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      ‘From all sides’: universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home

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      Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government’s sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states.Many private colleges and universities have begun to push back against Donald Trump’s federal funding cuts, bans on diversity initiatives, and targeting of foreign students, while faculty at more than 30 universities, most of them public, have passed resolutions calling for a “mutual defence compact” – a largely symbolic pledge to support one another in the face of the government’s repressive measures. But in conservative states, where local attacks on higher education were in vogue before the US president took office, faculty trying to fight back find themselves fighting on multiple fronts: against state legislators as well as against Trump.Some have persevered, although for now that resistance has been limited to statements and resolutions calling on the universities themselves to put up a more muscular response. The faculty senate at Indiana University, Bloomington, voted in favor of a defence compact last month, days before Republican legislators passed a sweeping overhaul of the state school’s governance. In Georgia, Kennesaw State University became the first – and so far only – school in the US south to join the call for the solidarity pact, in part to protest the state scrapping a decades-old initiative to increase the college enrollment of Black men, which was pulled as part of the broader Trump-led crackdown on diversity initiatives. This week, faculty at the University of Miami in Ohio and at the University of Arizona – both states with Republican-majority legislatures – also passed resolutions in favor of mutual alliances among universities.The resolutions are nonbinding, as faculty senates play an advisory role at most universities, and so far no administrations have responded to the call. But the idea, those behind it say, is to send a message.“All universities in all states are under threat,” said Jim Sherman, a retired psychology professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, who proposed the resolution passed by faculty there. “If we don’t stand together and talk about what each of us is experiencing, how we’re dealing with it, and what the options are, then we’re standing alone, and that’s much more difficult.”Paul Boxer, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, first came up with the plan to organize faculty in the “Big Ten” conference, a group of 18 large, mostly public universities, to put up a united front against the Trump administration. But schools outside the conference showed an interest, and the solidarity effort quickly outgrew the consortium to include other, mostly public colleges and universities across the country. Boxer also praised other collective initiatives that have since emerged, including by a group of “elite” universities quietly strategizing to counter the Trump administration policies, but called on more universities to publicly unite in their resistance.“A lot of the attention has been on Harvard, and the Ivy Leagues, and the universities that Trump has name-dropped, and I’m glad that Harvard did what they did, obviously, but they’re sitting on a $50bn endowment, and they can do things that we can’t in a public university,” Boxer said, referring to the university’s public defiance of Trump’s demands and a lawsuit it filed against the administration.Large state universities – particularly those in blue states with sympathetic legislators – had other advantages, Boxer noted, including strong connections to alumni in local government and the broader community.That is a harder case to make in Republican-controlled states – some of which, like Florida, Texas, Iowa and Utah – had essentially drawn up a blueprint for attacking diversity initiatives and academic freedom in the years leading up to Trump’s election. In Indiana, the recently passed measures, which legislators attached to a budget bill at the last minute, would establish “productivity” quotas for tenured faculty and end alumnis’ ability to vote for the university’s board of trustees, which would fall under the full control of the state’s governor, Mike Braun.“There is a lot of anxiety,” said Sherman. “If Indiana is any indication, red states might even be more under threat from their state legislatures than they are from the federal government.”Taking a public stance in a climate of growing repression is not easy, faculty say. In Florida, where Ono is headed, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was an early champion of the battle against diversity initiatives and said this week that he expects the incoming president to abide by the state’s mission to “reject woke indoctrination”.In Georgia, at a statewide faculty leadership meeting this week, scholars from across the state’s universities debated how to defend programmes supporting Black students, help international students facing visa revocations, and prepare to fight proposed state legislation that would impose further restrictions on diversity initiatives and criminalize the distribution of some library materials.“Faculty want to do something, they want to respond, but they also see the inevitability of their university system and their lawmakers doing it. There’s no stopping that train here in Georgia,” said Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia who also leads the state’s American Association of University Professors conference.“There are state-level attacks, there are federal attacks,” he said. “We are taking it from all sides.” More

