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    Texas Democrats who left state in protest can ‘stay out long enough to stop this deal’, Beto O’Rourke says – live updates

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    Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ exodus, told CNN earlier that he believes they can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are, O’Rourke said, “trying to steal these five seats in Texas because without them Trump’s going to lose a majority in the House of Representatives”.
    Without that majority, there’s a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption, and the possibility of free and fair elections going forward.
    The 56 Texas Democrats who left the state are, O’Rourke said, “all that stand between that future and where we are right now”.
    I think what they’re doing is the highest form of public service. They’re trying to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power in America.
    They are the champions for this democracy, for America, for the rule of law and for our constitution.
    Paxton has called their leaving a “dereliction of the duty as elected officials” and said he would pursue a court ruling to declare the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” vacant if they do not return to work at the statehouse by Friday.“This matters more than any other priority,” said O’Rourke. “We have to stop their power grab.” He added:
    The election of 2026 is going to be decided in the summer of 2025, so we have to fight now and every day going forward.
    During a White House event to announce new investments in manufacturing by Apple, Donald Trump said the United States will impose a tariff of about 100% on semiconductor chips imported into the country.Trump told reporters in the Oval office that the new tariff rate would apply to “all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States,” but would not apply to companies that had made a commitment to manufacture in the United States.“So 100% tariff on all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States”, Trump said. “But if you’ve made a commitment to build [in the US], or if you’re in the process of building, as many are, there is no tariff”, Trump said.The White House has released a statement to reporters in which the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, suggests that the idea of a direct meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, was proposed by the Russians during Putin’s meeting with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Wednesday.“As President Trump said earlier today on TRUTH Social, great progress was made during Special Envoy Witkoff’s meeting with President Putin”, Leavitt said. “The Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the President is open to meeting with both President Putin and President Zelensky. President Trump wants this brutal war to end.”I asked Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who represents San Antonio in the Texas state legislature what it was like away from the cameras as he and his colleagues live out of a hotel room in Illinois with no idea of how long they’ll be there.“It’s important to just have the right mental focus and to stick to routines”, he said. “We’re still, you know, we’re still parents, and we’re still spouses. And we’re still trying to run our business or explain to our boss why we’re not there. We try to live, you know, we try to live a normal life, and we will rely on each other”.Texas’ part-time lawmakers earn just $600 a month, so many have other jobs and have been forced to work remotely from outside the state, if they can.Martinez Fischer wanted to make sure people knew that he and his colleagues are still doing legislative work, even though they’re not in Austin. He mentioned that he filed two bills yesterday.He said this was his fourth quorum break. He said he was a “one bag guy” and had packed some leisure wear to wear with polos and his best suit he could stretch out a few days. “I’m wearing some clothes today that I haven’t worn yet. So, you know, that’s a small success for me”.“When we talk about the grand scheme of what we, what we’re doing here and why we’re here, I mean, there are people who have had it a whole lot worse than me”, he said.He also said this quorum break feels different than the one in 2021, when Democrats fled the state for several weeks to try and stop a bill with sweeping new voting restrictions from going into effect.“2021, we spent more time trying to convince the country that there was an issue, right? This time, you know, there is no tutorial necessary and everybody is laser focused on the issue before us”, he said. “We don’t have to debate somebody on the merits of this walkout. I mean, they know the implications”.I just got off the phone with Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat who represents San Antonio in the Texas state legislature, and is one of dozens in his party who fled the state to try and stop Republicans from passing new Congressional maps.I asked Martinez Fischer if he could lend any insight into how long Democrats would hold out before returning. He declined to say.“These quorum checks and the strategies and end games are kind of best left undiscussed”, he said. “It’s a very fluid, it’s a very fluid dynamic. The idea that we had on Sunday may be different next Sunday”.Martinez Fischer said he’s not really concerned about the $500 per day fines lawmakers are accruing under state legislature rules enacted in 2023. “Not concerned about it at all”, he said. “We’ve had rules set aside before, and courts don’t have to interpret the rules the way Republicans want them to be interpreted”.He said he also wasn’t fazed by threats from top Texas Republicans to ask courts to remove Democratic lawmakers from office. Abbott filed a long-shot legal bid to do so against Gene Wu, the chair of the Democratic caucus, on Tuesday evening.“I think he recognizes that he’s on the losing side of this narrative”, Martinez Fischer said. “I think that the theories by which the governor is trying to remove people from office has a much more structured procedure than just filing some papers with the supreme court. So I don’t think that that kind of stuff happens overnight”.

    Texas Democrats are still hunkering down in blue states across the country. It comes after they broke quorum for two consecutive days this week, in protest of a new GOP-drawn congressional map. It’s now evolved into a nationwide redistricting battle.

    Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke has emerged as a top funder, covering the costs of the lawmakers’ exodus through his political group ‘Powered by People’. In an interview with CNN earlier he said that state reps can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.

    Meanwhile, many of the Texas legislators who decamped to Illinois were forced to evacuate from their hotel today when they experienced a bomb threat. The area was secured as bomb squad units conducted their investigation. No device was found according to local police. Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was aware of the threats, in a post on X. “Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” he added.

    In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “great progress” was made at a “highly productive” three-hour meeting today between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian president Vladimir Putin. This comes just two days ahead of a deadline Trump set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war with Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions.

    The New York Times also reports that Donald Trump plans to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin as early as next week. Trump will then organise a follow-up for Putin, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and himself, sources tell the Times.

