US news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Democratic lawmakers call for release of Tufts student from Ice detention

      by

      A group of high-profile Democratic lawmakers has called on the Donald Trump administration to immediately release the Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, praised her “unwavering spirit” and warned that the White House is engaging in “repression”.In a New York Times essay published on Friday morning, the US senator Ed Markey and representatives Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley, who all represent Massachusetts, where Tufts is based, shared more details from their visit to Öztürk this week at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center in Louisiana, where she has been held since her arrest last month.“She was inadequately fed, kept in facilities with extremely cold temperatures and denied personal necessities and religious accommodations” and has “suffered asthma attacks for which she lacked her prescribed medication” the lawmakers wrote.“Despite all this” they added, “we were struck by her unwavering spirit.”The lawmakers were part of a delegation of congressional Democratic lawmakers who traveled to Louisiana this week to visit both Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist who is also being held in Ice custody at a separate facility in Louisiana.Öztürk, who co-authored an opinion essay last year in the Tufts student newspaper that was critical of the university’s response to Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, was detained in late March and transferred to Louisiana. Neither she nor Khalil have been charged with any crimes and appear to have been targeted solely for their political views in a Trump administration crackdown that goes far beyond the undocumented immigrant communities that Trump pledged to expel when he was running for a second term.View image in fullscreen“This is not immigration enforcement” the lawmakers wrote. “This is repression. This is authoritarianism.”They warned that Öztürk’s case “is not an isolated one.“This administration has already overseen a wave of unconstitutional actions: raids without warrants, prolonged detentions without hearings and retaliatory deportations,” they wrote.The lawmakers cautioned that each case “chips away at the rule of law”, “makes it easier for the next to go unnoticed”, and “brings us closer to the authoritarianism we once believed could never take root on American soil.“When a government begins to imprison writers for their words, when it abandons legal norms for political convenience, when it cloaks oppression in the language of national security, alarm bells must ring. Loudly,” they wrote.They called for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release Öztürk immediately, to drop any proceedings against her and to investigate the conditions at the detention center where she is being held.They also urged their Republican colleagues “to stand up to President Trump’s evident disregard for the rule of law.“And we urge every American to understand: This is not someone else’s fight,” they conclude. “The Constitution is only as strong as our willingness to defend it.”Also, in Khalil’s case, lawyers for DHS disclosed in court documents that they did not have a warrant when they arrested him last month.The attorneys representing the administration argued on Thursday that “officers had exigent circumstances to conduct the warrantless arrest” and said that agents believed Khalil would “escape before they could obtain a warrant”.Khalil’s legal team has argued that Khalil’s removal proceedings should be terminated since he was arrested without a warrant. His lawyers also stated that Khalil had no plans to flee or leave the country, and emphasized that he “fully complied with the agents arresting him, despite the fact that after repeated requests by Khalil, his pregnant wife, and his lawyer, they never showed him a warrant”. His wife has since given birth while Khalil was not released for the event. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US consumer sentiment sees largest drop since 1990 after Trump tariff chaos

      by

      US consumer sentiment plummeted in April after Donald Trump’s trade war threw the global economy into chaos, according to a new report.The index of consumer sentiment, a score based on a monthly survey asking Americans about their financial outlooks, fell by 32% since January – the largest drop since the 1990 recession, according to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.“Expectations worsened for vast swaths of the population across age, education income and political affiliation,” said Joanne Hsu, director of the surveys of consumers, in a statement. “Consumers perceived risks to multiple aspects of the economy, in large part due to ongoing uncertainty around trade policy and the potential for a resurgence of inflation looming ahead.”In April, the index of consumer sentiment fell to 52.2, down from 57 in March. The last time the index fell below 55 was in the summer of 2022, when inflation rose to 9%.Consumer expectation of inflation also soared from 5% in March to 6.5% in April, the highest it has been since 1981.It is a sign that, despite his insistence that tariffs will “make a lot of money” and have not yet raised prices, Trump still has not convinced many Americans that his tariffs will actually work.Trump’s trade policies have scared investors, causing sell-offs in stock and bond markets. The president softened his tone earlier this week on his trade war with China after a volatile few weeks. Markets rallied after Trump said that his Chinese tariffs “will come down substantially”, though he also warned that “it won’t be zero.”But Wall Street tends to be more reactive than consumers, who have shown four straight months of declining sentiment on the economy. Even after Trump paused the highest of his reciprocal tariffs, causing stock markets to rise, consumer inflation expectations still remained much higher compared with March.Higher inflation expectations have also been paired with consumers anticipating slower income growth for the year ahead, meaning that more of them will be hesitant to spend in the months ahead – which all could ultimately mean a slowdown in the economy.“Without reliably strong incomes, spending is unlikely to remain strong amid the numerous warning signs perceived by consumers,” Hsu said. More

