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      The supreme court is giving a lawless president the green light | Steven Greenhouse

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      Just when we thought the US supreme court couldn’t sink any lower in bowing and scraping to Donald Trump, it issued a shocking order last week that brushed aside important legal precedents as it ruled in the president’s favor. In that case, the court’s rightwing supermajority essentially gave Trump carte blanche to dismantle the Department of Education, which plays an important role in the lives of the nation’s 50 million public schoolchildren, sending federal money to schools, helping students with disabilities and enforcing anti-discrimination laws.Many legal experts, along with the court’s three liberal justices, protested that the court was letting Trump abolish a congressionally created federal agency without Congress’s approval. In their dissent, the liberal justices warned that the court was undermining Congress’s authority and the constitution’s separation of powers. Not only that, we should all be concerned that the court was giving dangerous new powers to the most authoritarian-minded president in US history.In the Department of Education case, the court issued a one-paragraph, unsigned order that lifted a lower court’s injunction that blocked the Trump administration from making wholesale layoffs that went far toward dismantling the department. Recognizing that Article I of the constitution gives Congress the power to create and fund federal agencies and define their responsibilities, prior supreme court decisions have held that presidents don’t have the power to defy what Congress has legislated and gut an agency without Congress’s approval.In a stinging dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “Only Congress has the power to abolish the Department. The Executive’s task, by contrast, is to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’” Sotomayor added that the court’s order “permitting the Government to proceed with dismantling the Department” was “indefensible”.Making the court’s move even more maddening was its failure to include any reasoning to explain its action – it was the most recent in a string of brief “emergency docket” orders which, without giving any rationale, ruled in Trump’s favor. The rightwing justices might argue that this was a harmless, minor order, merely lifting a lower court’s injunction until the case is fully adjudicated. But by vacating the injunction, the court let Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, speed ahead with her plan to slash the department’s workforce by over 50%, a move that will gut the agency and prevent it from carrying out many functions that Congress authorized it to do. The supreme court’s order is likely to leave the department an empty shell by the time the judiciary issues a final ruling on whether Trump broke the law in gutting the department – and there’s a good chance the judiciary will conclude that Trump acted illegally.The Trump administration insisted that it wasn’t dismantling the education department, that it had merely ordered massive layoffs there to boost efficiency. But the district court judge didn’t buy the administration’s arguments, especially because Trump had spoken so frequently about killing the department.Sotomayor wrote that the constitution requires all presidents, including Trump, to faithfully execute the law. But in this case, Trump seemed eager to execute the Department of Education, while showing scant concern for executing the law. Noting Trump’s repeated vows to abolish the department, Sotomayor chided the supermajority, writing: “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.”With that language, the three dissenting justices were in essence accusing the supermajority of aiding and abetting Trump’s defiance of the law. In the court’s 236-year history, rarely have dissenting justices been so emphatic in criticizing the majority for “expediting” a president’s lawlessness.Sotomayor hammered that point home, writing: “The President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them. That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers. Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle.”If the US constitution means anything, it means that the supreme court should stand up to a president who seeks to maximize his power by defying the law. But far too often today’s rightwing supermajority seems to lean in to back Trump. The court leaned in for Trump last year in Chief Justice John Roberts’ much-criticized ruling that gave Trump and other presidents vast immunity from prosecution. The supermajority leaned in for Trump last month when it gave Elon Musk and his Doge twentysomethings access to sensitive personal information for over 70 million Americans on social security.One would think the nine justices would be eager to strengthen the pillars that uphold our democracy: the separation of powers, fair elections, respect for the law, limits on the power of the executive. But the Roberts court has too often weakened those pillars: by giving Trump huge immunity from prosecution, by turning a blind eye to egregious gerrymandering that prevents fair elections and by letting Trump fire top officials from independent agencies long before their terms end. In late June, the supermajority curbed district courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions to put a brake on Trump’s rampant lawlessness – by that time, lower court judges had issued more than 190 orders blocking or temporarily pausing Trump actions they deemed unlawful.In the Department of Education case, the court again weakened a pillar upholding our democracy; it gave Trump a green light to ignore Congress’s wishes and take a wrecking ball to the department. It’s hugely dismaying that the court undercut Congress’s power at a time when Trump has transformed the nation’s senators and representatives into an assemblage of compliant kittens by intimidating them with a social media bullhorn that bludgeons anyone who dares to defy his wishes. Instead of shoring up Congress’s power in the face of such intimidation, the Roberts court has seemed happy to undermine Congress and hand over more power to Trump.On top of all that, it is galling to see the court issue so many pro-Trump orders without giving any rationale. When the US is so polarized and the court so widely criticized for its many pro-Trump rulings, it would seem incumbent upon the court, when issuing orders, to explain why it’s doing what it’s doing. But the court has repeatedly failed to sufficiently explain its decisions, revealing an unfortunate arrogance and obtuseness.Justice Samuel Alito has complained about those who criticize the court over the rushed, unexplained decisions on its emergency docket. Critics have faulted the court for issuing too many orders through that docket, which uses abbreviated procedures to issue orders that remain in force while the courts adjudicate whether Trump’s actions are legal. Alito maintains that with the crush of cases, the court doesn’t have the time to write its usual, carefully wrought decisions.Alito has suggested, rather outrageously, that many critics of the court are engaged in improper bullying. He said that some critics of the emergency docket suggest it has been “captured by a dangerous cabal” that uses “sneaky” methods. Those criticisms, Alito warned, fuel “unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court”.When the court issues one order after another that favors Trump, the most lawless president in US history, often without explanation, the court should expect to be criticized for doing too little to defend our democracy and the rule of law. Alito shouldn’t be so thin-skinned or paranoid about supposed intimidation; he does have life tenure.The court’s critics aren’t seeking to intimidate the justices. Rather they are pleading with the rightwing supermajority to stop bowing to Trump and become more resolute in enforcing the law against the most authoritarian president in history, a president who said he could “terminate” parts of the constitution and who claims sweeping powers to singlehandedly nullify laws.The court’s supermajority should remember: we are supposed to have a government of laws, not of strongmen.

