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‘We’re fighting for you!’ Podcaster Ben Meiselas on taking on the Maga media – and winning the ratings battle
by Evelyn Reynolds 11 October 2025, 04:00
Ben Meiselas is a very busy man. So busy, he has to break off halfway through our interview to conduct an interview of his own, for his next broadcast. It’s 7am Los Angeles time when we meet via video call, and Meiselas is already well into another 18-hour day of podcasting, planning, interviewing, meetings and more besides. His “pro-democracy” channel MeidasTouch, which he runs with his younger brothers Jordan and Brett, puts out 15 or more videos a day, most of them presented by Meiselas himself. “I was doing another video before this,” he says, “and so by now I’ve already released one video I did last night, which was my 4am, and now I just worked on my 7am – it’ll get released any minute now. And then I’ll have an 8.30, a 10, an 11.30 …”The prolific output is part of the reason The MeidasTouch has become one of the most listened-to podcasts in the US, routinely beating the mighty Joe Rogan in both video and audio, and even overtaking Fox News in YouTube views. Rogan and others in the right-leaning podcast manosphere are thought to have swung the 2024 election in Donald Trump’s favour, prompting much soul-searching on the American left about its media game, and why they need a Joe Rogan of their own; MeidasTouch seems to have stepped in to fill the void.That void extends far beyond just podcasting, in Meiselas’s view. He is appalled at how the US media has reacted since Trump came to power. “It’s a total capitulation,” he says. “They’re either corporate news – like cable news, [which is] just completely both-sides-ing the issues and intentionally ignoring critical, existential things – or they’re just outright state regime media à la North Korea and Russia: Fox News, OAN [One America News], Newsmax … All of these corporations are run by rightwing oligarchs; they are tools to ingratiate themselves with the regime for other benefits and other business interests.”The spectacle of CEOs and podcast bros alike “kissing the ring” at Trump’s inauguration cemented this impression early on. As counter-programming, Meiselas broadcast four hours of cute puppies and kittens, raising funds for the Humane Society.View image in fullscreenIf the left is looking for its Joe Rogan, though, Meiselas doesn’t quite fit the bill. Where Rogan is casual, rambling and often credulous of his guests’ outlandish claims, Meiselas is focused, well-informed and disdainful. And as you’d expect of a former trial lawyer, he speaks with an off-the-cuff fluency (“no scripts, no notes – that’s part of the connection I build with the audience”), and he brings receipts. If he has a catchphrase, it’s “play this clip” – as he illustrates yet another incidence of Republican duplicity/hypocrisy/incompetence/deception/authoritarianism with video, audio, graphs or data.He can be a level-headed interviewer – this week he has spoken to Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and newly elected congresswoman Adelita Grijalva. (He breaks off from our interview to talk to a former commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission about free speech and media monopolies.) But over the course of a typical episode – which could be a 20-minute solo broadcast or a 90-minute talk with his brothers – he often becomes audibly outraged at what’s going on.Put that all together, and tonally MeidasTouch is somewhere between wartime resistance broadcast and wrestling commentary. Meiselas is not above throwing out insults: the Republican house leader is consistently referred to as “Maga Mike Johnson”, for example, and he is as merciless about Trump’s health as the rightwing media was about Joe Biden’s. He doesn’t hesitate to speak his mind: “What the hell are these people even talking about?” “Stop making up things and defrauding the American people.” “These people are sick.” And MeidasTouch’s episode titles conform to the hyperbolic YouTube vernacular: “Trump is COLLAPSING under SHUTDOWN PRESSURE!!!”, “Trump LOOKS AWFUL as PRESSER Goes OFF THE RAILS”. One journalist described MeidasTouch’s commentary as “seemingly calculated to appeal to those for whom [MSNBC host] Rachel Maddow is too subtle.”Meiselas makes no apologies for his house style. “I don’t curse,” he says. “I try to still keep it as much as possible appropriate for everyone. But on the other hand, I think where you have characters who are cartoonishly evil, like Maga Mike Johnson or JD Vance, framing them for the WWE cosplay characters they’ve become is actually an accurate way of describing who they are … I’m just trying to reflect the language of, truthfully, what it is that I’m seeing, and I think the growth of the network is the audience responding: ‘Yes, that’s exactly how I see it.’” He is speaking from the same home office in which his 5.5 million subscribers see him every day; it’s somewhat uncanny – as if I’m watching my own personal episode of his podcast.In his view, it’s other media outlets that are not meeting the moment. “We’re beyond a constitutional crisis. America’s living in a dictatorship right now. And the question is, how will an opposition respond to a dictatorship?” he says. “This is not a time to be playing games. People are waking up every day feeling, and rightfully so, that this is really life or death for them. We’re not talking about abstract concepts. People are saying, ‘I may not be able to afford healthcare and I’m going to die.’ So they don’t want to be lectured about, ‘Well, on the one hand; on the other hand.’ They want to be told directly, ‘What are you going to do to fight for my life? What are you going to do to fight for my healthcare? My community is under attack right now. There are masked agents who are disappearing human beings right here.’ Or, ‘I’m a member of a marginalised group’ – whether it’s a gay person, LGBTQ – ‘and I matter. I’m a human being, damn it.’ I think where we come in, very unapologetically, is we say, ‘We’re fighting for you, and we don’t waver on our values.’”This is what separates his operation from the forces they’re opposing, he says, despite their superficial resemblances. “You have to unite people with empathy and love and community and shared values as a force against the hate.” He’s all for building connections: communally, politically and internationally – given the global rise of far-right politics. “That, to me, is more important than, ‘Am I beating Joe Rogan this week or that week?’”View image in fullscreenMeiselas, 40, didn’t set out to build a media empire, nor did he really have to. Until about 2020 he was a partner in a successful law firm and his career was flying. The legal profession was in his blood, you could say. His mother practised law for a spell; his father, Kenny, is a leading entertainment lawyer whose clients include Lady Gaga, the Weeknd, Nicki Minaj and formerly Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was recently sentenced to more than four years in prison for prostitution-related charges. Meiselas actually interned for Combs’ Bad Boy Records for a few summers in his late teens. A Variety profile from 2019 claimed that Combs “took Meiselas under his wing, resulting in a precocious and priceless apprenticeship”, but he was not part of Diddy’s entourage or witness to any of wrongdoing, he stresses: “I was very low on the totem pole.” He was actually working on Diddy’s Citizen Change initiative, which was about voter registration for young people.He grew up on Long Island, New York, with