    • 238 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool | Jonathan Freedland

      by

      To see the true face of Donald Trump, look no further than Ukraine. Laid bare in his handling of that issue are not only his myriad weaknesses, but also the danger he poses to his own country and the wider world – to say nothing of the battered people of Ukraine itself.Don’t be fooled by the mild, vaguely theatrical rebuke Trump issued to Vladimir Putin on Thursday after Moscow unleashed a deadly wave of drone strikes on Kyiv, killing 12 and injuring dozens: “Vladimir, STOP!” Pay attention instead to the fact that, in the nearly 100 days since Trump took office, the US has essentially switched sides in the battle between Putin’s Russia and democratic Ukraine, backing the invaders against the invaded.On Friday, Trump’s real-estate buddy and special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, held talks in Moscow with Putin. But any resemblance between the US and an honest broker is purely coincidental. On the contrary, previous encounters between the two men resulted in Witkoff parroting Kremlin talking points, essentially endorsing Russia’s claim to the Ukrainian territory it seized. In that, Witkoff was merely following the lead set by his boss: the supposed peace deal Trump is now in a hurry to seal amounts to handing Putin almost everything he wants and demanding Ukraine surrender.Hence Trump’s anger on Wednesday, when he accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of making “inflammatory statements”. What had the Ukrainian president said that was so incendiary? He had calmly pointed out that he could not do as Trump demanded and recognise Russian control of Crimea, which Russia grabbed in 2014, because it was forbidden by his country’s constitution. It’s telling that Trump should be enraged by a president who thinks constitutions have to be respected.Whether Trump succeeds in making Kyiv buckle or not, the new reality is clear. The US president is taking an axe to an international order constructed in the aftermath of a bloody world war, a system that has held, however imperfectly, since 1945. A central tenet of that order was that big states could not simply swallow up smaller ones, that unprovoked aggression and conquest would no longer be allowed to stand. Yet here is Trump bent on rewarding just such an act of conquest, not simply acquiescing in Putin’s land grab in Ukraine but conferring on it the legitimacy of approval by the world’s most powerful nation.Note how he speaks as if Putin had every right to seize the territory of his neighbour. Asked this week what concessions, if any, he had extracted from Moscow, Trump replied that Putin’s willingness to stop the war, rather than gobbling up Ukraine in its entirety, was a “pretty big concession”.This is not only a disaster for Ukraine, though it is obviously that. It is also the destruction of global architecture that has stood for many decades – and it is hardly a lone case. Trump’s tariff fetish is similarly upending a system of international trade that had made the world, and especially the US, more prosperous. The consequences are already visible, in plunging global stock markets, gloomy growth forecasts and warnings of a recession that will start in the US and then spread everywhere else.Trump’s eagerness to acquiesce in Putin’s seizure of Ukraine makes a dead letter of international law, with its prohibition of the crime of aggression, and that too points to a wider pattern. For Trump is at war with the law at home as well as abroad. Indeed, in three short months, it has become an open question whether the rule of law still operates in the US.That peril is revealed most clearly in Trump’s willingness to defy the orders of the US courts. Judges have issued multiple rulings, seeking, for example, to delay or overturn the deportation of migrants without due process, only for those judges to be ignored or targeted with personal invective from the president. For the latest Politics Weekly America podcast, I spoke to Liz Oyer, a former justice department official fired last month after she refused to restore gun-owning rights to the actor and Trump pal Mel Gibson: he had lost them when he was convicted of domestic violence in 2011. Oyer is a sober, nonpartisan former civil servant, but she told me of her fears if the Trump administration continues to refuse to comply with the law as laid down by the courts. “We will have a true crisis on our hands. They are testing the limits.”Part of Trump’s assault on the law has come in a flurry of executive orders, targeting specific, named law firms that had previously acted for his opponents. He offered the firms a choice: either be barred by presidential diktat from cases involving the federal government, or commit to giving Trump and his administration free legal advice worth tens of millions of dollars. So many firms have caved in, the president now has access to an estimated $1bn (£750m) war chest of pro bono legal services. Trump has been bragging about it, but there’s a word for what he has done: extortion.It’s a favourite weapon of Trump’s and it’s been on display in Ukraine too. Let’s not forget the “deal” Trump wants to strike with Zelenskyy: a degree of US protection in return for half of the revenue from Ukraine’s minerals, ports and infrastructure. This is not the behaviour of an ally, but a gangster.Everything Trump does, and has always done, he is doing in and to Ukraine. Recall the hyperbolic promise he made to end the war within “24 hours” of returning to the White House. It was of a piece with the inflated hype that puffed up his real-estate career – and about as reliable. The same goes for his campaign promise to end inflation on “day one”, when his tariff policy is only going to push up prices.Now he threatens to walk away from Ukraine altogether, impatient to get a deal in time for his 100th-day celebrations on Tuesday. That’s typical too: so often Trump’s grand plans turn to dust because, if he doesn’t get an instant reward, he gets bored and drifts away. Witkoff’s previous role was securing a lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Now that’s fallen apart, he’s moved on to other things.Above all, Trump’s willingness to capitulate to Putin on Ukraine is a reminder not only of his own authoritarian ambitions – he likes Putin because he wants to be like Putin – but also of how serially bad a negotiator this self-styled artist of the deal really is. He declared tariff war on China, thinking he could squeeze the US’s great economic rival. Instead, America’s biggest retailers this week warned that their shelves could soon be empty, thanks to the havoc Trump’s tariffs are unleashing on the global supply chain. Container traffic across the Pacific from China is already down by as much as 60%, meaning Americans are not going to get the goods they’ve come to rely on. Those shortages will lead to voter anger directed at Trump. To avert it, he needs a deal with China – desperately. He goes to the table weak, facing an opponent he has made strong. So much for the maestro dealmaker.There is no mystery to Trump. It’s all plain to see – the habits of the vandal, the autocrat, the gangster and the fool – with Ukraine as clear a guide as any. Not that that is any comfort to the people of that besieged land. They don’t want to be a cautionary tale, a demonstration case of the fecklessness and menace of Donald Trump. They want to be a free, independent nation. Their great misfortune is that the mighty country that should be their most powerful friend is now in the hands of an enemy.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and the host of the Politics Weekly America podcast