    Trump also followed through on his threats to increase tariffs on India. Earlier he issued an executive order today imposing an additional 25% on goods from India, saying the country directly or indirectly imported Russian oil. It brings the total levies against India to 50%.
    The president plans to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin as early as next week, according to reporting from the New York Times.Sources tell the Times that Trump plans to follow up with a meeting between himself, Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.The newspaper reports that Trump disclosed the details on a call with European leaders. Although, the meeting with Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy will not include any European counterparts, two people familiar with the plan tell the Times.This comes after a three-hour meeting today between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin, which Trump described as “highly productive” in a post on Truth Social.Facing images of violent white mobs defending racial segregation, the condemnation of the world and of its own citizens, Congress in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, a law meant to end the hypocrisy of a democratic country that denied Black people the power of their vote.Sixty years later, race remains at the center of American politics. Cases before the US supreme court, and a platoon of Texas legislators fleeing the state to prevent redistricting, demonstrate how the Voting Rights Act – and its erosion – remains on the frontline of the political battlefield.“Democracy is at stake,” said Todd Cox, associate director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Even as voting rights advocates use the act to win additional congressional representation in Alabama and press cases in Louisiana and North Carolina, a conservative supreme court makes gains precarious, he said.Read more about how the Voting Rights Act is confronting its biggest threats in the 60 years since its passage.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, in a post on X, that Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia, and the White House is monitoring the situation.Five soldiers were shot and wounded today on the military base in south-east Georgia, before the shooter was taken into custody.Parts of the base had been locked down earlier on Wednesday after a shooter was reported on the sprawling army post, a spokesperson said.In an analysis by Politico, Democratic lawmakers from Texas stand to amass almost $400,000 in penalties, for leaving the state in protest during the special session that ends on 19 August.Politico crunched the numbers and worked out the total based on the fewest lawmakers needed to break quorum, the anticipated length of their out-of-state trips, and the $500-per-day fee they’re being charged.“Should Democrats refuse to return for the length of the entire special legislative session, which will end on Aug. 19, they could rack up fines totaling at least $382,500,” Politico estimated.In a post on Truth Social, the president said that “great progress” was made at the meeting between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian president Vladimir Putin.“Afterwards, I updated some of our European Allies. Everyone agrees this War must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,” Trump added.The meeting comes just two days before a deadline the president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war with Ukraine, or face fresh sanctions.Texas state lawmakers – many of whom decamped to Illinois to break quorum over the new GOP-drawn congressional map – were forced to evacuate from their hotel earlier near Chicago today.The St Charles police department said they responded to a report of a potential bomb threat at the Q-Center hotel and convention complex. Four hundred people were immediately evacuated, and the area was secured as bomb squad units conducted their investigation. No device was found.On social media, Democratic state representative John Bucy III said that “this is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’,” referring to the Texas attorney general’s earlier calls to bring absent lawmakers back to the state house.Illinois governor JB Pritzker said he was aware of the threats, in a post on X. “Threats of violence will be investigated and those responsible will be held accountable,” he added.JD Vance will reportedly host top administration officials at his residence tonight, where they will discuss a strategy to address the fallout of the government’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and come up with a “unified response”, CNN reports.Among the attendees will reportedly be, attorney Pam Bondi, her deputy Todd Blanche, FBI director Kash Patel and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.It comes as the administration weighs whether to release the contents of Blanche’s interviews, including over 10 hours of audio and a transcript, with Epstein accomplice and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Two officials told CNN that the materials could be made public as early as this week.One official told CNN that some of the conversation within the White House has focused on whether making the details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back to the surface, at a time when many officials close to Trump believe the story has finally died down.Former Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has emerged as a top funder covering the costs of Texas lawmakers’ exodus, told CNN earlier that he believes they can “stay out long enough to stop this deal in Texas”.Donald Trump, Texas governor Greg Abbott, and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton are, O’Rourke said, “trying to steal these five seats in Texas because without them Trump’s going to lose a majority in the House of Representatives”.
    Without that majority, there’s a check on his lawlessness, accountability for his crimes and corruption, and the possibility of free and fair elections going forward.
    The 56 Texas Democrats who left the state are, O’Rourke said, “all that stand between that future and where we are right now”.
    I think what they’re doing is the highest form of public service. They’re trying to stop the consolidation of authoritarian power in America.
    They are the champions for this democracy, for America, for the rule of law and for our constitution.
    Paxton has called their leaving a “dereliction of the duty as elected officials” and said he would pursue a court ruling to declare the seats of “any rogue lawmakers” vacant if they do not return to work at the statehouse by Friday.“This matters more than any other priority,” said O’Rourke. “We have to stop their power grab.” He added:
    The election of 2026 is going to be decided in the summer of 2025, so we have to fight now and every day going forward.
    US envoy Steve Witkoff’s meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday went well, a White House official has told Reuters, adding that Washington still planned to proceed with secondary sanctions on Friday.
    The Russians are eager to continue engaging with the United States. The secondary sanctions are still expected to be implemented on Friday.
    My colleague Jakub Krupa is covering this in greater detail over on our Europe live blog:It follows a Reuters report that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump spoke on the phone earlier today, according to a source familiar with the matter.Hours earlier, US special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. There haven’t been any immediate indication from either side as to how the talks went.We’re seeing lines on Reuters quoting a White House official that secondary US sanctions on Russia are expected to be implemented on Friday, the deadline Trump gave Putin to reach a peace deal to end its war in Ukraine.Up until this point Trump had been unusually reticent to punish the Russian president, my colleague Patrick Wintour wrote in a piece published this morning, so “what Trump – who some had claimed was a Russian asset – does next to punish Putin could define his presidency.”I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.If state legislators in California move ahead with governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to hold a special election – and begin the process of redrawing the state’s congressional maps in response to Texas’s plans – they’ll have just five days to announce their decision.The California legislature returns from its recess on 18 August, and it will have to declare a special election by 22 August, according to KCRA News.“They’re doing a midterm rejection of objectivity and independence, an act that we could criticise from the sideline, or an act that we can respond to in kind – fight fire with fire,” Newsom said in a press conference last week, referring to Texas Republicans’ plans to pass a new congressional map.Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with Donald Trump on the phone today, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.This comes after US special envoy Steve Witkoff wrapped up a three-hour meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier today.My colleagues are tracking the latest here. More

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      Texas Democrats receive bomb threat in escalating standoff over redistricting