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      Pentagon orders military to pull books related to DEI and ‘gender ideology’

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      Military leaders and commanders at the Pentagon were ordered on Friday to go through their libraries and review all books that were related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), in the US military’s latest anti-DEI move.Leaders were ordered to “promptly identify” materials that promote “divisive concepts and gender ideology [that] are incompatible with the department’s core mission”, according to a memo sent to leaders that was seen by the Associated Press. The department gave leaders until 21 May to remove the books.Also on Friday, the Pentagon sent a separate memo to the military’s training academies that the institutions should have “no consideration of race, ethnicity or sex” in their admission process and should focus “exclusively on merit”, though they can allow for students who show “unique athletic talent”, according to the AP. The department ordered the administrations to certify these standards by mid-June.The memo to leaders on books follows a similar order that was given to the military academies, including the US Naval Academy, that led to the removal of nearly 400 books from its library. Books that were withdrawn from the library included Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, novels by writers of color including the Palestinian American Etaf Rum, and academic books that examine race and gender.The department said that a temporary “academic libraries committee” would convene to help the other colleges and academies remove similar books from their collections. Librarians and staff were ordered to use search terms like “affirmative action”, “anti-racism”, “critical race theory” and “white privilege” when determining which books could be subject for removal.The book bans also affect K-12 school libraries that are on military bases around the world. A list of banned children’s books, including books about LGBTQ+ teens and others dealing with race, has been issued by the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DoDEA, which oversees the schools attended by the children of military families abroad.On the list is a New York Times bestseller chronicling the true story of a teenager set on fire by a fellow teenager while riding an Oakland, California, bus, as HuffPost reported. The list also includes a collection of poems and short stories by a New York Times bestselling author documenting the feelings and experiences of teenagers in love.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has vowed to purge DEI from the Pentagon, saying when he took office earlier this year that “our diversity is our strength” is “the single dumbest phrase in military history”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSince January, the Trump administration has been overseeing a widespread culling of anything the White House considers to be DEI within the federal government. The specific number of DEI roles that have been removed is unclear as the federal government isn’t keeping track or reporting which roles have been eliminated, but estimates say hundreds or possibly thousands of employees have been fired since the start of the year. More

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      Judge orders White House to temporarily halt sweeping government layoffs

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      Donald Trump’s administration must temporarily halt its sweeping government overhaul because Congress did not authorize it to carry out large-scale staffing cuts and the restructuring of agencies, a federal judge in California said on Friday.US district judge Susan Illston in San Francisco sided with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments in blocking large-scale mass layoffs known as “reductions in force” for 14 days.“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston said.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The ruling is the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul that has been led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person who is also the chief executive officer of electric vehicle maker Tesla.Dozens of lawsuits have challenged the work of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) on various grounds including violating privacy laws and exceeding its authority, with mixed results.Trump directed government agencies in February to work with Doge to identify targets for mass layoffs as part of the administration’s restructuring plans.The president urged agencies to eliminate duplicative roles, unnecessary management layers and non-critical jobs while automating routine tasks, closing regional field offices and reducing the use of outside contractors.“The Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to reorganize the federal government has thrown agencies into chaos, disrupting critical services provided across our nation,” said a statement from the coalition of plaintiffs.