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    Trump has pulled the US out of the World Health Organization – here’s why that’s sheer hypocrisy | Devi Sridhar

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    There’s a lesson here for the UK and the anti-WHO Nigel Farage – Trump attacks it in public, but in private he knows he still needs itDonald Trump is persistent. In his first term as president, he withdrew the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) on 6 July 2020, giving the necessary one-year notice period. Soon after, Joe Biden was elected, and he reversed this executive order within days of being in office, reinstating the US support for the agency on 20 January 2021. While many hoped this would be the end of the story, Trump came back with a vengeance in his second term and immediately signed an executive order withdrawing on 20 January 2025.This means that – buried under news of other Trump-related chaos – the US formally left the WHO at the end of last month. It is just the second time in the agency’s history a major power has left. In 1949, during the cold war, the USSR withdrew citing unhappiness with the US influence over the organisation. In 1956, with concerns over disease surveillance and spread, the USSR re-engaged with the UN system.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Continue reading… More

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      Trump news at a glance: Ukraine must reach a deal with Russia ‘fast’, says president before trilateral talks

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      Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet delegates from Russia and Ukraine in Geneva. Key US politics stories from 16 February at a glanceDonald Trump has piled pressure on Ukraine to reach a deal with Russia “fast” before US-brokered talks in Geneva on Tuesday. “Ukraine better come to the table, fast,” the US president told reporters onboard Air Force One while en route to Washington.Trump is pushing to end the conflict, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but two previous rounds of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi did not yield any signs of a breakthrough. Continue reading… More

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      Anderson Cooper to leave 60 Minutes amid turmoil at CBS News

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      Cooper is leaving the fabled news show after nearly 20 years amid a shake-up under new editor-in-chief Bari WeissAnderson Cooper will leave the CBS News program 60 Minutes after nearly two decades, he said on Monday, in the latest staffing shake-up to hit the storied news magazine amid broader newsroom changes under the new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.“Being a correspondent at 60 Minutes has been one of the great honors of my career. I got to tell amazing stories, and work with some of the best producers, editors and camera crews in the business,” Cooper said in a statement. “For nearly twenty years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me.” Continue reading… More

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      US judge orders Trump administration to restore Philadelphia slavery exhibit

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      In ruling, judge cited quote from Orwell’s novel 1984 describing process by which authoritarians rewrite historyA federal judge in Pennsylvania on Monday ordered the National Park Service to reinstall a slavery exhibit at a Philadelphia historic site, pending the outcome of ongoing litigation after the city sued the federal government over its removal.The National Park Service last month dismantled and removed a long-established slavery-related exhibit at the Independence National Historical park, which holds the former residence of George Washington, in response to Donald Trump’s claims, which have been rejected by civil rights groups, of “anti-American ideology” at historical and cultural institutions. Continue reading… More

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      Civil rights groups sue to protect voter data FBI seized from Georgia office

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      Fulton county office was raided in January amid Donald Trump’s claims that 2020 election was fraudulentRights groups have sued to protect voter information that was seized by the FBI in a controversial raid in Georgia at the behest of Donald Trump in his renewed push to invalidate the 2020 election.The NAACP and other civil rights organizations filed a motion on 15 February to “prohibit the Trump administration from misusing the voter information” taken from an elections warehouse in Fulton county, Georgia, late last month. Continue reading… More

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      ICE-free zones and blocked liquor licenses: US cities fight back against immigration raids

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      Cities across the US have developed novel tactics to protect their residents from federal immigration agentsAs federal immigration agents flooded the streets of Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles over the past year, cities across the US have been at the frontlines of strategizing over how to protect their residents, should Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents come to their communities.From Philadelphia to Oklahoma City and Oakland, California, many cities are developing new – and creative – tactics to prepare for and push back against ICE. Here’s a look at a few. Continue reading… More

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      Trump’s Obama and Bad Bunny posts crystallize his political philosophy | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Maga is a recapitulation of the dark side of American history that cohered into nativist nationalism a century agoDonald Trump’s posting of a video depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes was the most overtly racist act of a president since Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal civil service – or since Trump’s previous racist gesture. The racist imagery Trump posted was so egregious that the video’s misogyny representing Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as animals was overlooked. Trump’s denigration of women is implicitly assumed as business-as-usual and not newsworthy: “Quiet, piggy!” And down the memory hole are the 3m long-suppressed documents from the Epstein files in which he is mentioned in its unredacted pages “more than a million times”, according to the Democratic representative Jamie Raskin, who was permitted access.The only Black Republican US senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, said of the Obama portrayal: “It’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” though Scott did not disclose any list, which could have been drawn from an encyclopedia of offenses beginning decades before Trump’s birther campaign. During Trump’s first administration, in 2020, Scott chose to call out one incident as “indefensible”: Trump’s tweet of a video of a supporter chanting “white power”. Trump’s latest racist post was preceded on 11 January by his predictable vandalism of Black History Month in an interview with the New York Times with a remark about the Civil Rights Act of 1964: “White people were very badly treated.”Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading… More

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      Trump news at a glance: EU chief hits back after US claims of Europe’s ‘civilisational erasure’

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      Kaja Kallas rejects ‘fashionable euro-bashing’ by US leaders and says other countries ‘look up to us’ – key US politics stories from 15 February at a glanceThe European Union’s foreign policy chief has criticised US claims that Europe was facing “civilisational erasure” and rejected what she called “fashionable euro-bashing”.Kaja Kallas told an audience at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday that other countries looked up to Europe for its values, such as press freedom. Continue reading… More

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      US teen who pushed for her father’s release from ICE custody dies of cancer

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      Ofelia Torres, 16, spotlighted her dad Ruben’s illegal detention last fall during Trump’s crackdown in ChicagoA Chicago teenager, whose father was detained by immigration authorities while she navigated cancer, died on Friday, a family spokesperson said.Ofelia Torres, a 16-year-old in Chicago, had been undergoing treatment for an aggressive and rare form of cancer since late 2024. As she and her family struggled with the medical procedures, her father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was detained by immigration authorities while at a Home Depot in October, leading to a contentious and public case that highlighted the human effects of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. Continue reading… More