      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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      Trump’s shift on Ukraine has been dramatic – but will it change the war? | Rajan Menon

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      Donald Trump presents himself as a peerless president, an unrivaled negotiator, even a “genius”. So it’s a unique moment when he comes close – I emphasize the qualifier –to conceding that another leader has outfoxed him. Trump suggested as much recently when characterizing Vladimir Putin’s modus operandi. “Putin,” he told reporters on 13 July, “really surprised a lot of people. He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening.” Melania Trump may have contributed to this reassessment. As Trump recounted recently, when he told her about a “wonderful conversation” with the Russian leader, she responded, “Oh, really? Another city was just hit.”Trump’s new take on Putin is a break with the past. His esteem for Putin – whose decisions he has described as “savvy” and “genius” – has contrasted starkly with his derisive comments about the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he memorably disrespected during a White House meeting and even blamed for starting the war.As recently as February, he declared that Russia’s invasion didn’t matter to the United States because, unlike Europe, it was separated from Ukraine by “a big, big beautiful ocean”. He criticized Joe Biden’s assistance to Ukraine as a waste of taxpayers’ money.Now, Trump has not only changed his view of Putin, stunning many within his “America First” MagaA movement; he’s decided to start arming Ukraine. Well, sort of.Trump has gone beyond in effect conceding that Putin has played him. He has decided to sell military equipment to individual European countries so that they can supply Ukraine and restock their arsenals with purchases from the United States. The president formally announced the change during his 14 July meeting with Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general.There was more. Trump warned Putin that if he did not accept a ceasefire – which he has steadfastly refused, just as he has ignored Trump’s demand to stop bombing Ukraine’s cities – within 50 days, Russia would be slammed with tariffs as high as 100%, as would countries that continued to trade with it after the deadline.Two things are clear. First, Trump’s perspective on Putin has changed, unexpectedly and dramatically. Second, a war that Trump once said was none of America’s business now apparently matters. The president said European countries would buy “top of the line” American military equipment worth “billions of dollars” to arm Ukraine. According to one report citing “a source familiar with the plan”, the total will be $10bn.This all sounds like a very big deal. But here’s where it becomes important to go beyond the headlines and soundbites and delve into the details.Take the $10bn figure. That’s certainly not chump change. Moreover, the main piece of equipment specified so far, the Patriot “long range, high altitude, all weather” missile defense system, will provide desperately needed relief to Ukrainian city dwellers, who have endured relentless waves of drone attacks – several hundred a night – followed by missiles that slice through overwhelmed defenses. Ukraine has some Patriots but needs more: it’s a vast country with a dozen cities whose populations exceed 400,000.However, a Patriot battery (launchers, missiles, a radar system, a control center, antenna masts, and a power generator) costs $1bn, the missiles alone $4m apiece. Ukraine may not need 10 Patriot batteries, but even a smaller number will consume a large proportion of the $10bn package. The other system that has been mentioned is the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm), which combines stealth technology and GPS guidance with a 230-mile range. Ukraine will be able to use its American-made F-16 jets to fire Jassms into Russia from positions beyond the reach of Russian air defense systems. But a single Jassm costs about $1.5m, so the costs will add up quickly. Additional items have been mentioned but only generically; still, their price must also be figured in, bearing in mind that the war could drag on. So, $10bn could be depleted quickly.Moreover, beyond a certain point the US cannot sell equipment from its own stocks without regard to its military readiness requirements. Precisely for that reason, the defense department recently declined to send Ukraine some of the equipment promised under Joe Biden.And Trump has not said that there will be follow-on sales to benefit Ukraine once the $10bn mark is reached. Even if he were to change his mind, individual European countries would be able to buy only so much American weaponry without straining their finances, especially because France and Italy have opted out of the arrangement. Trump has been uninterested in joining the recent move by the UK and the EU to impose a $47.60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil sales, toughening the $60 limit the west enacted in 2022. Finally, Trump isn’t going to resume Biden’s multibillion-dollar military assistance packages – 70-plus tranches of equipment, according to the DoD.Trump’s 50-day tariff deadline permits Putin to continue his summer offensive, and may even provide an incentive to accelerate it. Russia has already shrugged off Trump’s tariff threat. Its exports to the US in 2024 amounted to $526m, a tiny fraction of its global sales.By contrast, Trump’s secondary tariffs will hurt Russia, which earned $192bn in 2024 from its global exports of oil and related products, much of that sum from India and China. If the president follows through with his threat, Beijing will surely retaliate, and the consequence will be painful: the United States exports to China totaled $144bn last year. Will Trump proceed anyway, and during his ongoing trade wars, which have already started increasing prices in the US? His track record on tariff threats leaves room for doubt.Ukraine’s leaders are understandably elated by Trump’s reappraisal of Putin. But it’s premature to conclude that it’s a turning point that could change the war’s trajectory. Washington’s new policy may prove far less momentous than Maga critics fear and not quite as transformative as Kyiv and its western supporters hope for.

      Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies More

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      According to our research, 11% of Trump voters can be won back. Here’s how | Dustin Guastella

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      To win in 2028, Democrats need to win back a lot of working-class voters, including a lot of blue-collar Donald Trump voters. Doing so requires dispensing with some long-held myths that have captured the minds of Democratic party strategists. The first is that persuading working-class Trump supporters is a waste of time. They are – so the story goes – so totally absorbed in Magaland that there is no winning them back. Why bother? On the flip side, some liberals insist that some of these voters are winnable, if only Democrats can make themselves more like Trump by embracing tax cuts and tough talk. A third notion, favored by progressives, says that if liberals just crank the progressive economic message up to 11, blue-collar voters will come running home.The truth is, none of these strategies are particularly useful. Because none of them take working-class interests, values and attitudes seriously enough. Fortunately, new research from the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) can help shed light on what working-class voters actually want. And it can offer the Democrats a path out of the wilderness.In a report published by Jacobin magazine, we analyzed working-class responses to 128 survey questions from academic surveys stretching back to 1960. We looked at class attitudes toward major topics like immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, social norms and economic policies. The result is the most sophisticated, comprehensive and up-to-date portrait of American working-class social and economic attitudes available. And it provides the best evidence yet for the potential of a certain kind of populist politics.Our work shows that working-class voters are, and have always been, decidedly less progressive than their middle- and upper-class counterparts when it comes to social and cultural issues. But the story is more complicated than it seems. It’s not the case, for instance, that blue-collar workers are becoming more socially conservative. Instead of a rising tide of reaction, we show that working-class attitudes have actually drifted slowly toward more socially and culturally liberal positions over decades. At the same time, however, middle- and upper-class Americans have raced toward uber-liberalism, especially in recent years, opening up a yawning class gap on social attitudes. A first step to winning back workers is closing that gap.On the economic front, the situation is different. Most working-class voters are what we call “economic egalitarians” – they favor government interventions to level the playing field, they take inequality seriously, and they support programs that increase the economic and social power of working people. Large majorities favor raising the minimum wage, import limits to protect jobs, increasing spending on social security and Medicare, using federal power to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, expanding federal funding for public schools, making it easier to join a union, increasing infrastructure spending, implementing a millionaires’ tax, and even the notion of a job guarantee. Luckily for Democrats, middle- and upper-class voters have drifted to the left on many of these economic issues, embracing a more social democratic outlook. That bodes well for developing an economic platform that can appeal to the broadest electoral coalition. Yet there is an important caveat here. While working-class voters are strongly in support of a range of progressive measures, they are wary of big new government programs, skeptical of new regulations and broadly suspicious of welfare spending. Their economic progressivism is jobs-centered and pro-worker, not built around cash transfers and expansive social services.So working-class voters are more socially moderate than the middle- and upper-class voters that make up the Democratic party’s core support. Yet they are also broadly economic egalitarians – on some questions even more so than their well-educated and well-heeled counterparts. They agree with a populist economic agenda but not an excessively liberal cultural one. The path to winning them back, and stitching together a majority, then, is clear: adopt social populism. Embrace working-class social and cultural attitudes and a worker-focused economic program that promises to raise the minimum wage, protect industrial jobs from free trade, increase infrastructure spending, expand social security, strengthen Medicare and guarantee full employment.And what about blue-collar Trump voters? After analyzing the broad working class we tried to find just how many Trump-voting workers might be won over by that kind of program. In fact, a lot of them hold progressive views across a range of economic issues. We found that “over 20% of working-class Trump voters were in favor of an economic policy package that included increasing federal funding for public schools, increasing federal funding for social security, and increasing the minimum wage.” Of course, many of these same voters have such conservative views on social issues that they would never vote for a Democrat. But are there any working-class populists in the Trump coalition who hold socially moderate attitudes? There are.Eleven per cent of them, to be exact.We found that about 11% of Trump voters maintained socially moderate and economically egalitarian views.Now, that may not sound like a lot, but it’s a significant slice of the electorate, comprising about 5% of the total. No Democrat could win all of those voters. But given that these are working-class voters, many of whom are concentrated in swing states, each single vote has tremendous electoral value. In fact, even winning half of these voters – a little more than 2% of the electorate – would be significant enough to sway a national election in our age of razor-thin vote margins. Moreover, it could set the Democrats on the path to a more durable majority in the future.Given all this we can put to bed the various myths about working-class voters – that they are bigots, hardened reactionaries, hopelessly unwinnable, etc – and instead embrace a strategy that can win. With the right kind of candidate (preferably a working-class one) and the right kind of political message, Democrats can win back a working-class majority.The evidence is clear: it’s social populism or bust.

      Dustin Guastella is director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics More

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      Summer of Our Discontent by Thomas Chatterton Williams review – the liberal who hates leftists