“Each of us represents communities deeply invested in the efficiency of the federal government – laying off federal employees and reorganizing government functions haphazardly does not achieve that.”Illston scheduled a hearing for 22 May to consider a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.She said that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on merits of some of their claims in their lawsuit, which was filed on 28 April and alleged Trump exceeded his authority. It also alleged the office of management and budget, Doge and the office of personnel management exceeded their authority and violated administrative law.Illston said plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm without the temporary restraining order, which she said preserves the status quo.Illston said the plaintiffs submitted more than 1,000 pages of evidence and 62 sworn declarations, and she highlighted some of the material.For example, she said the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and its Pittsburgh office, which researches health hazards facing mineworkers, had 221 of the department’s 222 workers terminated, citing the union. She gave similar examples at local offices of the Farm Service Agency, the Social Security Administration and Head Start, which supports early learning.“The court here is not considering the potential loss of income of one individual employee, but the widespread termination of salaries and benefits for individuals, families and communities,” Illston wrote in her ruling. More

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      New bill aims to allow research to catch up with US’s increasing cannabis consumption

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      A recently introduced bill, if it passes, would allow research on cannabis despite its schedule I status, which some experts say could help policymakers “craft effective” legislation in the future and potentially allow more clinical research on medical cannabis.Representatives Dina Titus and Ilhan Omar introduced the Evidence-Based Drug Policy Act of 2025 (EBDPA) last week, which would radically ease research restrictions on cannabis and other schedule I substances.Omar said in a statement that the law would allow research to catch up with the US’s increasing cannabis consumption: “We need drug policy to follow the science and reflect the reality on the ground in states across the country.”Schedule I substances, including cannabis, heroin and MDMA, are legally defined as having “no accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse”. Medical cannabis proponents point out that cannabis’s federal schedule I status is contradictory, given that patients throughout the US already use cannabis for medical purposes.The Biden administration pushed for cannabis to be reclassified as a schedule III substance, which would alter its legal status and make cannabis-based medicines eligible for FDA approval.But the rescheduling process has continued to stall since Donald Trump reentered the oval office.Unlike rescheduling, the EBDPA would be simple to enact. In its current form, it repeals sections of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998 that forbid federal funds from going towards research of schedule I substances, and that require the ONDCP to oppose any attempts to legalize schedule I substances.Still, there are questions as to whether this bill has the ability to pass.Katharine Neill Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University, says that the bill is a “modest proposal” and “it might be possible for it to gain the bipartisan support it needs to pass”.Cat Packer, director of Drug Markets and Legal Regulation at Drug Policy Alliance, notes that the bill “has the potential to attract bipartisan support as a modest but meaningful step forward” due to it prioritizing “evidence over ideology”.Though more comprehensive federal cannabis reform might be in the distant future, “the EBDPA should be seen as a neutral step that would enable policymakers to study what works – and be better prepared to craft effective, informed legislation in the future,” Packer added.On the other hand, Aaron Smith, CEO of the National Cannabis Industry Association, doesn’t feel as hopeful and that because of “the hyper-partisan times we live in, getting this bill, or any legislation, frankly, passed isn’t likely in the near term”.Packer hopes that policymakers will see that the bill is vital for shaping smart cannabis policy.“The federal government cannot meaningfully learn from the experiences of the 24-plus states that have legalized cannabis,” Packer says of the current state of affairs.There aren’t ways at the moment for the federal government to scientifically measure cannabis’ impact on youth consumption and health outcomes, arrest and incarceration rates, and who benefits economically from legal cannabis policies, versus who is left out.Existing policy is not only outdated, but there’s “an institutional blindfold that prevents the federal government from adapting to real-world conditions and designing effective, responsive policies”, Packer said.Ideally, Harris says the law would lead to “an increase in rigorous research to inform medical use practice”, noting that there are many questions when it comes to how cannabis functions as a medicine, about ideal doses, long term-impacts of different consumption methods, and whether certain strains work better for some conditions than others.While Omar and Titius have emphasized cannabis when promoting the bill, it would allow federal funding to go toward research on other schedule I substances as well.Smith said that “drug policy should be rooted in scientific fact” and that any step in that direction should be applauded. Harris echoed that sentiment, noting that research on other schedule I substances is “much needed,” given that “several substances in schedule I – psilocybin and MDMA in particular, seem to have therapeutic effects for some people with difficult-to-treat conditions”. Federally funded medical research on the efficacy of these drugs could advance medicine in the US.“If there is evidence to support FDA approval for a schedule I drug for therapeutic applications, this bill would mean that the Office of National Drug Control Policy would not have to reflexively oppose it,” Harris said.Should the bill pass, Harris is skeptical of how much federal funding will actually go to schedule I research as “the Trump administration, so far, has seemed opposed to federal research funding more broadly”.Still, she says: “This bill is an important and reasonable effort to improve the sensibility of federal drug policies, but the current climate could dampen its short-term effects.” More