      100 days of Trump’s presidency, with Jonathan Freedland and guests. On 30 April, join Jonathan Freedland, Kim Darroch, Devika Bhat and Leslie Vinjamuri as they discuss Trump’s presidency on his 100th day in office, live at Conway Hall London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Pete Hegseth’s controversial chief of staff leaves post unexpectedly

      by

      Joe Kasper, the controversial chief of staff to the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was central to a dramatic power struggle at the Pentagon, has left his post, in an unexpected departure.Despite Hegseth’s assurances just days ago in a TV appearance on the Fox & Friends show that Kasper would merely transition to “a slightly different role” within the department, Kasper confirmed to Politico in a Thursday interview he will instead return to government relations and consulting, maintaining only limited Pentagon ties as a special government employee.A senior defense official at the Pentagon confirmed the dramatic title change to the Guardian on Friday, saying Kasper would be “handling special projects at the Department of Defense”“Secretary Hegseth is thankful for [Kasper’s] continued leadership and work to advance the America First agenda,” the official said in a statement, referring to Donald Trump’s protectionist policy push.The quick exit comes after Kasper was implicated as the orchestrator of a power grab that led to the dismissal of three senior Pentagon officials – Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll – allegedly as part of a leak investigation.The administration’s first hundred days created a troubled tenure for Kasper, with anonymous sources claiming he was frequently late to meetings, failed to follow through on critical tasks, and displayed inappropriate behavior, including berating officials and making crude comments allegedly about his bowel movements during high-level meetings.“He lacked the focus and organizational skills needed to get things done,” one anonymous insider told Politico.The leadership shake-up coincides with separate allegations that Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection installed in his Pentagon office, which would bypass government security protocols, to use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer. This “dirty line” arrangement potentially exposes sensitive defense information to surveillance or hacking risks, according to reports from the Associated Press and ABC News.Kasper previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security, the US navy and the air force during the first Trump administration before becoming a lobbyist. More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Why does RFK Jr want to put my family on an ‘autism registry’? | Deborah Bloom

