated January 6 as a witch hunt. Last year a CNN poll found that 69% of Republicans sayJoe Biden’s win was not legitimate.Sykes noted another recent example: presidential ally Elon Musk suggesting that federal judges who rule against the Trump administration be impeached. Now opinion polls suggest that a majority of Republican voters are in favour of the move.Sykes added: “If Donald Trump keeps putting this idea out there, there’s no reason to believe that he can’t get Maga [the Make America great again movement] behind him and then the question is whether the courts would go along with it. What happens if the court says, no, you can’t serve another term, but enough states put him on the ballot anyway? Who’s going to stop him?”View image in fullscreenTrump’s third-term talk may also be a strategy to maintain political relevance and influence, wrongfooting opponents by keeping them guessing. It prevents him from being seen as a “lame duck” president and keeps the spotlight on him rather than his potential successors.The comments could also serve to deflect attention from other controversies. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Trump mused about a third term in the same week that his administration had been rocked by a scandal over senior officials accidentally inviting a journalist into a Signal group chat about military attack plans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome Republicans are downplaying Trump’s remarks as jokes or simply an effort to “get people talking”. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, stated: “It’s not really something we’re thinking about. He has four years. There’s a lot of work to do.”But the issue is gaining traction on the right. Just three days after Trump was sworn in on 20 January, Republican representative Andy Ogles proposed a House of Representatives joint resolution to amend the constitution so that a president can serve up to three terms – provided that they did not serve two consecutive terms before running for a third (this would continue to bar Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama from running again).At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Bannon proclaimed, “We want Trump in 28,” and argued forcefully for a constitutional change. The case was also put by Third Term Project, a thinktank exploring presidential term limits, with a logo portraying Trump as Julius Caesar.Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump, has seen this movie before. “It starts out as ha-ha, Trump is trolling the libs, and then it’s well, Trump is trolling the libs but he’s got a good point. Well, he’s got a good point and the Democrats are so evil we should set aside any restraint to pursue this idea. Then it’s why aren’t you getting in line with this idea, every Republican?”Wilson added: “That arc is a known pattern now with Trump. Remember January 6. Every Republican – almost – came out and condemned that the day it happened and the idea became less and less defensible the more we knew about Trump’s role in it. But they became less and less willing to speak the truth. They became less and less willing to to resist and so I think that pattern is real, it exists, it’s been visible to us for a long time.”Democrats are moving to counter Trump’s remarks and Ogles’ proposed resolution. Congressman Dan Goldman has introduced resolutions reaffirming support for the 22nd amendment.He told the MSNBC network: “I’ve unfortunately been spending enough time studying Donald Trump to know that he’s not a comedian. He doesn’t joke and he has a very set MO, which is to float a crazy idea, claim that he’s joking, have some sycophantic Republicans start to run with it, like in this case, Representative Ogles, and then all of a sudden it becomes normalized and socialised.”The two-term standard began when America’s first president, George Washington, voluntarily stepped down. Four of the next six presidents won a second term but passed on a third. In 1940 Franklin Roosevelt became the only president to successfully win a third election, couching his decision as one of necessity, not ambition, during the second world war. Roosevelt won again in 1944 but died the following year.Not long after, Congress began discussion of what became the 22nd amendment, limiting presidents to two elections, and ratified it in 1951. There has been occasional talk of repealing it since. Ronald Reagan, another two-term president, publicly supported repeal, telling an interviewer that he “wouldn’t do that for myself, but for presidents from here on”.Trump, however, has shown no qualms about grabbing power for himself, claiming that the public demands it because he has the highest poll numbers of any Republican for the past 100 years. Asked this week about a hypothetical showdown with Obama in 2028, he replied: “I’d love that, boy, I’d love that.”Some observers note that Trump’s approval rating is already on the slide. Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, insisted: “This is not a serious effort. This is an effort to make Donald Trump into the most powerful politician that ever happened. The guy is not God. He will fall to the normal rhythms of politics. He’ll lose the midterms in 2026 and then people will be sick of the guy.”Others, however, warn that Trump has been written off to easily before. Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, said: “This is no joke and no distraction. It needs to be taken seriously. Trump just saying, ‘Fuck it I’m running’ and daring people, the party, the media, the military, the courts, to stop him – I don’t know that he could be stopped.“It’s been an utter failure of imagination to be prepared for how far this guy will go. People never thought January 6 will happen; we never thought a president would try to overthrow an election. A guy who would do that, if he wanted to, would try to do anything to stay in office and run again.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: anti-Trump protests draw huge crowds across the US