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      Texas Democrats who left the state say they experienced a bomb threat at their Illinois hotel on Wednesday morning amid an ongoing clash with Republicans over their effort to block a new congressional map from going into place.John Bucy III, a Democrat who represents Austin in the state legislature, confirmed the threat on X on Wednesday and said the lawmakers were evacuated. “This is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’. Texas Democrats won’t be intimidated,” he said.“We are safe, we are secure, and we are undeterred,” three other members of the Texas house Democratic caucus, representatives Gene Wu, Ramón Romero and Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, said in a statement. They thanked Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, and law enforcement officials “for their quick action to ensure our safety”.The showdown between Texas Republicans and the Democrats who fled the state to block redistricting plans escalated late on Tuesday when Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, filed an emergency petition asking the state supreme court to remove Wu, the top Democrat in the state house of representatives, and declare his seat vacant.“Fearing one of eighteen items on the Special Session agenda, Democrat members of the Texas House claim an entitlement to abdicate their official duties by refusing to show up for work,” lawyers for Abbott’s office wrote in the filing, asking the court to rule on his request by Thursday. “These members have abandoned their official duties required by the Constitution.”In a statement on Tuesday evening, Wu said he would not be intimidated by Abbott’s request.“This office does not belong to Greg Abbott, and it does not belong to me. It belongs to the people of House District 137, who elected me. I took an oath to the constitution, not a politician’s agenda, and I will not be the one to break that oath,” he said in a statement. “Let me be unequivocal about my actions and my duty. When a governor conspires with a disgraced president to ram through a racist gerrymandered map, my constitutional duty is to not be a willing participant.”Texas Republicans already hold 25 of Texas’s 38 congressional seats, but Abbott agreed to redraw the state’s congressional districts at the request of Donald Trump to add more GOP-friendly districts. Republicans hold a narrow 219-212 advantage in the US House, and the Texas redraw is a brazen effort to try to shore up Republicans’ advantage before next year’s midterm elections, when Republicans are expected to lose seats.A new map unveiled last week would favor Republicans in 30 of 38 seats and weaken the influence of Hispanic voters throughout the state.Abbott’s effort is considered a long shot, legal experts told the Texas Tribune. In 2021, the Texas supreme court made clear that the state constitution both allows state lawmakers to break quorum and allows for mechanisms for lawmakers to bring them back.“I am aware of absolutely no authority that says breaking quorum is the same as the intent to abandon a seat,” Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a constitutional law expert at the University of Missouri law school, told the Tribune. “That would require the courts extending the premise to the breaking point. It’s inconsistent with the very text of the Texas Constitution.”The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Republican, has said he also plans to take legal action to try to remove the lawmakers from office.On Tuesday, Senator John Cornyn asked the FBI to assist in returning the lawmakers to Texas. Trump said on Tuesday that the FBI may have to get involved. “The governor of Texas is demanding they come back,” Trump said. “You can’t just sit it out. You have to go back. You have to fight it out. That’s what elections are all about,” he said. The FBI has declined to comment.Under rules enacted by the legislature, lawmakers also face a $500 daily fine for each day they are not present in the capitol. Many of the costs so far, including a private charter to Illinois, meals and lodging have been picked up by Powered by People, a political group started by former Representative Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Tribune reported. Paxton announced on Wednesday he was investigating the group’s funding of the effort.Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democratic representative of San Antonio in the state legislature, said in an interview he was unfazed by the possibility of racking up fines.“Not concerned about it at all,” he said. “We’ve had rules set aside before, and courts don’t have to interpret the rules the way Republicans want them to be interpreted.”“The group is very committed and we recognize that this is much bigger, it’s much bigger than anybody’s individual congressional district, it’s much bigger than anybody’s individual city, and it’s even bigger than the state of Texas,” he added.Other states appear to be following Texas’s lead and considering mid-cycle redistricting. Ohio is already set to redraw its congressional map this year because of a unique state law, and is expected to add more GOP-friendly seats. Republicans in Missouri and Indiana are also reportedly considering redrawing maps to add GOP-friendly districts.Democratic governors have threatened to redraw the maps in their states too to offset Republican gains, though they do not have the power to draw as many seats as Republicans do. The biggest opportunity for Democrats is in California, which has 52 seats in Congress. Governor Gavin Newsom is reportedly moving ahead with a referendum this fall to ask to adopt a new map that would add Democratic seats and override an independent redistricting commission. More

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      Trump to announce Apple’s plan to invest $100bn in US manufacturing

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      Donald Trump on Wednesday is expected to celebrate a commitment by Apple to increase its investments in US manufacturing by an additional $100bn over the next four years.“Today’s announcement with Apple is another win for our manufacturing industry that will simultaneously help reshore the production of critical components to protect America’s economic and national security,” a White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said.Apple’s plan to up its domestic investment comes as it seeks to avoid Trump’s threatened tariffs, which would increase the tech giant’s costs as it relies on a complex international supply chain to produce its iPhones. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, warned during an earnings call in May that the tariffs could cost the company up to $900m that fiscal quarter alone.Apple had previously said it intended to invest $500bn domestically, a figure it will now increase to $600bn. Apple also claimed that it would directly hire 20,000 US workers over the next four years.“Today, we’re proud to increase our investments across the United States to $600 billion over four years and launch our new American Manufacturing Program,” Cook said in a statement. “This includes new and expanded work with 10 companies across America. They produce components that are used in Apple products sold all over the world, and we’re grateful to the President for his support.”Trump in recent months has criticized the tech company and Cook for efforts to shift iPhone production to India to avoid the tariffs his Republican administration had planned for China. The same day as the White House announcement, Trump doubled US tariffs on India from 25% to 50%.While in Qatar earlier this year, Trump said there was “a little problem” with Apple and recalled a conversation with Cook in which he said he told the CEO: “I don’t want you building in India.”India has incurred Trump’s wrath, as the president signed an order on Wednesday to put an additional 25% tariff on the world’s most populous country for its use of Russian oil. The new import taxes to be imposed in 21 days could put the combined tariffs on Indian goods at 50%.Apple had attempted to get ahead of any tariffs on India in April by shipping as many as 1.5m iPhones from the country into the US, according to Reuters.The company has been uniquely threatened by Trump’s tariffs as iPhones include parts manufactured in dozens of countries and the devices themselves are largely assembled in China. Shifting production of the devices to the US would drastically increase the cost to the point that most analysts view an American-made iPhone as a pipe dream, leaving Apple to navigate the uncertainty surrounding Trump’s trade wars.As part of the Apple announcement, the investments will be about bringing more of its supply chain and advanced manufacturing to the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionApple’s new pledge comes just a few weeks after it forged a $500m deal with MP Materials, which runs the only rare earths mine in the US. That agreement will enable MP Materials to expand a factory in Texas to use recycled materials to produce magnets that make iPhones vibrate.Speaking on a recent investors call, Cook emphasized that “there’s a load of different things done in the United States”. As examples, he cited some of the iPhone components made in the US, such as the device’s glass display and module for identifying people’s faces and then indicated the company was gearing to expand its productions of other components in its home country.“We’re doing more in this country, and that’s on top of having roughly 19bn chips coming out of the US now, and we will do more,” Cook told analysts last week, without elaborating.Despite Apple’s struggles with looming tariffs and concern from investors over its lag in fully embracing artificial intelligence, the company’s latest earnings report showed that it made huge gains in iPhone sales and easily beat Wall Street’s expectations for its year-over-year revenue. Apple’s stock, which was down double digits so far this year, spiked upward over 5% on Wednesday following news of Trump’s announcement. More