      by

      I always knew my parents operated on a different wavelength than most.For one, they are both exceptionally smart. My mother is a former mathematician, who studied the various levels of infinity as part of her master’s thesis. My father is a computer programmer who, at 17 years old, was one of the youngest people to ever be able to communicate with ships in morse code. They met at a party for members of Mensa, a club for the highly intelligent.But their gifts have come with challenges. My dad struggles with eye contact and can become easily overwhelmed in social settings, where emotion and nuance can short-circuit his systems. My mother has difficulty with executive function, and finds it tough to stay neat and organized. Regulating their emotions and reading social cues don’t come easily to either of them.My father was first diagnosed with what was then known as Asperger’s syndrome in his 20s. My mother has never been officially diagnosed as autistic, but identifies as such. When I was a child desperately wanting to fit in with others, I found their neurodivergence to be embarrassing. I wanted what I thought other kids had: parents who got them to school on time, who didn’t have unpredictable, emotional flare-ups or constantly messy homes.Now as an adult, living in a time when neurodivergence is more openly discussed and understood, I’ve come to see their quirks not as flaws but as unique features of who they are. I’ll call my mom when I’m struggling across a tricky math problem, knowing she’ll light up with excitement at the opportunity to assist me with her expertise. I love watching my dad pour himself into his ham radio community, where friendships are forged without the pressure of eye contact.That’s why, when I first heard RFK Jr vow to the Trump administration to find the cause behind the so-called “autism epidemic”, describing it as a “cataclysm”, I got scared. Was the person in charge of the federal government’s healthcare apparatus really describing my parents as victims of an illness that we, as a society, have let get out of control?Later that week, he doubled down, calling autism spectrum disorder a “preventable disease” that “tears families part”, citing the growing rates of ASD among children: one in 31 kids in 2022, compared with one in 36 kids in 2020. “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”Autism is, in fact, being diagnosed more than ever before, but scientists largely attribute this to increased awareness and a broader diagnostic criteria for the disorder. “When I started in this field in the late 60s, autism was a last resort diagnosis,” says Dr Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist whose primary focus is ASD. “It was primarily given to kids with intellectual disabilities.”It’s also true that people in my generation have more autism diagnoses than our parents. But there are plenty of us out there who suspect our parents may have been on the spectrum, even though they were never formally evaluated. “It’s rare for a parent first to be diagnosed with autism, and then a child realizes they are also autistic,” Lord says. “It’s much more common for a parent to realize they’re on the spectrum after their kid’s been diagnosed.”RFK Jr’s blanket description of 2% of the population fails to take into account the wide spectrum of symptoms that people with autism experience. Some have higher needs than others. Many are able to mask their symptoms. Some are non-verbal – about 30%, according to the National Institutes of Health. All deserve to live in a society where they are understood, recognized and supported – not categorized, as RFK Jr describes, as a “tragic” aberration that needs to be snuffed out.The federal government says it is committing resources to finding the cause behind ASD (a condition that has been studied since the 1940s and is overwhelmingly attributed by scientists to genetics) and that it is starting an autism database to track the private medical information of numerous Americans. At the same time, it is also poised to cut funding for autism research and support.Slashes to the Department of Education and National Science Foundation mean less money for special needs kids and intervention programs. Reduced funding to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration means autistic people, who are particularly vulnerable to mental illness, will have less access to mental health services. Meanwhile, there are concerns that Congress will cut Medicaid coverage, which would lead to less behavioral support for autistic people, especially children and low-income families. “It just seems so contradictory,” Lord says.By saying autism is a “preventable disease” rather than a complex neurodevelopmental disorder, RFK Jr further stigmatizes an already vulnerable population and threatens to set back a decades-long effort to bring ASD into public awareness and acceptance. Schools already struggle with how to incorporate autistic children into everyday learning, and few programs exist (let alone are publicly funded) specifically for neurodivergent kids. An infinitesimal percentage of workplaces recognize the unique needs of their neurodivergent employees, making it difficult for people with ASD to find and keep employment.Neither set of my grandparents understood their children were autistic, and so the support my parents received was limited. My mom’s parents shrugged their shoulders and categorized her as weirdly obstinate. My dad’s parents treated him like a prodigy, which, although a kinder approach, fostered a superiority complex and a host of anti-social behaviors, making it tough for him to find friends. As adults, both my parents struggled to hold down full-time employment at office jobs, presumably in part because their workplaces probably adhered to a rigid social compact and failed to recognize their unique needs.These days, my parents have learned to mask their autism to varying degrees. My father eventually taught himself how to sustain eye contact with others, and can now hold a conversation with minimal downward glances. They both, to a degree, have become more socially aware and work for themselves.So, no, autism did not ruin my family, as RFK Jr claims. If anything, their conditions have made me a more empathetic, understanding adult, which I believe makes me a better journalist, friend and daughter. But, I sometimes wonder: what would my parents’ lives have been like if society had made more room for them and others like them? I suspect that in a less ableist world, they would have led happier childhoods. And, I think, so too would I.

      Deborah Bloom is a text and video journalist who covers breaking news and human interest stories about gender, culture, mental health and the environment More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Ukraine, Gaza and Iran: can Witkoff secure any wins for Trump?