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      Trump’s latest Fox News hire looks even worse than Pete Hegseth | Margaret Sullivan

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      The revolving door between the Trump administration and rightwing Fox News took another wild spin this week, as America’s TV-obsessed president tapped Jeanine Pirro for a prominent legal post: top federal prosecutor for Washington DC.Pirro is unqualified, perhaps even more so than was her former Fox colleague Pete Hegseth when he was named Trump’s defense secretary a few months ago. In that crucial position, Hegseth has been a dangerous embarrassment, as his shockingly inappropriate communications have exposed national security secrets to the world.Pirro, although once a county-level district attorney, hasn’t held a government legal position in decades. But she has been opining on Fox for 14 years, mostly recently as a host on The Five, the network’s popular afternoon talkshow.But no matter. She “is in a class by herself”, Trump wrote on social media in announcing his intention to make her the interim (and perhaps permanent) prosecutor.His description may be accurate, but surely not in the way he intends.Pirro’s record at Fox is startlingly checkered, even for that propaganda outfit. She got in trouble with the network’s brass a few years ago for her eager promotion of Trump’s lies about supposed voter fraud in the 2020 election. (The voting-fraud lies became part of a defamation lawsuit against the network by a voting-systems company; Fox paid nearly $800m to settle the case and had to acknowledge that statements made on air were false.)Fox once suspended her for her ugly commentary on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s wearing a hijab, which Pirro suggested was an adherence to “sharia lawm which in itself is antithetical to the United States constitution”. And she advocated for a “cleansing” of the FBI and the justice department because their ranks were full of people who “need to be taken out in handcuffs”.But none of this causes any real concern for the president, apparently, because Pirro has one huge thing going for her. Over the course of a long friendship and many visits to Mar-a-Lago, she has been relentlessly loyal to Trump.In fact, she has gone well beyond loyalty into straight-up sycophancy.On this score, Pirro has what it takes.“Since Trump returned to office, Pirro has kept busy by showering him with praise and lashing out at anyone who stands in his way,” wrote Matt Gertz, senior fellow at the progressive watchdog group Media Matters, noting that she is the 23rd former Fox employee whom Trump has tapped for his administration.Tom Homan, a former Fox contributor, became Trump’s “border czar”, aggressively carrying out the administration’s anti-immigrant policy, and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and former host of a weekly Fox show, was named ambassador to Israel.Beyond her peerless cheerleading, Pirro would be useful to Trump in practical terms, noted the New York Times in a news story.She supports “Trump’s efforts to exact vengeance on his political enemies, has backed his challenges to federal judges who have questioned the legality of his immigration policies and spent months protesting the legitimacy” of Biden’s 2020 election to the presidency.Although Trump often doesn’t return the favor of loyalty, he has stepped up for Pirro’s family by pardoning her former husband (once Trump’s lawyer), who in 2020 was convicted of conspiracy and tax-evasion charges.All told, this is some serious symbiosis. In stepping away from her high-profile – and high-earning – TV job, Pirro may solve a sticky problem for Trump, whose earlier choice for the DC prosecutor’s position ran into trouble with Senate Republicans.It’s not clear if Pirro’s nomination will succeed, especially in the long term. Although Trump is nominating her on an interim basis, there’s little doubt he’d like it to be permanent. But even the interim appointment may run into a legal fight over just how many acting US attorneys the president can appoint consecutively.You might think that with Hegseth’s rocky and widely criticized start as defense secretary – where he oversees almost three million employees while maintaining a TV star’s firm jawline – the president would hesitate to choose another unqualified TV personality for a key role.But Trump clearly doesn’t see it that way.There’s hardly anything better, it turns out, than Fox News on one’s resume. Even better when it’s paired with a solid record of fealty to the Audience in Chief.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Crass, flashy, outrageous: Trump media blitz redefines meaning of presidential