his two brothers: Brett, who is five years younger, and Jordan, eight years younger. “We always did things together as brothers,” he says. “Like, we made videos, even in the early days of Adobe editing. We would do comedy skits together in the back yard for fun, and we would make movies together for our school projects.” Then, as now, Ben was the leader, it seems. A confident public speaker, he was president of his student government in middle school and high school, and of various undergraduate clubs. In his early 20s he interned on Capitol Hill, for New York Democrat Steve Israel, then for Hillary Clinton when she was a senator. “I would hand her the speeches before she spoke, answer constituent mail, give tours of the Capitol building – which was my favourite part about it.”He was one of the youngest students at law school, in Georgetown, Washington DC, but he only really became enthused when he began studying civil rights law. He was recruited out of college to a small law California firm and “thrown into the fire”, he says. Within three years, still in his mid-20s, he was in court handling significant cases of brutality and wrongful death at the hands of the police (he assisted the Guardian’s reporting on these issues in 2015), and invariably winning them. That led to representing Colin Kaepernick when the San Francisco 49ers quarterback sued the NFL for excluding him for taking a knee, in what seems like a different era (they reached a confidential settlement). He went on to become a business partner with Kaepernick and they remain good friends.View image in fullscreenIn retrospect, it could look as if Meiselas was destined for a career in politics, but it never really appealed. “When I became a civil rights lawyer, I actually started to not like politics, because politicians would start calling me up for money,” he says. “I still, and I say this all the time on the show, don’t like politics. To me, politics distorts from what the human issues really are.” He doesn’t quite rule it out for the future, though. “I can’t imagine it ever happening. I know it sounds like a political answer to say that, but I really have no desire at all.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt was during the Covid pandemic in 2020 that Meiselas felt the need to get more politically engaged. Again, he doesn’t mince words. “I thought that Trump was killing people,” he says. “He would do these Covid press conferences, and it would be spewing a bunch of nonsense and disinformation. And me and my brothers were like, ‘Are you watching this? What the hell is going on? We need to do something to call this out.’”At the time Brett was a digital editor for Ellen DeGeneres’ TV show, and Jordan worked in marketing. The brothers began producing anti-Trump videos that started to go viral. One of them, with a #CreepyTrump hashtag, superimposed GOP insider Kellyanne Conway’s comments about Joe Biden being “creepy” over clips of Trump’s inappropriate comments about young women, including his daughter Ivanka. They formed a political action committee, to raise funds for Joe Biden’s campaign, but found simply placing TV attack ads to be unsatisfactory – “You’re renting space on their network, and they’re undermining your message with their both-sides-ism.”Then the January 6 attacks happened, and the brothers decided to start their own podcast in earnest. “We just said, ‘Let’s just put out our own show together, from our living rooms,” Meiselas says. “The quality wasn’t great, but the first podcast we put out, there was a decent-size audience and the feedback was great. And so we’re like, ‘There’s something there.’”Meiselas began phasing out his legal work, and fully quit the day job in 2023. As well as him and his brothers, MeidasTouch now has a whole stable of hosts, including Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer; it produces shows not just on politics but on legal and economic matters. And it is expanding internationally: in September it launched a Canada podcast. “For us, the strategy is just to try to be everywhere,” he says. And not just in the interests of expanding the brand: “It may be important in the future to have international hubs getting out the message, in the event that there’s additional kind of clampdowns here.”There is no shortage of material for anti-Maga podcasting at the moment, but will the world still need such granular focus on day-to-day politics once the Trump era comes to an end in 2028 (assuming it actually does)? Even the podcast bros who supported Trump, including Rogan and Theo Von, are now turning against him over issues such as the Jeffrey Epstein saga and his brutal immigration policies. “I don’t think anybody would have signed up for [this],” Rogan said in July.“I think there’s always going to be a Trump worldview,” says Meiselas, “whether that’s embodied in Trump, or a Maga perspective, or the next generation that’s going to push these ideas. And while we’re often framed as anti-Trump or liberal or left, I don’t see it like that at all. Because to me, it’s what Trump represents, and what he does, that I’m against. It’s that he’s laundering a set of ideas that permeate internationally, that impact you in the UK, in Europe, in South and Central America, in Russia. He is a vehicle and a vessel for these concepts that I think bring us back to the dark ages.”Either way, Meiselas’s 18-hour shifts aren’t going to end any time soon – but he is fine with that, he says. At least he gets to work from home. “When I was a lawyer and I would have trials across the country, I’d be travelling for weeks and months, and I’d be in Utah or New York or San Francisco or wherever,” he says.He married last year and has a baby daughter. “She just turned one, so I’m able to do some videos, I get to walk my little girl up the block, we walk back, I do another video, we have lunch together, I do another video. So for me, it’s actually a blessing.” But he laughs as he admits that he’s never really not working. “Even when I’m doing the walks, I’m always thinking a little bit about what’s next. I’m always trying to make the connections in my mind.”But it doesn’t really feel like work, he says. “I don’t wake up and I’m like, ‘Another day at work …’ I feel a broader sense of this historical moment and where the network fits into it. I feel every day is like, ‘This is what I was meant to do.’” More
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Trump news at a glance: layoffs for federal workers begin and president threatens China with tariffs
by Evelyn Reynolds 11 October 2025, 00:53