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      Crowds of people angry about the way Donald Trump is running the country marched and rallied in scores of American cities on Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain its momentum after the shock of the US president’s first weeks in office.The so-called “Hands Off!” demonstrations were held in more than 1,200 locations in all 50 states by more than 150 groups, including civil rights organizations, labor unions, LBGTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists.Demonstrators voiced anger over the administration’s moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close social security administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut funding for health programs.Here are the key stories at a glance.More than 1,000 ‘Hands Off’ anti-Trump protests hit cities across the USPeople across the US took to the streets on Saturday to oppose what left-leaning organizations called Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.Organizers estimated that more than 500,000 people demonstrated in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere.Read the full storyTens of thousands rally against Trump at DC protestDemonstrators estimated to be in the tens of thousands gathered in Washington on Saturday in a display of mass dissent against Trump’s policies that organizers hoped would snowball into a rolling cycle of protests.Anger with Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, the SpaceX and Tesla leader Elon Musk, was expressed in a sea of placards and banners on the Washington mall. Multiple messages denounced the two men for shuttering government agencies, cutting jobs and services and – in often graphic terms – for threatening the survival of US democracy.Read the full storyCory Booker urges action in first event since historic speechThe Democratic senator Cory Booker took a version of his record-breaking Senate floor speech on the road Saturday to a town hall meeting in a New Jersey gymnasium, calling on people to find out what they can do to push back against Donald Trump’s agenda.Booker took questions at suburban New Jersey’s Bergen Community College the same day that more than 1,200 ‘Hands Off’ demonstrations took place around the country. The town hall event was punctuated both by celebratory shouts of “Cory, Cory” as well as at least a half-dozen interruptions by protesters.Read the full storyObama calls on Americans to defend democratic values in face of TrumpBarack Obama has called on US citizens, colleges and law firms to resist Trump’s political agenda – and warned Americans to prepare to “possibly sacrifice” in support of democratic values.“It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social justice or say you’re for free speech and not have to pay a price for it,” Obama said during a speech at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Thursday.Read the full storyUS revokes all visas for South Sudanese over country’s failure to repatriate citizensWashington is revoking all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocking new arrivals, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining the African nation is not accepting its nationals expelled from the US.The state department “is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry”, Rubio said in a statement.Read the full storyMahmoud Khalil says his arrest was part of ‘Columbia’s repression playbook’Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student activist who led campus pro-Palestinian rallies and is now resisting the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, has accused the university of laying “the groundwork for my abduction” and called on the student body to continue demonstrations and protests.Khalil, a green-card holder who is in custody in Louisiana as his case moves through the courts, was detained on 8 March. The Trump administration is seeking to deport him under a provision in federal immigration law that permits the state department to deport non-citizens considered to be a threat to US foreign policy.Read the full storyTrump administration apologizes for telling Ukrainian refugees to leave USTrump’s presidential administration has acknowledged and apologized after it says it accidentally informed some Ukrainian refugees fleeing their country’s invasion by Russia that they needed to leave the US because their legal status was being revoked.About 240,000 Ukrainians have been settled in the US as part of the Uniting for Ukraine – or U4U – program launched during Joe Biden’s presidency. But according to CBS News, some resettled Ukrainians received emails this week telling them that the US Department of Homeland Security would be terminating their legal protections.Read the full storyTed Cruz warns of midterm ‘bloodbath’ if Trump tariffs cause a recessionTed Cruz, the US senator from Texas, has warned that his fellow Republicans risk a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs cause a recession.Cruz also warned that the president’s tariffs, if they stay in place for long and are met by global retaliation on American goods, could trigger a full-blown trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Another round of torrential rain and flash flooding on Saturday hit parts of the US south and midwest already heavily waterlogged by days of severe storms that also spawned deadly tornadoes. Forecasters warned that rivers in some places would continue to rise for days.