      by

      Donald Trump’s version of Pax Americana, the idea that the US can through coercion impose order on the world, is facing its moment of truth in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran.In the words of the former CIA director William Burns, it is in “one of those plastic moments” in international relations that come along maybe twice a century where the future could take many possible forms.The US’s aim has been to keep the three era-defining simultaneous sets of negotiations entirely separate, and to – as much as possible – shape their outcome alone. The approach is similar to the trade talks, where the intention is for supplicant countries to come to Washington individually bearing gifts in return for access to US markets.The administration may have felt it had little choice given the urgency, but whether it was wise to launch three such ambitious peace missions, and a global trade war, at the same time is debatable.It is true each of the three conflicts are discrete in that they have distinctive causes, contexts and dynamics, but they are becoming more intertwined than seemed apparent at the outset, in part because there is so much resistance building in Europe and elsewhere about the world order Donald Trump envisages, and his chosen methods.In diplomacy nothing is hermetically sealed – everything is inter-connected, especially since there is a common thread between the three talks in the personality of the property developer Steven Witkoff, Trump’s great friend who is leading the US talks in each case, flitting from Moscow to Muscat.View image in fullscreenTo solve these three conflicts simultaneously would be a daunting task for anyone, but it is especially for a man entirely new to diplomacy and, judging by some of his remarks, also equally new to history.Witkoff has strengths, not least that he is trusted by Trump. He also knows the president’s mind – and what should be taken at face value. He is loyal, so much so that he admits he worshipped Trump in New York so profoundly that he wanted to become him. He will not be pursuing any other agenda but the president’s.But he is also stretched, and there are basic issues of competence. Diplomats are reeling from big cuts to the state department budget and there is still an absence of experienced staffers. Witkoff simply does not have the institutional memory available to his opposite numbers in Iran, Israel and Russia. For instance, most of the Iranian negotiating team, led by the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, are veterans of the 2013-15 talks that led to the original Iran nuclear deal.Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s chief foreign policy adviser, who attended the first Russian-US talks this year in Saudi Arabia, spent 10 years in the US as Russian ambassador. He was accompanied by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund who then visited the US on 2 April.In the follow-up talks in Istanbul on 10 April, Aleksandr Darchiev, who has spent 33 years in the Russian foreign ministry and is Russian ambassador to the US, was pitted against a team led by Sonata Coulter, the new deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, who does not share Trump’s benign view of Russia.View image in fullscreenAs to the Gaza issue, Benjamin Netanyahu has lived the Palestinian conflict since he became Israel’s ambassador to the UN in 1984.Richard Nephew, a former US Iran negotiator, says the cuts to state department means the US “is at risk of losing a generation of expertise … It’s beyond tragedy. It’s an absolutely devastating national security blow with the evisceration of these folks. The damage could be permanent, we have to acknowledge this.”One withering European diplomat says: “It is as if Witkoff is trying to play three dimensional chess with chess grandmasters on three chessboards simultaneously, not having played the game before.”Bluntly, Witkoff knows he needs to secure a diplomatic win for his impatient boss. But the longer the three conflicts continue, the more entangled they become with one another, the more Trump’s credibility is questioned. Already, according to a Reuters Ipsos poll published this month, 59% of Americans think Trump is costing their country its credibility on the global stage.The risk for Trump is that the decision to address so much so quickly ends up not being a show of American strength but the opposite – the public erosion of a super power.In the hurry to seal a deal with Iran inside two months, Trump, unlike in all previous nuclear talks with Tehran, has barred complicating European interests from the negotiation room.To Iran’s relief, Witkoff has not tabled an agenda that strays beyond stopping Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. He has not raised Iran’s supply of drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. Nor has he tabled demands that Iran end arms supplies to its proxies fighting Israel.That has alarmed Israel, and to a lesser extent Europe, which sees Iran’s desire to have sanctions lifted as a rare opportunity to extract concessions from Tehran. Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, and Mossad’s head, David Barnea, met Witkoff last Friday in Paris to try to persuade him that when he met the Iran negotiating team the next day in Rome, he had to demand the dismantling of Tehran’s civil nuclear programme.Witkoff refused, and amid many contradictory statements the administration has reverted to insisting that Iran import the necessary enriched uranium for its civil nuclear programme, rather than enrich it domestically.Russia, in a sign of Trump’s trust, might again become the repository of Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, as it was after the 2015 deal.Israel is also wary of Trump’s aggrandisement of Russia. The Israeli thinktank INSS published a report this week detailing how Russia, in search of anti-western allies in the global south for its Ukraine war, has shown opportunistic political support not just to Iran but to Hamas. Israel will also be uneasy if Russia maintains its role in Syria.But if Trump has upset Netanyahu over Iran, he is keeping him sweet by giving him all he asks on Gaza.Initially, Witkoff received glowing accolades about how tough he had been with Netanyahu in his initial meeting in January. It was claimed that Witkoff ordered the Israeli president to meet him on a Saturday breaking the Sabbath and directed him to agree a ceasefire that he had refused to give to Joe Biden’s team for months.As a result, as Trump entered the White House on 19 January, he hailed the “EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signalled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies”.But Netanyahu, as was widely predicted in the region, found a reason not to open talks on the second phase of the ceasefire deal – the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a permanent end to the fighting.Witkoff came up with compromises to extend the ceasefire but Netanyahu rejected them, resuming the assault on Hamas on 19 March. The US envoy merely described Israel’s decision as “unfortunate, in some respects, but also falls into the had-to-be bucket”.View image in fullscreenNow Trump’s refusal to put any pressure on Israel to lift its six-week-old ban on aid entering Gaza is informing Europe’s rift with Trump. Marking 50 days of the ban this week, France, Germany and the UK issued a strongly worded statement describing the denial of aid as intolerable.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is calling for a coordinated European recognition of the state of Palestine, and Saudi Arabia is insisting the US does not attack Iran’s nuclear sites.Witkoff, by contrast, has been silent about Gaza’s fate and the collapse of the “EPIC ceasefire”.But if European diplomats think Witkoff was naive in dealing with Netanyahu, it is nothing to the scorn they hold for his handling of Putin.The anger is partly because Europeans had thought that, after the Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s public row with Trump in the Oval Office, they had restored Ukraine’s standing in Washington by persuading Kyiv to back the full ceasefire that the US first proposed on 11 March.View image in fullscreenThe talks in Paris last week between Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and European leaders also gave Europe a chance to point out it was Putin that was stalling over a ceasefire.But instead of putting any countervailing pressure on Russia to accept a ceasefire, Witkoff switched strategy. In the words of Bruno Tertrais, a non-resident fellow at the Institut of Montaigne, Witkoff is “is now presenting a final peace plan, very favourable to the aggressor, even before the start of the negotiations, which had been due to take place after a ceasefire”.No European government has yet criticised Trump’s lopsided plan in public since, with few cards to play, the immediate necessity is to try to prevent Trump acting on his threat to walk away. At the very least, Europe will argue that if Trump wants Ukraine’s resources, he has to back up a European force patrolling a ceasefire, an issue that receives only sketchy reference in the US peace plan.The Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, addressing the country’s parliament on Wednesday, pointed to the necessity of these security guarantees. “Any arrangement with the Kremlin will only last so long as the Russian elite dreads the consequences of its breach,” he said.View image in fullscreenBut in a sense, Trump and Putin, according to Fiona Hill at the Brookings Institution, a Russia specialist in Trump’s first administration, may already have moved beyond the details of their Ukrainian settlement as they focus on their wider plan to restore the Russian-US relationship.It would be an era of great power collusion, not great power competition in which Gaza, Iran and Ukraine would be sites from which the US and Russia could profit.Writing on Truth Social about a phone call with Putin in February, Trump reported” “We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II … We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together.”Witkoff has also mused about what form this cooperation might take. “Shared sea lanes, maybe send [liquefied natural] gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together,” he said, adding: “Who doesn’t want to see a world like that?” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Disabled people detained by Ice sound alarm over overcrowded jails