Mass firings of US federal workers have begun, as Republicans work to exert pressure on Democrat lawmakers to end a government shutdown. The White House budget office said the layoffs were “substantial”, with unions for federal workers taking the matter to court. President Donald Trump said of the job losses “it’ll be a lot” and suggested those losing their jobs would be in areas that were “Democrat oriented”.The government shutdown comes as the US president has revived the trade war with China, this time promising to increase tariffs on Chinese imports by 100%. His administration is also considering using visa restrictions and sanctions against countries that support the International Maritime Organization’s “net zero framework” proposal.White House announces federal worker layoffsThe White House announced layoffs of federal workers on Friday, making good on a threat it had made in response to the US government shutdown, which now appears likely to stretch into a third straight week. Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that “RIFs have begun”, referring to the government’s reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go.Read the full storyTrump threatens 100% China tariffsDonald Trump has threatened to impose additional US tariffs of 100% on China from next month, accusing Beijing of “very hostile” moves to restrict exports of rare earths needed for American industry. Wall Street fell sharply after the US president reignited public tensions with the Chinese government, and raised the prospect of another acrimonious trade war between the world’s two largest economies.Read the full storyNational guard troops seen on Memphis streetsNational guard troops were seen patrolling in Memphis for the first time on Friday, as part of Donald Trump’s controversial federal taskforce, amid fierce legal challenges as he was blocked from sending troops to Chicago and a court ruling was awaited in Portland, Oregon.Read the full storyMIT rejects White House proposal to overhaul policiesThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has become the first US university to formally turn down a Trump administration proposal that would overhaul university policies in return for preferential access to federal funding.Read the full storyWhite House slams Trump’s perceived Nobel peace prize snubThe White House has denounced the Norwegian Nobel committee’s decision to award the Nobel peace prize to someone other than Donald Trump.“The Nobel committee proved they place politics over peace,” wrote Steven Cheung, a Trump aide and the White House’s director of communications.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
Donald Trump had what he has described as a “semiannual physical” at the Walter Reed national military medical center.
Up to 40 US academics have been dismissed or disciplined after rightwing campaigns targeted their comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, creating a “climate of fear” on campuses.
Leading New York Democrats have rallied behind Letitia James a day after she was indicted on mortgage fraud charges by a federal prosecutor appointed by Trump.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 9 October 2025. More
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‘Substantial’ federal layoffs begin as Congress remains deadlocked over funding to end shutdown – live
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 October 2025, 21:33
The Guardian has independently confirmed that reductions in force (RIFs) are under way at the following departments and agencies:
Department of Education
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Homeland Security (specifically the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
Department of the Treasury
Certain agencies haven’t immediately responded to the Guardian’s request for comment, but other media outlets have reported layoffs are expected at the following:
Environmental Protection Agency
Department of Energy
Department of the Interior
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Donald Trump just started an Oval Office announcement on a deal with the British-based drug maker Asta Zeneca, for a “most-favored-nation” drug pricing model aimed at making prescription medicines more affordable, by boasting that he would have struck the deal sooner, but “we were interrupted by a rigged election”.Trump went on to repeat the wildly false claim that the discounted prices for American consumers would reduce the price of prescription drugs by up to 1,000%.As Daniel Dale of CNN has explained: “Cutting drug prices by more than 100% would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications rather than paying for them.” A health economist, Timothy McBride, told the network Trump’s claims are “just not logical,” since a 500% price reduction would mean that a drug that now costs $100 would cost be available for free, with consumers given a $400 rebate.The actual deal includes cutting prices for the government’s Medicaid health plan for low-income Americans and discounted prices through a “TrumpRx” website the president said.AstraZeneca’s chief executive Pascal Soriot stood near Trump in the gold-clad Oval Office as the president made the announcement.Pfizer previously agreed to drop prescription drug prices in the Medicaid program for lower-income Americans to what it charges in other developed countries in exchange for relief from tariffs threatened by Trump.Americans currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations, and Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay elsewhere or face stiff tariffs.Last month, he threatened 100% tariffs on drug makers, increasing pressure on the pharmaceutical industry to agree to price cuts and shift manufacturing to the US.Writing on his social media platform, Donald Trump just announced that, in response to what he called China’s “extraordinarily aggressive position on Trade” and new export restrictions, he intends to “impose a Tariff of 100% on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying” starting on 1 November.The same day, he adds, “we will impose Export Controls on any and all critical software.”That date is after Trump’s planned meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.Our colleague Callum Jones has more on the latest friction in Trump’s trade war with China.The wave of layoffs at federal agencies has reportedly reached the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) now, according to the PBS correspondent Lisa Desjardins.Federal prosecutors in Maryland could seek criminal charges next week against Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, report the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Carol Leonnig and her colleague Ken Dilanian for MSNBC.A grand jury in Maryland has been hearing evidence related to claims that Bolton, a former ally of Trump turned harsh critic, improperly kept classified national security information in his Maryland home.The journalists also report that Ed Martin, a Republican operative who served briefly as Trump’s acting US attorney in the District of Columbia now running the justice department’s “Weaponization Working Group”, has met multiple times with the Trump-appointed acting US attorney in Maryland, Kelly Hayes, on the Bolton case.An indictment on Bolton for illegally retaining classified documents would be the third of a Trump critic in recent weeks, and would echo the indictment of New York’s attorney general, Tish James, in accusing critics of the president of committing crimes he was indicted for after his first term.I’ve been chatting to Jessica Roth, a former federal prosecutor in the southern district of New York, about the indictment of Letitia James.Roth said it was “extremely distressing” to see prosecutions brought against the president’s perceived political enemies.“I can’t say that I was surprised that the department [under attorney general Pam Bondi] pursued these charges against Tish James,” she added. “That doesn’t lessen my distress … particularly in light of what had been longstanding Department of Justice policy not to pursue an indictment unless prosecutors were convinced that they would be able to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.”Lindsey Halligan, the handpicked and newly installed US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, has pursued the charges against James and former FBI director James Comey, and Roth notes that we could see a wider effort to bring charges against the president’s adversaries in districts throughout the country that are now run by Trump-friendly prosecutors.Much like the charges brought against Comey, Roth underscored that the crimes that James is being accused of are very difficult to prove “even under the best stances” because they require proof of “criminal intent as opposed to an honest mistake or negligence”.The Guardian has independently confirmed that reductions in force (RIFs) are under way at the following departments and agencies:
