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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

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      Lawyer who prosecuted Trump hauled in front of House judiciary committee

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      The former special counsel prosecutor Jay Bratt is scheduled 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.Bratt’s appearance is the first known instance of a special counsel prosecutor being hauled before the judiciary committee since Trump took office vowing revenge and personally directing the firings of more than a dozen prosecutors who worked for Smith within days of his inauguration.It was not clear how long the deposition might last and whether Bratt planned to invoke any privileges to avoid testifying. A spokesperson for the judiciary committee did not immediately respond to questions about the deposition.Smith charged Trump in two cases: in Florida, for mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and defying a subpoena commanding their return; and in Washington, for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The classified documents case was dismissed before it went to trial by the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled that Smith had been unlawfully appointed because he was acting with the powers of a “principal officer” at the justice department, which requires confirmation by the US Senate.The topics that House investigators have prepared for Bratt were also not clear. But the judiciary committee, led by Republican chair Jim Jordan, has long believed that the special counsel cases were the result of political animus against Trump at the justice department.In repeated letters to the former special counsel last year, House investigators demanded information from Smith about contacts between the Biden White House and the justice department about the criminal cases, including when Bratt once travelled to the White House.They also sought documents and communications about meetings between FBI and justice department officials before the decision was made to ask a magistrate judge for a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. Bratt is widely understood to have encouraged FBI leaders to obtain a warrant.The warrant later proved to be the basis for the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice charges against Trump; the FBI retrieved 101 classified documents despite Trump’s lawyers having previously claimed that they had complied with an earlier subpoena to return all classified materials.The House judiciary committee has also taken a special interest in a fraught and disputed meeting between then-Trump legal team attorney Stanley Woodward and Bratt at justice department headquarters during the height of the classified documents case in November 2022.The Guardian previously reported on the complaint that Woodward filed in federal district court in Washington about the meeting, where he alleged Bratt discussed Woodward’s application to be a judge while trying to get the cooperation of Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet and Woodward’s client.In the filing, Woodward alleged that Bratt told him he did not think Woodward was a “Trump guy” and that “he would do the right thing” and get Nauta to testify against Trump in the classified documents case.The allegation was that Bratt had engaged in possible misconduct by suggesting Woodward’s judgeship application might be considered more favorably if he convinced his client to flip. The matter was referred to the justice department’s office of professional responsibility but it does not appear as though any action was taken.The extent of any potential impact on the case was unclear, since the meeting did not appear to have directly affected any testimony Nauta gave to prosecutors, and Bratt would not have had the ability to influence such an application, which is handled by the White House counsel’s office. More

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      Trump administration mulling end to legal right to challenge one’s detention

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      The 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.“The constitution is clear, and that of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus could be suspended in time of invasion. So that’s an option we’re actively looking at. A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not,” Miller said to a group of reporters at the White House.The US constitution says: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The writ of habeas corpus has only been suspended four times in US history, most notably by Abraham Lincoln during the civil war. It was also suspended during efforts to fight the Ku Klux Klan in the 19th century in South Carolina, in the Philippines in 1905 and after Pearl Harbor.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.Miller, long known for his far-right positions on immigration, has sought to deploy a maximalist approach in carrying out mass deportations. The US government has already produced little evidence to justify immigrant deportations and in some cases has sought to remove students in the United States legally for expressing their views, specifically support for Palestinians.Many of the immigrants that the Trump administration has moved aggressively to deport – including Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk – have filed habeas petitions challenging efforts to deport them.The administration has already attempted to deport people without due process by invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that allows the president to do so in a time of war.The Trump administration has justified its actions by arguing that the US is under “invasion” by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. Multiple judges have rejected the idea that the United States is under invasion and tried to halt the removals.But, while courts have tried to stop the administration’s efforts to unlawfully deport people, Trump has attacked judges for ruling against him and in some cases openly defied the courts. More

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      Mayor of Newark arrested for trespassing at Ice detention center