      by

      In his three months locked up at Stewart detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia, Rodney Taylor has missed meals and showers, lived with increasing pain in his hips, developed a swollen thumb on his right hand and blisters on the stumps where his two legs were amputated when he was a toddler.Taylor’s mother brought him to the US from Liberia on a medical visa as a small child. He went through 16 operations and is a double amputee. He has two fingers on his right hand. Now 46, he has lived in the US nearly his entire life, works as a barber, is active in promoting cancer awareness in his community, and recently got engaged.Nonetheless, his immigration status is unresolved, and despite having an application for residence – commonly known as a “green card” – pending, on 15 January Ice agents arrived at his Loganville, Georgia home and took him to Stewart.The reason, according to his attorney, who shared paperwork from his case with the Guardian: a burglary conviction he received as a teenager and which the state of Georgia pardoned him for in 2010.View image in fullscreenHis case is one of an untold number of people with disabilities and other serious health issues who are being swept up in the current administration’s “mass deportation” efforts. These efforts are carried out in extreme overcrowding at the hundred-plus detention centers like Stewart across the nation.They also happen without the benefit of two federal offices that formerly provided oversight for healthcare and other issues, and now a situation is unfolding where detainees with disabilities like Taylor are increasingly at risk of life-altering outcomes and even death, experts say.“It’s the perfect storm for abuses to occur – including negligence,” said Joseph Nwadiuko, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who researches the immigration detention system. “Deaths are much more likely … [and] we haven’t thought about the healthcare implications of what’s developing,” he said.The immigration detention system was already a precarious, potentially unsafe place for detainees with disabilities, according to experts and a handful of current and former employees with the Department of Homeland Security – Ice’s parent agency.But when the current administration closed the office for civil rights and civil liberties (CRCL) and the office of the immigration detention ombudsman (Oido) last month, detainees such as Taylor were left with less protection than ever – at a time when nearly 48,000 detainees are locked up nationwide, the highest number since October 2019.“It’s all happening in the dark,” said Sarah Owings, Taylor’s attorney, speaking of conditions facing her client and others like him.Taylor spoke to the Guardian from Stewart. When he was detained in front of his house, he was only days away from picking up new prosthetic legs; the ones he was using were too tight. Then the detention center gave him shoes that didn’t fit the legs and trying to walk “felt like walking on concrete on my knees”, he said.In addition, the prosthetic legs have batteries that require eight hours of charging a day. But after being locked up at Stewart, he didn’t even see a doctor for three days, and in the ensuing months, the facility has never been able to arrange for eight hours of charging, allowing only several hours at a time. The result: the batteries die and the legs don’t bend, creating more pain in Taylor’s hips.Taylor and Owings sought a medical leave, in order to see the doctor who could at least fit him for the new prosthetic legs – and were denied. A second petition is “under review”, he said.In the meantime, walking to the cafeteria to eat has proved too painful. Other detainees brought him meals for awhile, but often had to argue with guards for permission. A case manager took over the chore, often arriving at least an hour after meals.Staff also offered Taylor a wheelchair – but he can’t push it, as his right hand only has two fingers, and his thumb has swollen and become painful since he was detained.Taylor’s case was one of several featured in a CNN story about people facing possible deportation after decades of living in the US. Afterwards, he said, “the warden came to me and said, ‘Tell me what you need.’” He told him about his legs and thumb. “I haven’t heard a response yet,” Taylor said. “It’s stressful.”Taylor told the Guardian he was not the only detainee at Stewart with medical issues. He met another detainee who suffered an infection and couldn’t walk; the man had to wait about a month to get crutches.“Unless you’re dying or bleeding out … they’re not going to come,” he said a guard told him and several others. “They think, ‘Everybody is getting deported soon … and fixing your issue is not our concern – getting you outta here is our concern. Why spend all this extra money?’” said Taylor.The situation is the same at other Ice detention facilities, several experts told the Guardian. They mentioned Krome, in Miami, Florida, where at least three detainees have died in recent months and others with conditions such as HIV have gone weeks without medicine.Amy Zeidan, a professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta’s Emory University who has researched healthcare in the immigration detention system, said that increasing overcrowding also worsens a chronic workforce shortage. “They don’t have enough qualified people,” she said. “They don’t have the people they need to provide appropriate care.”These conditions “are emblematic of the system” under the current administration, said a DHS staffer who preferred anonymity to avoid retaliation.Michelle Brané was the ombudsman at the Oido until the office of 100-plus employees was shut down, doing away with inspections of immigration detention facilities – both announced and unannounced; responses to complaints; and policy recommendations for improving such aspects of detention as healthcare. Her office “deescalated situations that are now being exacerbated [by] … increasing detentions”, she said.The DHS sees things differently.“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining [the department’s] mission,” said a DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, in March, regarding shuttering the Oido and the CRCL, which handled more in-depth investigations of healthcare and other issues. Ice did not respond to a query from the Guardian.This attitude, said Brané, shows a “disdain for meeting basic humane conditions”, adding that her office was “created by statute and funded by Congress”.The former ombudsman is concerned about the situation facing detainees with disabilities and other serious health issues. “Ultimately, I’m worried people will die, or suffer irreparable harm – and dying shouldn’t be the point at which we start caring,” she said. “We shouldn’t be a country that is willingly mistreating people.” More

    • 250 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      China’s top leaders pledge to oppose ‘unilateral bullying’ in global trade in veiled rebuke to Trump – US politics live

      by

      China’s top leaders pledged on Friday to step up support for the economy and oppose “unilateral bullying” in global trade, offering a veiled rebuke of hefty tariffs recently imposed by US president Donald Trump.The world’s two largest economies are engaged in a high-stakes tit-for-tat trade war that has spooked markets and spurred major manufacturers to reconsider supply chains.Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has slapped most trading partners with 10% tariffs. But China has received the worst, with many products from the country now facing a 145% tariff. Beijing has responded with new 125% tariffs of its own on US goods.A spokesperson for Beijing’s commerce ministry said on Thursday that “there are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States”. But hours later, asked about the state of negotiations with Beijing, Trump maintained: “We’ve been meeting with China.”Chinese financial news outlet Caijing reported on Friday that Beijing was considering the exemption of certain US semiconductor products from recent additional tariffs, citing sources familiar with the matter. Beijing’s commerce ministry did not immediately respond to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) request to confirm the reports.Meanwhile, the Hill reports that China cancelled 12,000 metric tons of US pork shipments, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), with Bloomberg News reporting that this represents the biggest cancellation of pork orders since the Covid-19 pandemic.More on this story in a moment, but here are some other recent developments:

      US defense secretary Pete Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection set up in his Pentagon office so that he could bypass government security protocols and use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer.

      Donald Trump directed his attorney general to investigate the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue based on an unsubstantiated rightwing claim.

      Federal judges blocked several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he has tried to enact through executive orders, which do not carry the force of law. One judge blocked his efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disfranchised millions of voters.

      Another judge ruled the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes.

      On immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. Another judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown.

      Trump issued a rare rebuke against Vladimir Putin, and said he has his own deadline for the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump said that he still thinks the Russian leader will listen to him.