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      The Guardian view on Putin’s propaganda: the strongman myth hides great strategic weakness | Editorial

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      For a quarter of a century, Russian media have cultivated a myth of Vladimir Putin’s inspired leadership. State propaganda allows no hint of presidential fallibility. When things go wrong, official news ignores the setbacks. When problems cannot be downplayed, Mr Putin is portrayed as the wise corrector of errors made by underlings.Foreign perceptions of Mr Putin have been shaped by this image. It has been boosted online by Kremlin influence operations and embraced by nationalist politicians who admire the Russian president’s methods of domestic control and contempt for the rule of law.Until recently, Donald Trump was the most powerful figure in that category. The US president is no convert to democratic pluralism but he has become notably more suspicious of Russia and less effusive in his admiration for its president. He has threatened Moscow with tightened sanctions if there is not progress towards a ceasefire in Ukraine by the end of this week. Steve Witkoff, the White House special envoy, met Mr Putin on Wednesday for talks. The substance of the discussion was unclear.Uncertainty also shrouds the reasons for Mr Trump’s shifting stance and its durability. June’s Nato summit appears to have been critical in nudging the president towards greater appreciation of the alliance and scepticism about Mr Putin’s claims to want peace.The presidential ego is also a factor. Mr Trump campaigned on a pledge to end the Ukraine war and imagined it could be done swiftly. His initial method was to sideline and bully Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, while offering sweeping territorial concessions to Russia. That was a disgraceful betrayal of an embattled democracy and a reward for unprovoked military aggression. It was a gift for the Russian president. Yet Mr Putin was not satisfied and instead intensified the onslaught.Mr Trump has no record of sympathy with Ukraine’s plight, but he is notoriously sensitive to a snub. Mr Putin embarrassed him by refusing to do a quick deal.The Russian president’s motives are also obscure. He may be betting on the US staying keen to secure a ceasefire on a land-for-peace basis, and so grabbing more land before White House patience runs out altogether. But he is also trapped by his own maximalist demands. He has sent hundreds of thousands of young Russians to their deaths on the grounds that the nation is locked in an existential struggle with the west. He has cast Ukraine as a rogue province to be reintegrated into the greater Russian motherland. He has geared the country’s economy for perpetual war. His image as a great military leader is in jeopardy if Mr Zelenskyy is still the president of a viable sovereign country when the guns fall silent.There seems no brilliant plan behind Mr Putin’s determination to continue a brutal war of attrition. He does it through inertia and paranoia. He appears afraid to end the fighting on terms that risk ordinary Russians fully grasping the horrific pointlessness of the whole bloody business.History will surely record Mr Putin’s conduct in Ukraine as the action of a delusional murderer. The myth of the Russian president as some kind of mastermind is just another weapon of propaganda. Its function is to project strength where there is weakness, and make victory seem inevitable when the facts of the war describe a litany of Kremlin failure.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      JD Vance to meet with top Trump officials to plot Epstein strategy – report

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      JD Vance will reportedly host a meeting on Wednesday evening at his residence with a handful of senior Trump administration officials to discuss their strategy for dealing with the ongoing scandal surrounding the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The vice-president’s gathering, first detailed by CNN, is reportedly set to include the attorney general, Pam Bondi; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; the FBI director, Kash Patel; and the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.Sources familiar with the gathering told CNN and ABC News that the officials will be discussing whether to release the transcript of the justice department’s recent interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and a convicted sex trafficker.Two weeks ago the justice department sent Blanche, who is also one of Donald Trump’s former personal lawyers, to interview Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison for sex trafficking and other crimes.That meeting lasted two days and details from it have not been made public.According to ABC News, the administration is considering publicly releasing the transcripts from the interview as soon as this week.On Wednesday, Alicia Arden, who filed a police report against Epstein in 1997 accusing him of sexually assaulting her, appeared at a news conference and implored the government to release all of the files related to the Epstein case.“I’m tired of the government saying that they want to release them. Please just do it,” she said, adding that she would like to know what Blanche asked Maxwell during their meeting, and what Maxwell’s responses were.Maxwell, Arden said, “should not be pardoned”.“She was convicted of sex-trafficking children,” she added. “This is a terrible crime.”Arden was joined by her lawyer, Gloria Allred, who also said that the Trump administration should release the “entire transcript” of Blanche’s interview with Maxwell “including all of his questions and all of her answers”.Last week, Maxwell was quietly transferred from a Florida prison to a lower-security facility in Texas. Trump claimed to reporters that he “didn’t know” about the transfer.The Trump administration has faced mounting pressure and a bipartisan backlash after the justice department announced it would not be releasing additional documents related to Epstein, despite earlier promises by Trump and Bondi that they would do so.Epstein, who died in prison in New York in 2019 while awaiting federal trial, is the subject of countless conspiracy theories, in part due to his ties to high-profile and powerful individuals.On Tuesday, the House oversight committee subpoenaed the justice department for files related to the Epstein sex-trafficking investigation and issued subpoenas for depositions from several prominent figures.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThey included the former president Bill Clinton; the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton; multiple former attorneys general, including Jeff Sessions, Alberto Gonzales, William Barr and Merrick Garland; and the former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller.Axios pointed out that Trump’s former labor secretary Alex Acosta was absent from the list despite his involvement in the 2008 plea deal with Epstein when Acosta was a top federal prosecutor in Florida. Axios noted that Acosta’s boss during his time in Florida, Gonzales, is on the subpoena list.At the news conference on Wednesday, Allred, who has represented multiple Epstein victims, said she believes that Acosta should also be subpoenaed, as well as Blanche and Bondi.Allred said that she believes that “victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell should be invited to appear before the House and Senate committees” to share their stories, how “they were victimized by Epstein and Maxwell, the impact on them of these crimes, and how the criminal justice system has helped them or failed them”.Maxwell, who was found guilty of sex trafficking and other charges in December 2021, is appealing her conviction to the supreme court, citing Epstein’s plea agreement. This week, her attorneys also opposed the government’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the Epstein case.“Jeffrey Epstein is dead,” her lawyers wrote. “Ghislaine Maxwell is not. Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable and her due process rights remain.”Maxwell also said last week that she was willing to testify before Congress if she was granted immunity.The Democratic representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has introduced a resolution in Congress that opposes Maxwell receiving a presidential pardon or any other form of clemency, told CNN on Wednesday that he believes the “vast majority of Americans oppose any form of clemency for Maxwell, and we need to say that with one voice in Congress as well”.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment relating to the Vance meeting. More