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      There was a disturbance in the Force. Donald Trump celebrated “Star Wars Day” this week with an AI-generated image of himself as a muscle-bound warrior holding a red lightsaber in front of two US flags and eagles.It seemed like a bit of fun but appeared on the White House’s official X account with a dark political message: “Happy May the 4th to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting so hard to bring Sith Lords, Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, & well known MS-13 Gang Members, back into our Galaxy. You’re not the Rebellion – you’re the Empire. May the 4th be with you.”Star Wars nerds were quick to point out that a red lightsaber implies that Trump has embraced the Dark Side. Actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, wrote on social media: “Proof this guy is full of SITH.” But the joking-not-joking post was also indicative of a wider trend: a revolution in the way the White House communicates with the American public.Over the past three-and-a-half months, the US president and his team have launched a relentless media offensive based on crass language, flashy tactics, shock-value videos and social media memes and posts that are outrageous by design. They have used platforms and personalities to bypass traditional outlets and directly engage the Maga (Make America great again) base. They have found new ways to drown out critics, goad opponents and antagonise the world.The embrace of viral far-right culture has nurtured a parallel information ecosystem through pro-Trump outlets enjoying a significant growth in influence, access to power and financial investment. It is helping the president dominate the “attention economy” and reshape narratives around the economy, immigration and other policy issues. But it also alarms critics who warn that insults and lies are going unchecked.Tara Setmayer, a political commentator and former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump has always understood mass communication and the power of propaganda and his rise and success politically will go down in history as one of the most successful propaganda operations ever. He has completely upended any semblance of decency, of class, of gravitas when it comes to presidential communications.“It’s literally turning presidential methods of communication into the WWE – the imagery, the immaturity, the outrageousness. All of those things seem to be more important than truth or respect for the office and what it means to use the power of the bully pulpit to speak to the American people and the world.”Presidential communications have come a long way. Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential press conference in 1913. Franklin Roosevelt pioneered radio with his informal “fireside chats” during the Great Depression and the second world war, articulating policies such as the New Deal directly to citizens.View image in fullscreenJohn F Kennedy leveraged TV for live addresses – for example, during the Cuban missile crisis. Ronald Reagan, a former actor, relished televised addresses, earning the nickname “the great communicator”. Barack Obama was the first president to use platforms such as YouTube and Twitter extensively, hosting online town halls and bypassing old media.Over the past decade, Trump has combined the old with the new, holding traditional in-person rallies while also being prolific on Twitter during his first term – a single all-caps tweet could dominate headlines, move financial markets or upend global diplomacy – and now his own Truth Social platform.But only since returning to office has he turned the White House into a quasi-content provider in its own right, continuing the aggressive media strategy honed during his winning election campaign to achieve what his communications director, Steven Cheung, has called “full-spectrum dominance”.In January, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, posted a photo of men in chains boarding a plane and wrote: “Deportation flights have begun.” In February, the White House posted on X a Valentine’s Day card with the faces of Trump and “border czar” Tom Homan with the caption: “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you.”It also posted a video of shackled immigrants being loaded on to planes, with the sounds of clanking chains and whirring jet engines in the background. The caption said “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight”. In March, on the day of Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, the White House’s rapid-response account posted more than 200 times to X, promoting clips and favourable reactions.Trump has spent his career living by the rule that, when he takes a hit, he hits back harder. That philosophy now infuses the White House. When the actor Selena Gomez posted an Instagram video in which she cried about the deportation of children, it quickly produced video interviews with the mothers of children killed by undocumented immigrants.When Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland man with protected legal status, was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Leavitt said “outrage” about the case by Democrats and the media “has been nothing short of despicable”. Dozens of posters of arrested undocumented immigrants were placed along the White House driveway, ensuring they would appear in the live shots of TV journalists.View image in fullscreenSome content is downright bizarre. The White House shared a photo of a fake Time magazine cover with Trump in a golden crown and the caption, “LONG LIVE THE KING”. Another post contained an AI-generated video that showed the Gaza Strip transformed into a luxurious, gilded resort called “Trump Gaza”. And earlier this month, Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself dressed as the pope as the mourning of Pope Francis continued.Setmayer, who now runs the Seneca Project political action committee, commented: “It’s so outrageous that it would be comical if it weren’t so serious. There’s nothing funny or comical about insulting one of the world’s largest religions and putting yourself in that role. It’s blasphemous. But it’s also a window into how Donald Trump views himself: this is part of that malignant narcissism.