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      The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, was arrested for trespass at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center in New Jersey on Friday as Democratic members of Congress also attempted to conduct what they say was a visit to the controversial facility to conduct “federal oversight”.News of Baraka’s arrest at Delaney Hall was reported on X by Alina Habba, the acting US attorney for the district of New Jersey, and a former personal attorney and adviser to Donald Trump.“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” Habba wrote.“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. No one is above the law.”Kabir Moss, spokesperson for the Baraka for Governor campaign, said in a statement that he was taken to a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office a few miles from the facility and remained in detention. Baraka is currently running for the Democratic nomination as New Jersey’s governor in a competitive race. The primary is scheduled for next month.“We are actively monitoring and will provide more details as they become available,” Moss said.The New Jersey Globe published a photograph of him being led away in handcuffs by officers in jackets marked “Police Ice”. The newspaper does not have a reporter at the scene, but said observers at Delaney Hall said there had been “a scuffle”.Baraka, who spoke out against Trump’s immigration policies in January after an immigration raid in Newark he said Ice agents conducted without a warrant, was at Delaney Hall with Democratic New Jersey Congress members Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez.The politicians have accused the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of reopening the detention facility, in contravention of local ordinances and without the necessary permits.It is the largest such facility in the north-eastern US, and was the first to open after Trump’s second term of office began in January, according to the Ice website.Coleman, in a tweet, said the visit was an attempt to establish conditions inside. “We’ve heard stories of what it’s like in other Ice prisons. We’re exercising our oversight authority to see for ourselves,” she wrote.Coleman also told reporters at a press conference outside the facility that the lawmakers had traveled to the facility to see the conditions, according to the Independent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Ice is out of control,” she said. “Ice thinks it can intimidate all of us. And it cannot intimidate any of us. And we the people will make sure that this administration adheres to the rules that separate us from dictatorships and other third world countries.”Menendez accused Ice agents of having “put their hands on” representatives Coleman and McIver, reported the New York Times. “They feel no restraint on what they should be doing, and that was shown in broad daylight today,” Menendez said at the news conference.Axios reports that Coleman’s office said that they “arrived at Delaney Hall today at about 1pm to exercise their oversight authority as prescribed by law. After a period of explaining the law to the officials at the site they were escorted in.”Video attached to the tweet shows the Congress members inside the grounds of the center talking to employees. Other clips show them being threatened with arrest for trespass by uniformed officials. More

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      Indiana passes law threatening non-profit status of expensive hospitals

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      Indiana’s governor, Mike Braun, has signed a landmark bill that would strip charity hospitals of their non-profit status if they continue to charge high prices.The legislation, the first of its kind in the United States, followed uproar across the state after a Guardian series in October that investigated how one major Indiana non-profit hospital system bought up its competition, then hiked its prices, leaving businesses and patients struggling to pay their medical costs.In the wake of the Guardian investigation, Braun, then the Republican gubernatorial candidate, and his Democratic rival both criticized the hospital system, Parkview Health, for its high prices, and lawmakers vowed to take action against the non-profit chain, which charged some of the highest prices in the country despite being based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the US’s most affordable metro area.Braun signed the legislation into law on Tuesday. It comes at a time of growing concern across the US about healthcare costs and medical debt.To implement the law, the Indiana office of management and budget will first study prices across the state and come up with a price benchmark for non-profit hospitals in consultation with the legislature, according to the bill’s author, Martin Carbaugh, a Republican representative who represents a district that includes Fort Wayne. Non-profit hospitals will then have until 2029 to get their prices under that average, though Carbaugh hopes some will lower their prices before then as they negotiate with insurers.“We’ll start to see the downward pressure put on them right away,” he said. “The hospitals know they can’t just go for broke and raise costs, only to have to lower it again in 2029.”According to data compiled by Hoosiers for Affordable Healthcare, an Indiana advocacy group, the legislation could result in average price reductions as large as 40% for Parkview, and similarly sized cuts for other large state hospital systems.“It’s gonna be beneficial to everybody,” said Doug Allen, a small business owner who has struggled to keep up with Parkview’s healthcare costs for his employees. “Maybe people won’t be hurting so bad. Maybe they won’t think twice before coming to the hospital. Almost everybody around here is on a payment plan with Parkview. Everybody owes money to Parkview.”Parkview Health did not respond to requests for comment but has previously said it is committed to lowering healthcare costs.In a statement, the Indiana Hospital Association said it was “concerned by the potential loss of non-profit status for hospitals based on meeting an unknown statewide average commercial price in the future. This does not take into consideration the uncertainty of rising cost pressures such as tariffs, inflation, and other significant economic factors that will further threaten the financial stability of Indiana’s health care ecosystem.”The group added that it looks forward to “continuing our work with legislators and Gov Braun’s administration on future solutions that strike the right balance of lowering costs while maintaining access for Hoosier patients”.The US spends far more on healthcare than other large, wealthy countries, a trend that has been exacerbated by decades of hospital consolidation limiting competition in the healthcare sector. Carbaugh said he was aware of how high healthcare prices are across the country and said Indiana’s legislation might be a model for other states too.“It’s great to be a leader,” he said. “I’m happy to be part of leading that charge.” More