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      Trump threatens to ‘federalize’ DC after attack on Doge staffer

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      Donald Trump is threatening to strip Washington DC of its local governance and place the US capital under direct federal control, citing what he described as rampant youth crime following an alleged assault on a federal employee who worked for the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said he would “federalize” the city if local authorities failed to address crime, specifically calling for minors as young as 14 to be prosecuted as adults.“Crime in Washington, D.C., is totally out of control,” Trump wrote. “If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run.”The threat received backing from Elon Musk, after the billionaire described an incident in which a member of the Doge team was allegedly “severely beaten to the point of concussion” while defending a woman from assault in the capital.“A few days ago, a gang of about a dozen young men tried to assault a woman in her car at night in DC,” Musk posted on X. “A @Doge team member saw what was happening, ran to defend her and was severely beaten to the point of concussion, but he saved her. It is time to federalize DC.”The victim was identified by friends and the police as Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old known as “Big Balls”, one of Doge’s most recognizable staffers who joined Doge in January. He reportedly left in June, and is currently employed at the Social Security Administration. According to a police report obtained by Politico, Coristine was assaulted at approximately 3am on Sunday by about 10 juveniles near Dupont Circle.Police arrested two 15-year-olds from Maryland, a boy and a girl, as they attempted to flee the scene, and charged them with attempted carjacking. A black iPhone 16 valued at $1,000 was reported stolen during the incident.Trump’s post, which included images of a bloodied and shirtless Coristine, concluded: “If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”Washington DC currently operates under “home rule”, established in 1973, which grants the city an elected mayor and council while maintaining ultimate congressional oversight. No president has attempted to revoke this arrangement since its creation.Trump’s threat could theoretically take several forms. The constitution grants Congress broad authority over the federal district, though completely suspending local governance would probably require congressional legislation. Trump could also deploy federal law enforcement officers or national guard troops under executive authority, as he did during 2020 protests when federal forces cleared Lafayette Square outside the White House over local officials’ objections.But fully stripping the city’s home rule would probably face fierce Democratic opposition in Congress. Any such move would require congressional legislation that Democrats could block or attempt to challenge in federal courts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe president targeted DC’s juvenile justice system specifically. “The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14,” he wrote, referring to alleged attackers he described as “local thugs” and putting the word “youths” in quotation marks.Washington DC, with a population of about 700,000, has seen violent crime decline in the first half of 2025 compared with the previous year, and 2024 marked a 30-year low, according to a pre-Trump January report by the Department of Justice. The Democratic-controlled city has frequently clashed with Trump over federal interventions and has long sought statehood, which would grant it full self-governance and congressional representation – which Republican lawmakers have opposed.The office of the DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, declined a request for comment. More

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      The US supreme court paved the way for Texas’s gerrymandering mess | Steven Greenhouse