“He is so desperate for adulation and attention and being all-powerful that he would project himself in a cartoon-like rendering of positions of power using the White House platform to push it. This is something a maladjusted 12-year-old does. Not the most powerful man in the world.”The Trump White House has a symbiotic relationship with a new wave of podcasters, X users and YouTubers who enjoy access to the briefing room and presidential press pool, often asking Trump conspicuously sycophantic questions. Employees of outlets such as the National Pulse and the Daily Wire have been invited on foreign trips with cabinet officials. The exposure is leading to bigger advertising deals and distribution contracts.No one embodies the new era of White House communications better than Leavitt, who at 27 is the youngest-ever press secretary and probably the most zealously on-message. She has shown an uncanny ability to channel Trump’s political psyche, his relish for disparaging the so-called legacy media and his willingness to play fast and loose with facts.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “She’s approaching it in a very different way than others have done. She is forthrightly being a person who communicates the message of the White House rather than responds to the questions of the press. You can query whether that’s the job she ought to be doing but she is doing it in an outstanding way.View image in fullscreen“She is mature beyond her years. She’s articulate. She both can deliver the message and respond in an interactive way, which is something that some press secretaries have difficulty with. If the job of the press secretary is to send the message of the administration on a regular basis in person, she is knocking the ball out of the park.”But Mike McCurry, who was White House press secretary under Bill Clinton, is among those who query whether that is what the job is about. He said: “She seems to be in nonstop belligerent mode and showing disdain for the reporters in the room. It’s nothing but a propaganda show. She’s not doing the job as it’s traditionally been defined. She’s got a whole different role in the Trump cosmos.”Leavitt presents a weekly “Maga Minute” roundup video on TikTok, YouTube and other platforms. Last week also saw the launch of White House Wire, a news-style website that publishes exclusively positive coverage. Its format closely resembles the Drudge Report, the rightwing site founded in the 1990s that broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal.When he was working for Clinton, McCurry initially tried to dismiss questions about Lewinsky by retorting: “Are you really going to ask a question based on something in the Drudge Report?” He acknowledges that today’s White House is operating in a very different media environment – but argues that is no excuse for its lack of accountability.McCurry said: “The concept is if you keep throwing stuff up against the wall all the time, the press tries to chase everything down and they get befuddled a little bit because they don’t have a way of focusing back on things that might truly matter in the world.“It’s a strategy to try to overwhelm all of the legitimate sources of discourse and just keep changing the tune every day to match whatever it is that you want to try to get done. It’s either completely malevolent or completely brilliant. It’s hard to know which.” More

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      ‘Really a mess’: US’s air traffic control system suffering from years of neglect

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      Twice in the past two weeks, communications between air traffic controllers and airplanes at Newark Liberty, one of the US’s busiest airports, have failed – leaving controllers unable to communicate with pilots.The outages have, thankfully, only led to massive delays, not disaster. But they have also once again focused a harsh light on the persistent safety problems at US airports, which handle over 50,000 flights a day.As a result of that estimated 90-second communications breakdown on 28 April, many air traffic controllers said they felt traumatized, and thousands of passengers suffered from the hundreds of canceled and delayed flights. A brief radar outage on Friday morning left radar screens black for another 90 seconds – underlining a growing crisis.Political leaders were quick to criticize the rickety state of the air traffic system. Senator Charles Schumer of New York said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was “really a mess”, while New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, decried “decades of underinvestment” in air traffic control infrastructure, “delays” in modernizing technology, and “inadequate air traffic control staffing”.The transport department’s inspector general has found that at 20 of the nation’s 26 most critical airports, air traffic control staffing falls below the 85% minimum level, with many controllers forced to work 10-hour days and six-day weeks. After the communications breakdown in Newark, several air traffic controllers there was so shaken that they went on “trauma leave”, leaving that airport even more understaffed.The Trump administration moved swiftly to respond after the alarming episode at Newark. On Thursday, Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, unveiled a plan to build a new state-of-the-art system that would overhaul the technology used by the nation’s air traffic controllers. Duffy said his plan would replace “antiquated telecommunications, with new fiber, wireless and satellite technologies at over 4,600 sites”.