      New York state officials have told the Trump administration that they will not comply with its demands to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices in public schools, despite the administration’s threats to terminate federal education funding.

      Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the US for a month as it considers how to mitigate the cost of Trump’s tariffs. The 25% tariff imposed by the US on imported cars and light trucks took effect on 3 April.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 4 April 2025. More

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      Cory Booker urges action in first event since historic speech: ‘This is a moment for America’

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      The Democratic senator Cory Booker took a version of his record-breaking Senate floor speech on the road Saturday to a town hall meeting in a New Jersey gymnasium, calling on people to find out what they can do to push back against Donald Trump’s agenda.Booker took questions at suburban New Jersey’s Bergen Community College the same day that more than 1,200 “Hands Off” demonstrations took place around the country. The town hall event was punctuated both by celebratory shouts of “Cory, Cory” as well as at least a half-dozen interruptions by protesters.It was Booker’s first in-person event in his home state since his speech this week, where he held the Senate floor for 25 hours and 5 minutes in opposition to Trump’s policies. In doing so, he broke the record for the longest floor speech, which was set by the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957.Questioner after questioner asked what they could be doing to show their disagreement and worry over the president’s policies. Booker told them it only takes a little bit more – could they afford a trip to Washington to lobby against budget cuts? One of the loudest moments of applause came after he addressed a woman who said she worried about what potential Medicaid cuts could mean for her son with autism.“A gathering like this can’t be the end of our activism,” Booker said. “This has got to be a moment in America where all of us begin to say, what more can I do?”The questions and Booker’s response mirror what voters and other Democrats have been hearing during town halls. He said he didn’t want to focus on the Democratic party, which has struggled to find a message since losing the 2024 election. Instead, he said, he would focus on “the people of our country”.“I think the Democratic party lost a lot of elections because people didn’t believe that they cared about them. So let’s stop worrying about the politics and get more focused on the people,” Booker said.After the event, Booker said he was reluctant to tell people the exact tactics to use, citing civil rights activists like the late John Lewis. He said creativity has a role to play.“I know one thing it’s not, is sitting down and doing nothing and just watching on TV and getting stuck in a state of sedentary agitation,” he said. “Everybody has to be taking measures to put the pressure on to change.”Booker, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020, said after the event that he was focused on running for re-election to the Senate in 2026 and that 2028 “will take care of itself”.Booker, 55, is in his second full term in the Senate. He chairs the Strategic Communications Committee, his party’s messaging arm. His team is focused on boosting Senate Democrats’ presence across social platforms through more frequent and casual content.Booker himself has amassed one of the largest followings on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X, where his commentary appears to connect with the party’s base. But staffers are now focused on how to transfer that success to Booker’s fellow senators, who are often less digitally fluent and face different political landscapes in their home states.That has involved turning the communications committee into a nerve center for testing and coordinating the easiest-to-use formats for lawmakers looking to boost their digital brands.Booker hopes to double the engagement that senators receive with their content directly online and increase the caucus’s appearances with online digital media personalities.The start of Saturday’s event included six disruptions, including by several people who decried the treatment of Palestinians. Police in the gymnasium escorted them from the arena.“I hear you and I see you,” Booker said. More

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      Tens of thousands rally against Trump at DC ‘Hands Off’ protest