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      With Texas Republicans rushing to fulfil Donald Trump’s wish to gerrymander to the max, many Americans are no doubt wondering why there isn’t some referee to stop this hyperpartisan race to the bottom that is poisoning our democracy. The supreme court should be the referee that puts a halt to this ugly, undemocratic mess, but in a shortsighted, 5-4 ruling in 2019, the court’s conservative majority essentially told state legislatures that anything goes when it comes to gerrymandering. Their message was: no matter how extreme the gerrymandering, we’ll look the other way.Writing the majority opinion in that case, Rucho v Common Cause, chief justice John Roberts declared that gerrymandering was a political matter that federal courts shouldn’t intervene in (unless it involves racial discrimination). Many legal experts said the conservative justices were defaulting on the court’s responsibility to prevent absurdly unfair, undemocratic elections, where the fix is in even before people vote. In a prescient dissent, justice Elena Kagan warned that the huge permission slip the court was giving to gerrymandering would encourage “a politics of polarization and dysfunction” and might “irreparably damage our system of government”.Trump and his team have been shrewd enough and shameless enough to seek to take maximum advantage of that ruling, and in doing so, they’re showing how right Kagan was. Trump and company are seriously damaging our system of government and our democracy by seeking to insulate Trump from the majority’s will, an expected Democratic-leaning vote in the 2026 congressional elections. Trump and team are also ratcheting up the “polarization and dysfunction” Kagan warned us about. Democratic lawmakers have fled Texas to prevent a GOP power grab, while Texas governor Greg Abbott has called for their arrest and removal from office.Gerrymandering further fuels polarization because November elections become largely irrelevant for choosing candidates. With gerrymandering, what counts are the party primaries, and there, the extremes, rather than moderate swing voters, determine who the winning candidate is. This in turn leads to increasingly polarized, dysfunctional legislative bodies, like the House of Representatives, where there’s plenty of performative, partisan showboating and very little legislation passed.In Rucho, the conservative majority declined to overturn a gerrymander in which the North Carolina GOP had rigged congressional districts so that Republicans would win 10 of the state’s 13 House seats even when the GOP won a bare majority of the statewide vote. (The case also involved some flagrant gerrymandering by Maryland’s Democrats.) It’s thanks to Roberts and the conservative justices’ indifference to gerrymandering that a person close to Trump could say that the administration’s attitude was “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time”.Seeking to maximize the chances of maintaining Republican control of the House, where the GOP has a mere three-seat majority, many Republicans also want GOP-led legislatures in Missouri, Florida, Ohio and Indiana to gerrymander to the max. In Texas alone, Trump hopes the GOP can pick up five House seats through redistricting. Even though Trump beat former vice-president Kamala Harris by 56% to 42% in Texas in 2024, the newly unveiled gerrymander aims to guarantee Republicans 30 out of Texas’s 38 House seats (a 79% to 21% ratio). Democrats accuse Trump and the Texas GOP of cheating, and it should be no surprise that they want to respond to fire with fire, with the Democratic governors of California, Illinois and New York saying that they, too, will push through gerrymanders.This unseemly electoral arms race results directly from the supreme court’s dodging of responsibility. In Rucho, chief justice Roberts shrugged at gerrymandering, saying that redistricting shenanigans were part and parcel of US history. Pointing to examples of gerrymandering from the 1780s and early 1800s, Roberts pooh-poohed this phenomenon, writing: “Partisan gerrymandering is nothing new. Nor is frustration with it.” He also voiced skepticism and snark about judges’ use of standards and election experts’ predictions to determine when partisan redistricting crosses the line into unconstitutional gerrymandering that violates the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause.In contrast to Roberts’ who-cares casualness, justice Kagan was an I’m-warning-you Cassandra. In a stinging dissent joined by justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, she correctly predicted that terrible things would result from Roberts’s decision. She wrote that his opinion showed “a saddening nonchalance about the threat that such [extreme] redistricting posts to self-governance”.Kagan didn’t mince her words about how Roberts’s decision threatened our democracy and undermined the ability of Americans to elect a government of their choosing. “For the first time ever,” she wrote, “this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities. And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives. In so doing, the partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people.”In Rucho, Roberts wrote that the constitution neither expressly bans gerrymandering, nor points to a standard to determine when partisan redistricting is so unfair that it becomes unconstitutional. He suggested it would be a grievous, arbitrary wrong to select some legal or mathematical standard to determine when gerrymanders are illegal. Roberts wrote: “There are no legal standards discernible in the Constitution for making such judgments, let alone limited and precise standards that are clear, manageable, and politically neutral.”Today’s headlines make clear that Roberts and his Rucho decision have left us with a far more grievous wrong. It has encouraged ultra-partisan gerrymandering that is sabotaging our democracy and the majority will – in this case with an eye to preventing Democrats from winning back control of the House and serving as a check on Trump, the most authoritarian president in US history. If Texas Republicans prevail and enact their gerrymander, despite Democratic lawmakers’ exodus from the state, then the votes of millions of Texas Democrats will become meaningless, their votes in effect erased by the Trump/GOP gerrymander juggernaut. The same thing will happen to many Republican voters in states where Democrats gerrymander.Roberts was dismayingly myopic in failing to realize how his Rucho decision would someday lead to a push for maximum, hyperpartisan redistricting and how new electoral and computer models would make gerrymandering far more sophisticated – and sinister. Roberts was flatly wrong when he wrote that there can’t be “clear, manageable, and politically neutral” standards that define when redistricting crosses the line from mere partisanship to over-the-top, undemocratic, grossly unfair ultra-partisanship. One study put forward a smart standard that says gerrymandering crosses the line into illegality when a certain, high percentage of votes are wasted, deliberately rendered meaningless through partisan redistricting.What we’re seeing right now in Texas is one political party seeking to squeeze every last drop out of a filthy gerrymandering sponge – fair play and democracy be damned. Foreseeing ugly episodes like this, Kagan cited the vision of James Madison, the main author of the constitution, who once wrote that the “power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people”.The whole purpose of Trump’s gerrymandering power grab is to prevent the people from having power over him and his increasingly unpopular government. Unfortunately, Roberts gave Trump a green light for such a power grab.Like Trump, Roberts hates admitting mistakes, but it’s not too late for him to admit how shortsighted and harmful his Rucho ruling was. Nor is it too late for the chief justice to get the court to set some sane, healthy limits on gerrymandering to safeguard our democracy as well as Madison’s vision that the “power is in the people over the Government”.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      The Voting Rights Act is facing the biggest threats in its 60 years