“A lot of people have said: this problem is too complicated, too expensive, too hard,” Duffy said on Thursday. “But we are blessed to have a president who actually loves to build and knows how to build.”Airlines and the air traffic controllers’ union applauded Duffy’s proposal, but several airline industry experts voiced fears that it would fall short, as have many past plans to fix the system. In a statement, the Modern Skies Coalition, a group of industry associations and experts, said: “We are pleased that the secretary has identified the priorities of what must be done to maintain safety and remain a leader in air navigation services.”The air traffic control system has been through some tough months. In January, a commercial jet collided with an army helicopter near Reagan Washington National airport, killing 67 people in the deadliest aviation disaster in the US since 2001. Trump upset many aviation industry experts and outraged many Americans when he, even before an investigation was begun, rushed to blame the crash on diversity, equity and inclusion.On 1 May, another army helicopter forced two flights to abort their landings at Reagan airport. Newark airport has suffered at least two other similar communications breakdowns since last August. A New York Times investigation in 2023 found that close calls involving commercial airlines occurred, on average, several times each week – with 503 air traffic control lapses occurring in the 12 months before 30 September 2023.For some these latests issues are part of a much older story. “The system’s staffing problems started when Ronald Reagan fired over 10,000 air traffic controllers,” after they went on strike in 1981, said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants.“And those problems were worsened by his pushing the hatred of government and the dismantling of government. That’s what’s put us on the track to where we are today. There were budget cuts and tax cuts for the rich, and all that stopped us from doing the infrastructure projects and hiring and training that we needed to have a stable system.”The nation’s air navigation system has just under 10,800 certified controllers, but their union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, says there needs to be more than 14,300, the number recommended by an arm of the FAA, called the Collaborative Resource Workgroup. There are over 2,000 controllers in training, and the union has urged the Trump administration to increase the number in the pipeline. Training usually takes 18 to 24 months, and getting up to speed to work at the most demanding airports such as JFK and Newark can take more than three years.“There is a shortage of controllers nationwide, but not to the degree it’s occurring at Newark,” said Jeff Guzzetti, an industry consultant who was an investigator for the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board.“There’s been a shortage of controllers for years, if not decades. That shortage was exaggerated by Covid; they couldn’t conduct training for new controllers. Beyond that, they’ve always had a problem finding the right people with the right skills to control traffic and to get people to pass the course work at the training academy and then to get them up to speed.”Many trainees drop out and don’t pass their exams, and many controllers don’t stay in the job because it is so stressful. In recent years, the number of controllers has been relatively flat. The total has declined by 10% since 2012 due to retirements and trainees failing to finish their requirements.“It’s not only the shortage of air traffic controllers. It’s antiquated facilities and equipment and software,” Guzzetti said. Many facilities still rely on floppy disks and copper wire.He said: “It’s all coming to a head now in New York and Newark. Newark has always been the worst in terms of air traffic staffing and modernizing its equipment.”Last September, the Government Accountability Office said the FAA needed to take “urgent action” to deal with its antiquated air traffic control systems. It said 51 of the FAA’s 138 air traffic control systems were unsustainable.On Thursday, Duffy did not say what his modernization plan would cost. The House transportation and infrastructure committee says it would cost $12.5bn to overhaul the air traffic control system, but Duffy says his plan would cost more than that. “Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age,” he said. “Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity.”On May 1, Duffy announced a related plan filled with incentives that he said would “supercharge the air traffic controller work force.” It includes $5,000 bonuses to new hires who successfully finish the initial training.Joseph McCartin, a labor historian at Georgetown University who wrote a book about the 1981 air traffic controllers’ strike, said that ever since Reagan fired 11,345 striking controllers, “the system has been out of sync”.