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      Thomas Chatterton Williams, a public intellectual of some standing in the US, dislikes the Trumpian right for its erratic authoritarianism. But he dislikes its hysterical leftwing critics too – arguably with more vehemence. He takes great pride in having no truck with tribes, but he does belong to one: like halitosis, as Terry Eagleton quipped, ideology appears to be only what the other person has. Williams may think he is a freethinker above the fray, but he has a creed – and it is liberal complacency.His 2010 debut memoir Losing My Cool was the story of – as the subtitle had it – Love, Literature and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd. Rap, he declared, was not so much a genre as a subculture, seducing young black men into a world of crime. That, apparently, would have been Williams’s fate (when he physically attacks his girlfriend, for instance, hip-hop lyrics shoulder the blame) had it not been for Pappy, his disciplinarian father, who foisted 15,000 books on him.The classics beat crime in the end, and we leave Williams on his happy road to intellectualdom, absorbing Sartre in Parisian cafes. But it wasn’t enough for him to merely present his own story; Williams elected to hold up his life as an example for black Americans. “See, you can be just like me” is the breathless gist of Losing My Cool. It never struck him that he might have had certain class advantages – a father with a PhD in sociology; a mixed-race heritage; an upbringing in white, bourgeois, suburban New Jersey – that make him somewhat unrepresentative as a role model.Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, Williams’s second memoir, published just before the pandemic, served up more hyper-agentic advice. The springboard for these post-racial reflections was the birth of his daughter. Bearing, as babies tend to do, a resemblance to her mother, who is white and French, Williams’s child is blond. It follows that there is an arbitrariness to the whole business of race, from which Williams swiftly emancipates himself. Then comes the counsel: black Americans would do well to follow in his footsteps by “transcending” race themselves. Conceding that this may be an easier proposition for him and his white-passing daughter, he exhorts mixed-race people to “form an avant garde when it comes to rejecting race”.Williams’s grand subject being himself, now we have a third memoir. Summer of Our Discontent takes a caustic look at Black Lives Matter from the lofty vantage point of his Parisian garret. At the outset, he tells us that the self-preening, race-mad identity politics of left-leaning liberals has fostered atomisation and precluded solidarity. As a consequence, the illiberal, unhinged right, now united behind Trump, has stolen a march on them. But from this not unreasonable edifice, Williams throws up a enormous scaffolding of enemies, which comes to encompass anyone and everyone engaging in some form or another of collective action. Ultimately, by the end, it appears that Williams’s beef is not so much with Trump as with his leftwing critics.This is a strange, muddled book. On the one hand, Williams emphasises the primacy of class over race in the US. George Floyd, he says, was not your average African American: he was poor, unemployed, and had a criminal record. Horrific as his killing by a white policeman was, it was unduly racialised by BLM. Fewer than 25 unarmed black civilians are killed by police annually. Most black people will never find themselves in Floyd’s shoes, Williams contends.While class is important for Williams, class politics isn’t. There is only so much that initiatives to lift the poor from poverty can achieve, we are told, because “the fundamental political unit, going back to Aristotle, remains the family”. The left has got it all wrong, obsessing over the “macro level” when real change apparently happens at the individual level.Williams’s