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      Facing images of violent white mobs defending racial segregation, the condemnation of the world and of its own citizens, Congress in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act, a law meant to end the hypocrisy of a democratic country that denied Black people the power of their vote.Sixty years later, race remains at the center of American politics. Cases before the US supreme court, and a platoon of Texas legislators fleeing the state to prevent redistricting, demonstrate how the Voting Rights Act – and its erosion – remains on the frontline of the political battlefield.“Democracy is at stake,” said Todd Cox, associate director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Even as voting rights advocates use the act to win additional congressional representation in Alabama and press cases in Louisiana and North Carolina, a conservative supreme court makes gains precarious, he said.“We wouldn’t be under such a threat if we weren’t doing so well in making sure our communities were engaged, that they were turning out and that their rights were protected,” Cox said. “This is a cyclical part of history, that when we see some success in advancing rights, there’s always backlash.”Veterans of the struggle for civil rights view passage of the act as a revolutionary, historical demarcation point equal to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Confederate general Robert E Lee’s surrender at Appomattox or the establishment of women’s suffrage. Enforcement of the Voting Rights Act fundamentally rewrote politics in America.“I know I stand on the shoulders of folks … who fought and died in some cases,” Cox said.Though constitutional amendments passed after the American civil war ended slavery and commanded racial equality before the law, American lawmakers regularly found ways to keep Black citizens from exercising political power. Literacy tests, poll taxes, separate ballot boxes for Black and white voters, white-only primary elections, purges of Black voters from the rolls and discriminatory district lines rigged elections for white voters in the US’s Jim Crow era.Each time a court struck down a state law or demanded the end of a discriminatory practice, obstructionist local lawmakers – mostly but not exclusively in southern states – would quickly adapt, often enacting new election changes without enough time for a court to intervene. Civil rights laws at the time held insufficient authority to stop the practice.After years of campaigns for voting rights and racial equality across the south, the civil rights struggle came to a head in March 1965 in Selma, Alabama. The death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Baptist deacon and local voting rights activist, at the hands of state troopers led 600 people to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.State troopers attacked demonstrators with truncheons and teargas. As networks broadcast the assault, the US watched future US representative John Lewis get beaten into unconsciousness by white police officers live on national television. Support crystalized for civil and voting rights after the events of the “Bloody Sunday” broadcast.Congress wrote the Voting Rights Act to prevent the case-by-case whack-a-mole games local lawmakers were playing with election rules. It forced jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to clear elections changes with the Department of Justice before they could go into effect. It banned literacy tests to vote and allowed challenges to district maps when those maps would not allow proportional representation for minority voters.The principles of the Voting Rights Act have shaped the way lawmakers from the halls of Congress to a city council hearing room have to respond politically to voters of color.Congress has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act four times since its enactment, each time under a Republican president. But the law’s protections have suffered a death of a thousand cuts.In the Shelby County v Holder case of 2013, the US supreme court held that the data defining jurisdictions with a history of discrimination was too old to be relied upon; Congress must update it for the Voting Rights Act’s pre-clearance rules in Section 5 to remain constitutional, the court ruled. Republicans in Congress have blocked legislation – the John Lewis voting rights advancement act – updating the law, effectively ending pre-clearance.“It was a pretty significant blow to the project of ensuring voting free of racial discrimination in this country,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s voting rights project. “I think it really accelerated in this moment the attacks on voting access across the country.”States previously restricted by pre-clearance enacted a wave of election legislation following the ruling, closing polling places, changing voter registration rules and redrawing district lines unhindered.The 5-4 decision in Rucho v Common Cause in 2019 further eroded the power of the Voting Rights Act, by explicitly permitting political gerrymandering, even as racial gerrymandering remained off-limits.The mid-decade redistricting in Texas proposed by Donald Trump presents a particularly vivid example of the consequences of an end to pre-clearance and recent supreme court decisions. Democratic state representatives have fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum to pass the redistricting legislation, which would likely grant Republicans an additional five congressional seats in Texas by concentrating some minority voters into fewer districts while diluting clusters of other voters.“Those maps would have had to be reviewed by the federal government coming in after the fact to challenge them, and winning,” Lakin said.In 2003, the eighth circuit federal appellate court further restricted the use of the Voting Rights Act, ruling in Arkansas State Conference NAACP v Arkansas Board of Apportionment that private groups do not have a right to challenge state election laws under the act; only the Department of Justice can bring a voting rights case to court. A second eighth circuit decision extended the ban on private voting rights suits from redistricting cases to suits challenging restrictions on voter assistance.Of the 180 or so successful claims brought under the Voting Rights Act, only 15 have been brought by the Department of Justice, said Jacqueline De León, senior staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund. The Department of Justice’s voting rights division used to have about 30 staff attorneys; under the Trump administration, it has lost all but two or three, she said.“We know the Department of Justice is not going to be in the business of enforcing voting rights,” De León said. “Right now, we don’t know if there will be a future where a Voting Rights Act is available to our country. This is really a moment for concern and reflection on this anniversary.”Lakin said she expects the eighth circuit ruling to be appealed to the supreme court.Meanwhile, a case in Louisiana that has reached the US supreme court threatens the last leg standing of the Voting Rights Act.On Friday, the court signaled that it will consider the constitutionality of section 2, asking for supplemental briefs in Louisiana v Callais. The case, to be heard later this year, asks whether the state’s creation of a majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th amendment to the constitution.“I think this is, unfortunately, another opportunity for the court to continue to attack this pillar of our democracy, the Voting Rights Act,” Lakin said.In Callais, a group of “non-African-American voters” filed suit against the state of Louisiana, arguing that lawmakers acting on the order of the federal court drew a congressional district map that unconstitutionally considered race.The Equal Protection Clause of the US constitution and the 15th amendment’s guarantee that the right to vote cannot be denied because of race says that lawmakers cannot consider race predominantly over other factors when redistricting without a compelling reason. But section 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires lawmakers to consider race when it is necessary to ensure that the voting power of racial minorities has fair representation.The cases are an effort to create conflict between the Voting Rights Act and the constitution as a rationale for a conservative court to chip away, Lakin said.“Congress can enact laws to ensure the 14th and 15th amendments are given life,” she said. “I think that there’s an attempt to create tensions around this and say that there’s a disconnect with the Voting Rights Act. But as the supreme court has stated … the act is a properly, constitutionally authorized use of Congress’s powers.”Such a finding would turn hard-fought civil rights law on its head. It would establish a legal basis for white voters to challenge laws meant to protect minority voters from discrimination.“I would say it’s a perversion of what the Department of Justice has symbolized, specifically what its historic role, its purpose was meant to be,” Lakin said. More

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      Trump cuts shut down an LGBTQ+ youth suicide lifeline. What happens now?