“The natural rhythm of the system broke down and we never fully recovered,” he said. “We’ve improved over time, but the FAA still has grave difficulty staffing facilities.”McCartin added: “[Elon Musk’s] Doge has made things only worse. The entire system that federal employees operate under has been terribly destabilized. The FAA exists in a world where this entire project of the federal government is teetering.”Robert W Mann Jr, an aviation industry analyst, said that for 40 years there have been FAA reauthorizations approved by Congress, but they haven’t fixed the problems. “Unless you do it right, it doesn’t make a difference what you spend,” he said. “You won’t have solved the root causes.”Nonetheless, Mann said he remained confident about airline safety. He said: “There’s a primacy in this business. Whether you’re working at airlines or the FAA, safety is the first thing.”Mann said that days when an airport faces severe understaffing of air traffic controllers or a crush of airplanes eager to take off as bad weather lifts, there will often be delays to ensure safety. “I’m not worried about safety,” Mann said, “but I might be worried that my flight will be four hours’ late.”Nelson, the flight attendants’ president, said that the US should be thankful to air traffic controllers because their job is so hard, stressful and important. “They should be commended for working in a system that’s crumbling,” she said. “They’re the ones we all need to applaud right now. They’re like the nurses during Covid, when everyone came out at 6 o’clock to bang pots and pans.”A big question now is whether Congress will approve the money for Duffy’s ambitious modernization plan. Nelson said: “I hate to say we’re a canary in the coalmine, but those of us in the airline industry have known for a long time that a lot of this [the air traffic control equipment] has been a problem. What happened in Newark is a sign of what will come in other airports if we don’t get the budget we need.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: White House doesn’t trust Hegseth to choose new chief of staff

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      Exasperated by the turmoil that has dogged Pete Hegseth’s office in recent weeks, the White House will block the US defense secretary’s choice of chief of staff and select a candidate of its own, according to two people familiar with the matter.Hegseth had suggested giving the chief of staff position to Marine Col Ricky Buria after the first person in the role, Joe Kasper, left last month in the wake of a contentious leak investigation that brought the ouster of three other senior aides. But the White House has made clear to Hegseth that Buria will not be elevated.Here are the key stories at a glance:White House block Hegseth choice for new chief of staffThe move to block Hegseth’s choice at this juncture is unusual and reflects Donald Trump’s intent to keep Hegseth by trying to insulate him from any more missteps.Read the full storyTrump mulls ending habeas corpusThe Trump administration is considering suspending the writ of habeas corpus, the legal right to challenge one’s detention, Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, said on Friday.Suspending habeas corpus would be an extremely aggressive move that would dramatically escalate the Trump administration’s efforts to attack the rule of law in American courts as it tries to deport people without giving them a chance to challenge the basis of their removals.Read the full storyJudge orders release of detained Tufts studentA federal judge in Vermont on Friday morning ordered the release on bail of a Tufts University student arrested in March for her political speech and now held in Louisiana in what she and her lawyers argue is a breach of her constitutional rights.The judge had ordered Rümeysa Öztürk’s return to Vermont, where she was briefly held after being grabbed on the street by masked immigration agents near Boston, for hearings.Read the full storyTrump floats China tariff cut to 80%Donald Trump has floated cutting tariffs on China from 145% to 80% before a weekend meeting as he looks to de-escalate the trade war.Top US officials are expected to meet a high-level Chinese delegation this weekend in Switzerland in the first significant talks between the two nations since Trump provoked a trade war with stiff tariffs on imports.The US president wrote “80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B” on his social media account on Friday morning, referring to Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary.Read the full storyUS considers special status for GreenlandUS officials are discussing a plan to pull Greenland into America’s sphere of influence using a type of agreement that the United States has used to keep close ties with several Pacific Island nations, according to two US officials and another person familiar with the discussions.Under the plan being considered, the Trump administration would propose to Greenland’s leaders that the island enter into a so-called compact of free association, or Cofa, with the United States.Read the full storyLawyer who prosecuted Trump hauled in front of House judiciary committeeThe former special counsel prosecutor Jay Bratt is expected to appear before the Republican-led House judiciary committee next week as it attempts to find instances of politicization in the federal criminal cases brought against Donald Trump, according to three people familiar with the matter.The deposition of Bratt, who led the criminal case over Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents as a top deputy to the former special counsel Jack Smith, has been scheduled for 10am ET next Wednesday, according to a notice reviewed by the Guardian.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Donald Trump abruptly fired the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, on Thursday as the White House continues to purge the federal government of those perceived to oppose the Republican US president and his agenda.

      The US has granted refugee status to 54 white Afrikaner South Africans, who could arrive as soon as Monday in Washington DC, where they will be welcomed by government officials, according to media reports.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 8 May. More