Department of Education
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Homeland Security (specifically the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
Department of the Treasury
Certain agencies haven’t immediately responded to the Guardian’s request for comment, but other media outlets have reported layoffs are expected at the following:
Environmental Protection Agency
Department of Energy
Department of the Interior
Department of Housing and Urban Development
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed to the Guardian that employees across “multiple divisions” have received reduction-in-force notices. HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said this was “a direct consequence of the Democrat-led government shutdown”.He added that HHS under the Biden administration “became a bloated bureaucracy, growing its budget by 38% and its workforce by 17%”.Nixon said that all employees receiving RIF notices were “designated non-essential by their respective divisions”.“HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” he added.The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal government workers, has condemned the mass layoffs announced by the White House budget office.“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, the union’s president.AFGE has already filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the firings, and a hearing is set for Thursday, 16 October. “We will not stop fighting until every reduction-in-force notice is rescinded,” Kelley added.The Department of Education has also confirmed to the Guardian that their employees will be affected by the reductions in force.An office of management and budget (OMB) spokesperson told the Guardian that the reductions in force that have begun are “substantial”.The official didn’t confirm an exact number, but we’re bringing you the latest as we hear from different agencies and departments about how they stand to be affected. More
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The mortgage fraud case against Letitia James is ‘bupkis’, experts say
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 October 2025, 20:31
A prosecutor installed by Donald Trump may have been able to secure an indictment against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, but actually obtaining a conviction may be an uphill battle, legal experts say.Even before a grand jury handed down the indictment on Thursday, there was already deep skepticism about possible charges. Career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of Virginia had looked at accusations James committed mortgage fraud and concluded there was no probable cause to charge the case. Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s handpicked interim US attorney, nonetheless went ahead and presented the case to the grand jury. Her decision to do so reportedly caught top justice department officials off-guard.The indictment handed down on Thursday charges James with bank fraud and making a false statement when she secured a mortgage to buy a second home in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2020. As part of the purchase, James signed a rider that indicated she would use it as her second home and prohibited her from renting it out, according to the indictment. James proceeded to then rent out the home, prosecutors allege. By lying on the mortgage statement, prosecutors say, James secured a better mortgage rate and a seller credit that saved her about $18,933 over the life of the loan.“In this case, prosecutors will be required to show that at the moment James signed the mortgage paperwork, she was aware of the provision regarding a secondary home, that she intended to use it for some different purpose, and that she intended to obtain a financial benefit as a result of her deceit,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan. “That can be very difficult for a prosecutor to do because we cannot read other people’s minds. Anyone who has ever participated in a mortgage closing is familiar with the daunting pile of papers they put in front of you.”The second-home rider James signed does not prohibit renting the home outright, Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University, wrote in a blogpost. Instead, the rider prevents the owner from giving control over rental decisions to someone else. The agreement also only imposes the restriction starting one year after the agreement. The indictment made public on Thursday does not say when James rented the home or for how long.The rider also includes an exemption for “extenuating circumstances”, Levitin noted, pointing out that the mortgage was obtained in August 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.“I’m unaware of the federal government having previously charged anyone for fraud based on renting out a second home,” Levitin wrote in the post on Credit Slips. “It’s clear why the career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia refused to bring a case: James doesn’t appear to have made any misrepresentation in her mortgage because the mortgage does not directly prohibit rentals.”James has forcefully denied the charges. Last month, Trump publicly admonished the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to indict her, along with the former FBI director James Comey and California senator Adam Schiff.“These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost. The president’s actions are a grave violation of our Constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties,” James said in a statement on Thursday evening.Trump’s public statements, combined with the conclusion of career prosecutors about a lack of probable cause, make it likely James will bring a selective prosecution argument to try to get the case thrown out.“Normally, a claim [that] this is a vindictive prosecution does not work,” said John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School. But, he added: “You don’t usually have the president calling for these sort of things.”The charges against James come as William Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has deployed mortgage filings to attack Trump’s rivals. In April, Pulte, a staunch Trump ally, sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice regarding two different real estate transactions involving James. Neither of the transactions in the referral were the ones actually charged this week.Pulte has also accused Schiff of mortgage fraud as he has the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump is trying to remove from the central bank. In Cook’s case, Pulte has made an allegation similar to the one against James, alleging she rented out a property she indicated was her second home on mortgage documents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlso unusual in James’s case is the amount of money she is said to have benefited from because of the fraud. Typically, investigators in the inspector general’s office at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which handles mortgage fraud investigations, pursue cases where there are substantial losses to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that support the housing market by guaranteeing mortgages.Even the most junior prosecutor in a US attorney’s office would turn down a case with a loss amount that low, said Jacqueline Kelly, a former federal prosecutor in New York who is now a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner.“It would never be signed off on by a supervisor with a loss amount that low,” she said. The low loss amount could also bolster James’s claims of selective prosecution. “When she has to prove that someone similarly situated would not have been prosecuted, she is on really strong ground there because if you look at other cases charged under these same statutes, you’re not going to find one similar to this at all.”While the length of James’s loan is not clear, if it was a standard 30-year mortgage she would have defrauded the government out of about $633 each year.“That’s bupkis,” said one former federal prosecutor who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions. “Are you really going to believe when you get up there that the attorney general of New York would commit this willfulness over $600 a year?“It’s a race as to whether this is weaker than the Comey case or stronger because they’re the two weakest cases I’ve ever seen in my life.” More
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White House announces federal worker layoffs as shutdown nears third week
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 October 2025, 19:52
The White House announced layoffs of federal workers on Friday, making good on a threat it had made in response to the US government shutdown, which now appears set to stretch into a third straight week.Russell Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, wrote on social media that “RIFs have begun”, referring to the government’s reduction-in-force procedure to let employees go.While Vought provided no details on the departments and agencies at which the layoffs were taking place, a treasury spokesperson said notices had been distributed within the department. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Guardian that layoffs would also happen at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And a union representing federal workers confirmed that members at the Department of Education would also be affected by the reduction in force.Union leaders warned the layoffs would have “devastating effects” on services relied upon by millions of Americans, and pledged to challenge the moves in court.“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” said Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents 800,000 federal and DC government workers.Vought had warned that federal agencies could slash jobs if the government shuts down, but the Trump administration largely held off after funding lapsed last week. Asked at a press conference before Vought’s announcement why no layoffs had occurred, the top Senate Republican, John Thune, signaled they would happen soon.“The White House has now for 10 days laid off doing anything in hopes that enough Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing and fund the government,” he said.View image in fullscreen“My expectation is, yes, they’re going to start making some decisions about how to move money around, which agencies and departments are going to be impacted, which programs are going to be impacted, which employees are going to be impacted. That’s what a shutdown does.”The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, responded to Vought’s post on Friday, saying: “America’s unions will see you in court.”Last week, the AFGE and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) filed for a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration from carrying out any reductions in force (RIFs) during the shutdown. The unions filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order on Friday, following Vought’s post.Lee Saunders, president of the AFSCME, said: “These mass firings are illegal and will have devastating effects on the services millions of Americans rely on every day. Whether it’s food inspectors, public safety workers, or the countless other public service workers who keep America running, federal employees should not be bargaining chips in this administration’s political games.“By illegally firing these workers, the administration isn’t just targeting federal employees, it’s hurting their families and the communities they serve every day. We will pursue every available legal avenue to stop this administration’s unlawful attacks on public service workers’ freedoms and jobs.”Congressional Democrats have refused to vote for a Republican-backed bill to restore funding unless it includes an array of healthcare-centered concessions. After holding seven unsuccessful votes on the parties’ spending bills, the Senate’s Republican leaders have put the chamber in recess until next Tuesday, meaning the standoff is unlikely to be resolved before then.The layoffs came on the same day government employees received only a partial paycheck covering the final days of September but not the beginning of October, since appropriations lapsed at the start of the month.At a Friday-morning press conference, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, blasted Senate Democrats for not supporting the GOP’s bill, which passed his chamber on a near party-line vote.If the government is not reopened by next Wednesday, US military personnel are set to miss a paycheck.“This is the last paycheck that 700,000 federal workers will see until Washington Democrats decide to do their job and reopen the government,” Johnson said.View image in fullscreen“Starting next week, American service members, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, are going to miss a full paycheck. If Democrats don’t end this shutdown by Monday, then that October 15 date will pass us by.”Johnson has kept the House out of session throughout the shutdown in an effort to pressure Senate Democrats into supporting the Republican funding proposal. Earlier this week, a group of House Democrats sent the speaker a letter asking him to allow a vote on legislation that would ensure US troops get paid during a shutdown, but Johnson has refused to bring lawmakers back to Washington.The Senate has become a chokepoint in the funding battle because any legislation needs at least 60 votes to advance in the chamber. In exchange for their support, Democratic senators are demanding that premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans be extended beyond their end-of-the-year expiration date.They are also seeking safeguards against Donald Trump’s rescissions of congressionally approved funding, a restoration of money for public media outlets, and an undoing of cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for poor and disabled Americans.Max Stier, the president and CEO of the non-profit Partnership for Public Service, condemned the gridlock’s impact on government workers.“It is wrong to make federal employees suffer because our leaders in Congress and the White House have failed to keep our government open and operational,” Stier said.“Our air traffic controllers, VA nurses, smoke jumpers and food inspectors are not responsible for this government shutdown, and they shouldn’t bear the financial burden created by the failures of our elected officials. The irony is that members of Congress and senior White House leaders are continuing to be paid.”Earlier this week, on 7 October, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide specifics on the status of any layoff plans, the affected agencies and whether any federal employees have been recalled back to work to carry out layoffs, by Friday, 10 October.A report by the Center for American Progress on 30 September argued that a government shutdown limits the ability of the Trump administration to carry out firings, citing guidance from the office of management and budget that admitted any permanent layoffs need to have been initiated before the shutdown began.“Constraints on permanently firing federal employees during a shutdown largely exist because of the Antideficiency Act and the distinction between ‘shutdown furloughs’ that happen during a lapse in congressional appropriations and ‘administrative furloughs’, which are department and agency procedures on how to permanently let staff go, including – for example – through a RIF,” the report, authored by Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy policy at the Center for American Progress, states. “The Trump administration’s threats to layoff federal employees should be understood as a goal of the administration that will be pursued with or without a government shutdown and should not drive lawmakers’ decisions on whether to support government funding bills.”Shrai Popat contributed additional reporting More