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      Becca Nordeen had just left a town hall for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline when she received some shocking news. As the senior vice-president of crisis intervention at the Trevor Project, a non-profit focused on suicide prevention for queer youth, Nordeen’s team had provided counseling to LGBTQ+ individuals through 988, a national suicide and crisis hotline, for nearly three years. But a few minutes after the meeting, Nordeen received an email notifying her that those services would be terminated in a month.“There’s an emotional hangover of dealing with the grief and the work of shutting down the program,” Nordeen said. “In the days and weeks that have followed, we have looked at, ‘well, there are still young people who need us, and in our remaining service, how can we be there to meet that need?’”From 988’s inception, trained counselors had answered 1.5m online chats, calls or texts from LGBTQ+ youth in crisis. The Trevor Project was one of several groups contracted by the federal agency the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa) to field calls from LGBTQ+ people, nearly 10% of the lifeline’s overall contacts. Nordeen’s team had responded to about half of the requests for services from the high-risk population. Samhsa cited financial constraints as the reason for closing its line geared toward the LGBTQ+ community, though opponents of the closure say that it was politically motivated.The 988 general hotline still exists and specialized services for veterans remain. But free, 24/7 counseling is no longer available for LGBTQ+ youth through the “press 3” option. According to 2023 survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 20% of queer youth attempted suicide between 2022 and 2023. They are more than three times more likely to do so than their cisgender and heterosexual peers.Since the closure of 988’s LGBTQ+ services on 17 July, Nordeen said that the Trevor Project has been “picking up the pieces”. The closure of the 988 lifeline has also meant that the Trevor Project lost the $25m federal contract that allowed the non-profit to more than double its impact by reaching 270,000 people. More than 200 counselors from the Trevor Project were let go upon the national lifeline’s termination. But through donations from individuals and foundations, the non-profit retained 30 counselors who will join their privately funded 24/7 suicide prevention hotline that started in 1998.Now, the Trevor Project has 130 counselors to answer the 20% surge in calls over the past two months. It’s too early to predict how long the influx will last, said Nordeen, but in the meantime, she wants youth to know that the non-profit is still there to help them. Over the past couple of weeks, Nordeen’s team has monitored the volume of requests and reached out to off-duty counselors and their network of more than 400 volunteers to respond to calls and texts during influxes.More than 53,000 people signed the Trevor Project’s petition to protect the lifeline, some of whom shared their personal experiences using it. One signer from California wrote that it saved their child’s life during a mental health crisis last year, and another person from Pennsylvania wrote that they had used the service countless times and would not be here today without it.“These youth resources make us the adults we are today,” a signer from New York wrote in the petition. “They’re not extras or luxuries, they’re lifelines. They’re the affirming spaces, the trusted adults … the moments where we were told: ‘You belong.’ Without them, many of us wouldn’t have made it.”‘An erasure of a population’A Samhsa spokesperson told the Guardian in an email that the “press 3” option had run out of congressionally directed spending and that “continued funding of the Press 3 option threatened to put the entire 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in danger of massive reductions in service”. Congress had appropriated about $519m for 988 in the 2025 federal fiscal year that began on 1 October 2024 and ends on 30 September 2025. The LGBTQ+ services were allotted $33m, which had been exhausted by June, Samhsa said in a statement. “The 988 Lifeline will continue to be a direct connection to immediate support for all Americans,” the spokesperson said, “regardless of their circumstances.”View image in fullscreenBut Dr Sunny Patel, a child psychiatrist and former senior adviser for children, youth and families at Samhsa, said that the agency was under pressure from the Trump administration to close 988’s “press 3” option to adhere to executive orders aimed at dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. “One of the things that I find very challenging to believe is that it’s related to a lack of funding,” Patel said.The National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2020, which created 988 and was signed into law by Donald Trump during his first term, specified that Samhsa must be prepared to provide specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth. But now, the Trump administration has taken a special interest in targeting the healthcare of transgender individuals, Patel said. “They don’t want anything to do with LGBTQ populations,” he added. “There is this air of, ‘Well, everything should be for everybody, and so why should we have any specialized services for anybody?’”Patel said that he believed that the agency was obliged to continue a lifesaving service, and that ending it would generate harm and confusion. “I fear for the direction that we’re going in,” Patel said, “where there’s an erasure of a population and its needs.”Mark Henson, the Trevor Project’s vice-president of government affairs and advocacy, is hopeful that the decision will be reversed, in light of support from members of Congress who are pushing the Trump administration to reinstate the 988 lifeline. In the meantime, the non-profit is fundraising to try to hire more counselors to handle the potential for a continued surge in calls. And in July, the office of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, announced that California would partner with the Trevor Project to train 988 counselors in the state to better serve LGBTQ+ youth.“We’re trying to flood the zone in any way that we can, to the extent that resources allow us to keep these services going,” Henson said, and to ensure that “the LGBTQ+ youth know that there are services out there, that they belong, and that their life has value”.‘What happens if there’s only one?’When the announcement was made that the lifeline would be terminated, Henson heard from youth that they would use 988’s LGBTQ+ services as a backup if surges on the Trevor Project’s hotline prevented them from quickly accessing a counselor and vice versa. “If there was an increase in wait time on one line, they would go to the other. There was an equilibration there that enabled them to have these multiple options,” Henson said. Now, he said, youth are asking: “What happens if there’s only one?”Specialized services from trained counselors provided a safe and affirming space for LGBTQ+ youth, Nordeen said, so that they felt less alone even if they did not have community or local support. “When you take that network away,” Nordeen said, “you are essentially invalidating that young person and their experiences and the crisis that they might feel.”The specialized services were also effective because the counselors sometimes shared similar experiences to the callers and were better able to relate to those in crisis, said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (Nami), where she advocates for policies to help people affected by mental health conditions. Youth and LGBTQ+ people were the most aware of 988, she said, so she’s concerned that dropping services could lead to “tragic outcomes”.“I fear in this time of really heated political rhetoric and partisanship,” Wesolowski said, “that this is another message point that tells young people: ‘You’re not important, you’re not the priority.’”Nami, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and other organizations are working with members of Congress to try to return funding to the hotline in the 2026 fiscal year, or to pass legislation that would require specialized services for LGBTQ+ people. And from a state level, Nami’s local chapters are brainstorming with politicians on potential crisis service options for queer youth in their nearby communities.For Bob Gebbia, the CEO of AFSP, an organization that researches suicide prevention and that advocated for the formation of 988, it is ironic that the specialized service that received widespread bipartisan support during its creation is now the subject of fierce debate. The argument for maintaining LGBTQ+ services is simple, he said: it’s based on need. “It isn’t a political issue,” he said, “it’s a public health issue.” More