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      White House to take choice of Pentagon chief of staff out of Hegseth’s hands

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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 to become his most senior aide at the Pentagon, the people said, casting Buria as a liability on account of his limited experience as a junior military assistant and his recurring role in internal office drama.“Ricky will not be getting the chief position,” one of the people directly familiar with deliberations said. “He doesn’t have adequate experience, lacks the political chops and is widely disliked by almost everyone in the White House who has been exposed to him.”The White House has always selected political appointees at agencies through the presidential personnel office, but the 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.The intervention comes at a time when Hegseth’s ability to run the Pentagon has come under scrutiny. It also runs into the belief inside Trump’s orbit that even the president might struggle to justify Hegseth’s survival if the secretary does not have a scandal-free next few months.The secretary is not expected to have to fire Buria after he agreed to a compromise: to accept the White House’s choice for a new chief of staff in exchange for keeping Buria as a senior adviser, the people said. The White House and Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.The internal staffing situation at the Pentagon has outsize consequences because Hegseth’s front office is involved in policy deliberations and sensitive decision-making at the defense department, which has a budget of more than $800bn and oversees more than 2 million troops.Hegseth’s office is currently operating at a fraction of the size it normally does, with roughly five senior advisers. “There’s so much that’s not happening because no one is managing the front office,” an official with knowledge of the situation said.View image in fullscreenThe possibility of Buria becoming chief of staff spooked the White House for multiple reasons. For one, the White House presidential personnel office previously declined Hegseth’s request to make him a political appointee, but Buria has been operating in such a capacity anyway, two officials said.Buria appears to be considered by the career civilian employees in the deputy defense secretary’s office as the acting chief, not least because he recently moved into the chief of staff’s office and has taken steps to redecorate by bringing in new furniture, the officials said.Buria also recently failed to pass a polygraph test that was administered as part of the leak investigation. The polygraph came back as inconclusive, the officials said, a result that would ordinarily require him to retake the test before he could be cleared.In an additional twist, Buria was identified as having sent some of the messages in at least one Signal group chat about sensitive and imminent US missile strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, the officials said. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported on Buria’s access to Hegseth’s personal phone.Buria, a former MV-22 pilot who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, started his ascent at the Pentagon as a junior military assistant (JMA) under Joe Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin. In the prestigious but unglamorous role, a JMA is something of a personal aide but with access to high-level operations.When Hegseth arrived, Buria continued his role as the JMA and quickly became close with Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer, traveling with the secretary and spending time at the secretary’s residence at Fort McNair.Buria’s influence expanded after Hegseth fired his boss, the air force Lt Gen Jennifer Short, who had been serving as the senior military assistant. Buria stepped into the job, typically held by a three-star officer, and joined bilateral meetings with foreign dignitaries. The National Pulse reported he also attended foreign policy briefings.When Army Lt Gen Christopher LaNeve arrived as Hegseth’s permanent senior military assistant, it was expected that Buria would return to his JMA position. Instead, he told officials he would retire from the military to become a political appointee in Hegseth’s office and took advantage of the power vacuum resulting from Kasper’s departure. More