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      Demonstrators estimated to be in the tens of thousands gathered in Washington on Saturday in a display of mass dissent against Donald Trump’s policies that organizers hoped would snowball into a rolling cycle of protests that could eventually stymie the US president in next year’s congressional elections.Anger with Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, the SpaceX and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk, was expressed in a sea of placards and banners on the Washington mall, in the shadow of the Washington monument. Multiple messages denounced the two men for shuttering government agencies, cutting jobs and services and – in often graphic terms – for threatening the survival of US democracy.“Resist like it’s 1938 Nazi Germany” and “Fascism is alive and well and living in the White House”, read two slogans at the Hands Off gathering, organized by the civil society group Indivisible and featuring speeches from a host of other organizations as well as Democratic members of Congress.The rally, which coincided with roughly 1,000 other similarly themed events across the country, was punctuated by a fusillade of barbs aimed at Trump as well as Musk, whose infiltration into government agencies through the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, without congressional approval, and cash-fueled interventions in election races have been seen as anti-democratic affronts.View image in fullscreen“They believe democracy is doomed and they believe regime change is upon us if only they can seize our payments system,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative from Maryland who is the party’s top figure on the House judiciary committee.He added: “If they think they are going to overthrow the foundations of democracy, they don’t know who they are dealing with.”Saturday’s events followed weeks of anxiety among anti-Trump forces that the president had railroaded through his agenda in the absence of adequate resistance from congressional Democrats and minus the displays of popular mass opposition that appeared early in his first presidency.But they also came days after the Democrats drew encouragement from victory in a race for a vacant supreme court seat in Wisconsin into which Musk had unsuccessfully ploughed $25m of his own money to support the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate.It also followed the roll-out of Trump’s flagship policy of import tariffs, which triggered massive plunges in international stock markets and fueled fears of an economic downturn.Multiple speakers and attendees said they hoped the rallies would embolden other American disillusioned by Trump’s policies to join future rallies, giving a fledgling protest movement much-needed momentum.View image in fullscreen“We want to send a signal to all people and institutions that have been showing anticipatory obedience to Trump and showing they are willing to bend the knee that there is, in fact, a mass public movement that’s willing to rise up and stop this,” said Leah Greenberg, Indivisible’s executive director.“If our political leaders stand up, we will have their backs. We want them to stand up and protect the norms of democracy and want them to see that there are people out there who are willing to do that. The goal of this is building a message.”Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer-rights advocacy group, told the crowd: “There’s only one thing that can face down the authoritarian moment we are facing, and that’s the movement we see here today.”Asked by the Guardian whether the mass demonstrations were sufficient to stop Trump, he said: “It’s not a one-time thing. It’s got to be a sustaining phenomenon. There’s been a lot of criticism of the Democrats for not standing up in Congress, so an event like this will stiffen their spine.“It’s about making the Democrats better and giving them courage – and it will. That’s also true for ordinary people, because Trump’s authoritarian playbook is designed to make people think it’s useless to resist. This demonstrates power and it will bring in more people.”Several congressional Democrats predicted the rally would inspire more protests, ultimately fueling an electoral triumph in next year’s congressional midterms, when control of the House of Representatives and the Senate will be up for grabs.“This is what freedom fighting against fascism looks like,” said Eric Swalwell, a representative for California. “This is not the last day of the fight, it’s the first day. When it all comes to [be] written about, you will see that April 5 is when it all came alive. Energy and activism beget energy and activism.”View image in fullscreenSeveral members acknowledged that protests were rarely enough to supplant authoritarian governments, as demonstrated in countries like Turkey and Hungary, whose strongman leaders, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Viktor Orbán respectively, have survived in office despite repeated episodes of street protests.“We invited some historians in to discuss that question,” said Raskin. “They said, in some countries there was just a legislative parliamentary strategy, and that only succeeded about one-third of the time.“In other countries, there was just a popular-resistance strategy, and that succeeded a little bit more than a third of the time. But when you have a popular-resistance strategy and an effective legislative strategy, it wins more than two-thirds of the time. It’s not a guarantee, but you need to have national mass popular action at the same time that you’ve got an effective legislative strategy, too.”Representative Don Beyer, whose northern Virginia district – home to 75,000 federal workers – has been disproportionately affected by Musk’s assault on government agencies, compared the effect of Trump’s actions to the upheaval wrought by Mao Zedong in the Chinese cultural revolution.But, he said, Trump would be derailed by next year’s election, which he said he was “somewhat confident” would be ‘“free and fair”.“They’re not perfect [but] the people do have a chance to speak,” Beyer said. “Elections are very much decentralized and organized precinct by precinct. There are lots of chances to push back. We just saw that in Wisconsin.” More