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Trump completes ‘semiannual’ physical before traveling to Middle East
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 October 2025, 19:52
Donald Trump – the oldest person ever to be elected US president – had what he has described as a “semiannual physical” at the Walter Reed national military medical center on Friday.The visit, which the White House announced earlier this week, comes as Trump is preparing to travel to the Middle East on the heels of a ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas war. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, described it as a “routine yearly checkup”, although the president had his annual physical in April.Trump left the White House at about 10.45am on Friday and returned to the grounds at 2.15pm, which was slightly ahead of schedule. He did not answer questions from reporters upon his arrival, and the White House has not indicated when it would release results or more information about his exams.The White House declined to explain why Trump was getting a yearly checkup at Walter Reed, which is in Bethesda, Maryland, six months after his annual exam. But in an exchange with reporters on Thursday, the Republican president said it was a “semiannual physical”.“I’m meeting with the troops, and I’m also going to do a, sort of, semiannual physical, which I do,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I think I’m in great shape, but I’ll let you know.”Trump’s April physical found that he was “fully fit” to serve as commander in chief. The three-page summary of the exam done by his doctor, navy Capt Sean Barbabella, said he had lost 20lb (9kg) since a medical exam in June 2020 and that he had an “active lifestyle” that “continues to contribute significantly” to the wellbeing of the president, who is 79.Since his April exam, Trump was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that can cause swelling, as the president has experienced in his legs and is common in older adults. Trump’s physician also addressed concern about bruising on the president’s hand, attributing it to irritation caused by frequent handshaking and his use of aspirin as a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.Recent images of a purplish bruise on Trump’s hand, which appeared to have been covered with makeup, fueled online speculation that the president was ill. When Leavitt discussed the results of his chronic venous insufficiency diagnosis from the briefing room, she noted that the White House was disclosing details of the checkup to dispel rumors about Trump’s health.At the April physical, Trump also passed a short screening test to assess different brain functions.Presidents have large discretion over what health information they choose to release to the public. Trump’s summary from his April exam included information about his weight, body mass index, past surgeries, mental health screenings, cholesterol levels and blood pressure. Trump’s previous medical reports typically produced a flattering report scarce on details.Trump has long been cagey about his health, and concern about the president’s wellbeing stretches back to his first term. But wild rumors reached a fever pitch when the president faded from public view for several days over the summer, with critics and TikTok influencers speculating that the president was on his deathbed. “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE!” Trump wrote at the time, in an assertion that only fueled suspicions of a cover-up.Lauren Gambino contributed reporting More
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Trump officials cancel major solar project in latest hit to renewable energy
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 October 2025, 19:25
The Trump administration has killed a huge proposed solar power project in Nevada that would have been one of the largest in the world, indicating that the White House plans to attack not only wind power but all renewable energy.On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) changed the status of the Esmeralda 7 project to say its environmental review has been “cancelled”, the climate publication Heatmap first reported.The super project in southern Nevada was set to cover 185 sq miles – a footprint close to the size of Las Vegas – and include seven solar projects proposed by different companies, including NextEra Energy Resources, Leeward Renewable Energy, Arevia Power and Invenergy. Together, the network of solar panels and batteries was set to produce 6.2 gigawatts of energy, enough to power nearly 2m homes.Asked to comment, the interior department appeared to leave open the possibility that at least parts of the project could be resubmitted for review. In an email, a spokesperson said: “During routine discussions prior to the lapse in appropriations, the proponents and BLM agreed to change their approach for the Esmeralda 7 Solar Project in Nevada. Instead of pursuing a programmatic level environmental analysis, the applicants will now have the option to submit individual project proposals to the BLM to more effectively analyze potential impacts.”The developers’ joint proposals were permitted by Joe Biden. Even once Donald Trump re-entered the White House this year, the process appeared to be moving forward when his BLM advanced a draft environmental impact statement. But the process has since come to a standstill, with the BLM failing to issue a final environmental impact statement or record of decision for the project.Reached for comment, a spokesperson for NextEra Energy Resources said: “We are in the early stage of development and remain committed to pursuing our project’s comprehensive environmental analysis by working closely with the Bureau of Land Management.”The Guardian has also contacted Leeward Renewable Energy, Arevia Power and Invenergy for comment.In an executive order on day one, Trump directed a pause on new renewable energy authorizations for federally owned land and water. Then in February he appointed Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based oil industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, to head the BLM, which manages a quarter of a billion acres of public land concentrated in western states.In July, as part of an attempt to win support for his tax and spending bill, Trump issued another order aimed at halting renewable projects, which called on the Department of the Interior to review its policies that affect wind and solar, and gave the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, final decision-making power on whether such projects could proceed.The following month, the president said his administration would not approve solar or wind power projects. “We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar,” he posted on Truth Social. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” More