      The Trump administration is loosening rules to help US automakers like Elon Musk’s Tesla develop self-driving cars so they can take on Chinese rivals. US companies developing self-driving cars will be allowed exemptions from certain federal safety rules for testing purposes, the transportation department said on Thursday.

      The Trump store is now selling “Trump 2028” hats to fans of the president, who is barred by the US constitution from serving a third term, despite the fact that a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not even try to run.
      The US justice department says it did not fire a former pardon attorney, Liz Oyer, after she refused to recommend reinstating Mel Gibson’s gun rights.But in the latest episode of Politics America Weekly Oyer tells Jonathan Freedland a different story, one she believes points to a wider crackdown by the Trump administration on the rule of law in the US.You can listen to the podcast here:A US push to approve deep-sea mining in domestic and international waters “violates international law”, China warned on Friday, after a White House order to ramp up permits, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).“The US authorisation … violates international law and harms the overall interests of the international community,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said.President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to “expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction”.Private companies and governments have long considered the mineral and metal resources found in stretches of the ocean floor, but they have mostly held off while waiting for the International Seabed Authority (ISA) regulator to devise rules – a process that began in the 1990s.The US never ratified the agreements that empowered the Isa’s jurisdiction and is not a member of the UN-affiliated body, reports AFP.Trump’s order demands Washington become a “global leader” in seabed exploration and “counter China’s growing influence over seabed mineral resources”.Beijing, which has so far held off mining in international waters while awaiting Isa rules, warned Trump’s orders “once again expose the unilateral approach and hegemonic nature of the United States”.US peace envoy Steve Witkoff is in Moscow today for further talks with Russia, including president Vladimir Putin, on Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine.Hoping to get results before Trump’s 100 days in the office next week, Witkoff will have to find a way to convey the sense of the president’s frustration with the Russian attack on Kyiv on Thursday, while hoping to make good progress as Washington tries to put pressure on Kyiv to agree to its proposal.During a gathering of the Chinese Communist party’s top decision-making body focused on economic work and attended by president Xi Jinping, leaders acknowledged that “the impact of external shocks is increasing”, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP), citing state news agency Xinhua.They also said they would seek to “work with the international community to actively uphold multilateralism and oppose unilateral bullying practices”, said Xinhua.Last year saw China achieve record exports, providing a key source of economic activity as domestic challenges in the property sector and deflationary pressure persisted.Friday’s politburo meeting “shows the government is ready to launch new policies when the economy is affected by the external shock”, Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist of Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note, reports AFP.However, Zhang noted “it seems Beijing is not in a rush to launch a large stimulus at this stage”. “It takes time to monitor and evaluate the timing and the size of the trade shock,” he added.China’s top leaders pledged on Friday to step up support for the economy and oppose “unilateral bullying” in global trade, offering a veiled rebuke of hefty tariffs recently imposed by US president Donald Trump.The world’s two largest economies are engaged in a high-stakes tit-for-tat trade war that has spooked markets and spurred major manufacturers to reconsider supply chains.Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has slapped most trading partners with 10% tariffs. But China has received the worst, with many products from the country now facing a 145% tariff. Beijing has responded with new 125% tariffs of its own on US goods.A spokesperson for Beijing’s commerce ministry said on Thursday that “there are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States”. But hours later, asked about the state of negotiations with Beijing, Trump maintained: “We’ve been meeting with China.”Chinese financial news outlet Caijing reported on Friday that Beijing was considering the exemption of certain US semiconductor products from recent additional tariffs, citing sources familiar with the matter. Beijing’s commerce ministry did not immediately respond to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) request to confirm the reports.Meanwhile, the Hill reports that China cancelled 12,000 metric tons of US pork shipments, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), with Bloomberg News reporting that this represents the biggest cancellation of pork orders since the Covid-19 pandemic.More on this story in a moment, but here are some other recent developments:

      US defense secretary Pete Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection set up in his Pentagon office so that he could bypass government security protocols and use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer.

      Donald Trump directed his attorney general to investigate the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue based on an unsubstantiated rightwing claim.

      Federal judges blocked several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he has tried to enact through executive orders, which do not carry the force of law. One judge blocked his efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disfranchised millions of voters.

      Another judge ruled the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes.

      On immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. Another judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown.

      Trump issued a rare rebuke against Vladimir Putin, and said he has his own deadline for the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump said that he still thinks the Russian leader will listen to him.

      The Trump administration is loosening rules to help US automakers like Elon Musk’s Tesla develop self-driving cars so they can take on Chinese rivals. US companies developing self-driving cars will be allowed exemptions from certain federal safety rules for testing purposes, the transportation department said on Thursday.

      The Trump store is now selling “Trump 2028” hats to fans of the president, who is barred by the US constitution from serving a third term, despite the fact that a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not even try to run. More