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Peter Thiel’s off-the-record antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon
by Evelyn Reynolds 10 October 2025, 15:24
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Peter Thiel famously isn’t into academia. And yet, in four recent off-the-record lectures on the antichrist in San Francisco, the billionaire venture capitalist has made a good case for credentialing.In these meandering talks, Thiel is clearly aiming for the kind of syncretic thinking he so relished in the books and lectures of the philosopher and professor René Girard, whom he knew at Stanford University and whose work he has long admired. Unfortunately, more often than not, Thiel ends up with something that reads like Dan Brown.Thiel has previously workshopped his talks on Armageddon at Oxford and Harvard, at various theology departments, and with a few unfortunate podcasters. For a man so vocal in his disdain of our institutions of higher education, he seems to spend an awful lot of time in them.Overall, the picture of Thiel that emerges in these lectures is someone desperately trying to disidentify from their own power. “You realize,” he tells his audience when interpreting a particular Japanese manga, “in my interpretation … who runs the world is something like the antichrist.” Here’s a man who, together with a couple of fellow Silicon Valley freaks, helped return a sundowning caudillo to a presidency he is obviously unsuited for, and who uses the awesome might of the US government to remake society and the world. A man who funds the companies that harness your data and determine who gets doxed, deported, drone struck. Who funds far-right movements that seek to remake the very face of liberal democracy.Immanentizing the KatechonTo be fair, Thiel has blazed a successful path outside of the ivory tower. Ungodly rich by age 30, the founder and investor has since spread the gospel of not going to college. He believes that higher education is a bubble. In his first book, co-authored with his Sancho Panza, David Sacks, he attacked US universities as bastions of diversity group-think, with slipping standards. He has evidently stuck to this diagnosis, even though admissions rates, scholarly output and Nobel prize recognition would seem to contradict it. To Thiel, even then, Jerusalem was definitely not build’d here, among these dark Satanic diploma mills.In September, Falter in Austria published a long profile about the theologian Wolfgang Palaver, who is one of those academics Thiel used as beta testers on his antichrist material. Palaver says it makes sense to him that Thiel is seeking out academics: “It’s really difficult in his environment: who tells him the truth to his face?”There is something deeply funny imagining a rapt audience, cowed by Thiel’s legend and wealth, following the billionaire into the autodidact’s private cosmos, in lectures whose bullet points were certainly more robust at the start of lecture one than at the close of lecture three. Thiel is lost in a bizarre thicket of his own references and preoccupations. You picture the theological faculty at the University of Innsbruck sitting politely through disquisitions about the manga One Piece, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, or gripes with specific effective altruists in Silicon Valley. In one lecture, Thiel identifies “the legionnaires of the antichrist”, such as the researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky and former Oxford professor Nick Bostrom. In another, he considers Bill Gates as an antichrist candidate. With enemies like these, who needs friends?But such is Thiel’s odd relationship to academia. For someone who dislikes universities and researchers, he has a hard time staying away. Thiel, who received a bachelor’s degree from Stanford in 1989 and a JD from Stanford Law School in 1992, was deeply impressed with the thinking of Girard, his Stanford professor. He has spent decades promoting Girard’s “mimetic theory”, including attributing his famous investment in Facebook to “betting on mimesis”. His current “Whore of Babylon” tour started with a presentation at a Paris conference devoted to Girard’s work.Thiel clearly admired Girard not just for his arguments but for his style of argumentation. These lectures don’t so much feel inspired by Girard’s ideas. They feel like his attempt to do Girard.Mimetic style over substanceGirard’s books were breathtaking in their range. They were deeply eclectic, but managed to be a mad dash through the western canon. The connections the philosopher made could seem to come out of left field, but at times the absurd swerves were held together by the sheer force of his erudition. Most importantly, Girard was always having a conversation all his own: his work could look like theology, but it wasn’t ultimately that religious; his work could look like philosophy, but wasn’t really in dialogue with academic philosophy. In San Francisco, Thiel appeared to be cosplaying this kind of performance.One of the things he replicates is the airtight and airless insularity of Girard’s thought. Thiel seems to take on board objections only to then barrel ahead with his initial instinct. Palaver is quoted in Falter as saying that he is “no longer the professor, and he’s no longer the graduate student”. It’s a funny remark because watching Thiel take feedback makes him seem exactly like a graduate student about to crash out of his comprehensive exam.In his telling, Thiel is already a part of an intellectual community. He loves telling his audience what he “always” says, he refers to standard answers and even a “spiel” that he gives. He seems a little bored with himself. Based at least on the recording, the actual audience in San Francisco seemed puzzled by Thiel’s disquisitions.Like his inspiration Girard, Thiel is prone to speaking in absolutes that, in order to make any sense at all, have to be quite a bit less than absolute. “In all times and all places, people want to always scapegoat the Christian God for our problems,” he said in his second lecture. Big if true, as they say.What is Thiel actually arguing? He suggests that we live in an age obsessed with apocalyptic thinking (keep that “we” in mind, it’ll become important later). “It’s AI, of course, it’s climate change, bioweapons, nuclear war,” “maybe fertility collapse”, he says.His overall point is that the current fixation on the apocalypse gets it wrong in two different directions: we’re too apocalyptic and “not apocalyptic enough”. Not apocalyptic enough because we tend to think of the various plausibly forecast ends of days as mutually exclusive: either climate change will get us, or nuclear war. The antichrist is Thiel’s attempt to think about the end of the world holistically.But we’re also too apocalyptic: in each lecture, Thiel comes back to the idea that “the Antichrist will come to power by talking about Armageddon nonstop.” Or, as he puts it in the second lecture, “the Antichrist might present himself or itself or herself as the Katechon”, meaning that withholding element that forestalls the apocalypse. This lecture is more or less a gloss on Carl Schmitt’s assertion in Nomos of the Earth, that the Katechon was what allowed for the identification of Christianity with the Roman empire. The doubleness of Thiel’s apocalypse – that what halts the apocalypse might in fact bring about the apocalypse – allows the billionaire to tilt boldly at any number of big questions: empire, Christianity, progress, and Silicon Valley’s dominance. Each of these, to Thiel, is ambiguous, might stymie or accelerate Armageddon.Warring with windmills, confusion and contradictionSo who or what is the antichrist? Thiel is admirably and uncharacteristically specific on this matter in a scattershot sort of way. The antichrist wants to erect a one-world state, which largely seems to mean any kind of global regulatory regime. Longtime Thiel watchers will recall his preoccupation with sovereignty and seasteading. The antichrist appears to be any force opposing that. The antichrist also is people who are against AI, especially those who seek to regulate it. If you were hoping for Al Pacino chewing scenery, this might be a bit of a letdown. It does lead, however, to the insight that the antichrist is “someone like Greta”, as in Thunberg, the climate activist, but “not Andreessen”, as in Marc, the venture capitalist.“I think Andreessen is not the antichrist. Because, you know, the antichrist is popular.” Respect where it’s due: that is a good line.But let me return to Thiel’s list of possible apocalypses: artificial intelligence, climate change, bioweapons, nuclear war, fertility collapse. The list is unintentionally revealing. Thiel is probably not wrong to say that people are pretty worried about the climate crisis. But the examples of AI, bioweapons and fertility collapse in particular suggest that Thiel has confused the world’s worries for those of a very recherché set of aging tech entrepreneurs he hobnobs with. And the antichrist, too, seems very Silicon Valley-coded. This suggests, I think, that in Thiel’s mind there are two cosmic forces warring over creation itself, and they both consist of Peter and his friends.Thiel thinks that by both increasing knowledge and particularizing knowledge, modernity has made thinking of the totality more difficult. He has observed there is “this sort of incredible fragmentation of knowledge”. We do more science than ever but without true insight. In the “post-modern multiversity”, “science continues to grow like a colony of rabbits”, but since the inputs, in terms of people, degrees awarded, investment, etc, keep increasing, “you have to suspect that there are diminishing returns,” he says.So for those playing along at home: Thiel is both a “classical liberal” who just thinks in terms of inputs and outputs and wants the university to be as efficient as it can possibly be. And he is a fire-breathing theologian who thinks that the university is failing at its job of considering the totality, venerating at the altar of hyperspecialization and postmodern deathworks. He is the libertarian offended at researchers “stealing money” and “not doing anything”, he says in one lecture. And he is the campus critic he was during his Stanford days, the one who refers to former Harvard University president Claudine Gay as “the DEI person”.How any of that mishmash fits together isn’t as important as why it goes together: it serves as a justification for Thiel’s own autodidactism.What does it all mean? Anything?It’s important to note that he holds himself to a vastly different standard than just about anyone else: he thinks just raising some questions about the antichrist might be useful in its own right – which may be true for all I know. But then he wants to quantify what everyone else contributes to knowledge in a way I can only describe as Doge-like. It would be difficult to count the monetary value of theorizing about Armageddon, as he is doing while pontificating about the cost-ineffective academic from the other side of his mouth. The rules appear to be different for Thiel, at least in his own mind. And such is Thiel’s odd relationship to power.One is reminded of the scene in Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen’s character comes across a platoon and asks who’s in charge here. “Ain’t you?” Ain’t you running the world, Peter? If it isn’t you, who is?If we want to look at Thiel as something he can’t seem to see himself as – as, in the end, a pretty standard specimen of homo siliconvalliensis – then what is interesting in these lectures is not the amateurish breadth and ambition. It’s the narrowness. Thiel’s vision of the antichrist may not be holistic enough. In the first lecture, where Thiel proposes that the catastrophes we see in the various end-of-days narratives in the Bible are threatening to play out literally in our day. He says we shouldn’t think of “the apocalyptic prophecies in the Bible … in a mystical way”, but almost as “rational scientific calculations of what people will be able to do to themselves in a world in which human nature is not changed or improved”.But that is surely not what Revelation is about: the end of days in the Bible is in there because it attests to a view of the cosmos, its alpha and omega, its entire meaningful constitution. Otherwise, it is just a bunch of trumpets and locusts and people who give suspiciously good speeches. In the end, it isn’t clear how meaningful these four lectures make the antichrist or indeed the apocalypse.It’s not even clear how they make meaning. During the Q&A after the second lecture, someone in the audience asked Thiel whether he was moving away from his erstwhile teacher Girard – which is the central question, though perhaps not for the reason the questioner thinks. It gets at what Thiel is aiming at with these lectures. Perhaps some of their surface strangeness is explained by the fact that Thiel is ultimately engaging in some kind of Girardian play with doubles, mirrors and imitation. Not least among those would be the fact that the description he gives of the antichrist might also apply to one Peter Thiel.So maybe getting stuck on the details means we are missing the hidden, esoteric meaning within? But in that case, what’s the point of these lectures? As he warns in his third lecture, “excessive esotericism means you don’t really think coherently enough about your ideas; they get lost and you communicate them too subtly”. It feels like Thiel is keeping both options open. He gets to tap dance between “I said what I said” and “you don’t understand what I’m doing here”. He seems to want to stand apart from his own immense power – apart from his own positions, apart from his own attempts to make himself understood – in something like bemused contemplation.body{–primary-text-color: #121212;–secondary-text-color: #707070;–tertiary-text-color: #707070;–primary-bg-color: #ffffff;–secondary-bg-color: #f3f3f3;–tertiary-bg-color: #f6f6f6;–primary-line-color: #333333;–secondary-line-color: #dcdcdc;–border-divider-color: #dcdcdc;–axis-color: #bababa;–primary-button-color: #121212;–primary-button-text-color: #ffffff;–primary-button-highlight-color: #333333;–highlight-color: #ffe500;–highlighted-text-color: #121212;–info-color: #00b2ff;–news-grey-01: #121212;–news-grey-02: #707070;–news-grey-03: #a1a1a1;–news-grey-04: #bababa;–news-grey-05: #dcdcdc;–news-grey-06: #f3f3f3;–news-core-01: #005689;–news-core-02: #0094da;–news-core-03: #c70000;–news-core-04: #23b4a9;–news-core-05: #494949;–news-core-06: #cca36e}@media (prefers-color-scheme: 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Peter Thiel’s off-the-record antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon

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