strategy is to cherrypick the most ludicrous examples of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to smear the entire left. Sympathy from a few celebrities for the actor Jussie Smollett – who was accused of faking a hate-crime against himself, which he denied – is taken as evidence of the left’s crumbling “moral authority and credibility”. BLM, he claims, was driven by “an ascendant raider class” of middle-class and not always black activists seizing institutional power – such as when a “multi-ethnic mob of junior employees” ousted New York Times opinion editor James Bennet for publishing Senator Tom Cotton’s call to deploy troops against BLM protests.Williams’s other objections appear to be mostly aesthetic. He expends much energy pillorying the performative activism of such BLM “allies” as “the official Twitter account of the wildly popular British children’s cartoon Peppa Pig”, which tweeted a black square in solidarity. Later, visiting BLM-ravaged Portland, he mourns that “a beloved statue of an elk has been toppled”. This in a town with a “well-deserved reputation” for “exquisite gastronomy”. Quelle horreur.He concludes by suggesting that the left and right are just as odious as one another. The storming of the Capitol in 2021, he says, had a mimetic quality, the populist right “aping” the “flamboyant reflex” of the unruly left. With such invidious comparisons, and with such a dim view of collective action, Williams is unable to make the case as to how precisely his homeland is to move towards a post-racial utopia. Excelling in sending up bien-pensant opinion, he has no answers. Fixated on slagging off the left, he has marooned himself on an island of vacuity. So when he articulates a positive vision of the future, all he offers are new age nostrums such as “reinvestment in lived community” and “truth, excellence, plain-old unqualified justice”.His plea for perspective is similarly misplaced. Young black Americans, Williams whinges, have been seduced by the race pessimism of the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates, his more popular nemesis. He enjoins us to look on the bright side: the racial wage gap is closing; black school attainment rates are nearing white levels.Williams’s Panglossian outlook is, I suspect, a form of American parochialism. His homeland, he says, is a “society that is frankly more democratic, multi-ethnic, and egalitarian than any other in recorded history”. The Gini coefficient and Democracy Index beg to differ. There are eminently sensible reasons for race pessimism in America. Segregation and ghettoisation are facts of life. The wage gap between black and white people is still a staggering 21% (in Britain, it’s under 6%). White Americans live three-and-a-half years longer than black Americans on average (black Britons outlive white Britons).Collectively, it was not the complacent optimists (who declared we had never had it so good) but rather the do-gooding pessimists (that demanded change at the dreaded “macro level”) who overthrew slavery and fought for civil rights. Individually, too, pessimism pays. For someone who sets great store by personal agency, Williams will no doubt appreciate Billy Wilder’s melancholy observation – occasioned by losing three relatives at Auschwitz – that “the optimists died in the gas chambers; the pessimists have pools in Beverly Hills”. More

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      Cables and notes reveal UK view on Howard’s personality, Australia’s part in Kyoto ‘awkward squad’ and an aborted cricket match

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      Plus ça change. At the turn of the millennium, Australia was in the throes of “one of its periodic bouts of angst over its place in the Asia-Pacific and the wider world”. It was doubting the reliability of its ally the US, wrestling with the issue of Indigenous reconciliation, and attracting criticism for its lack of commitment to addressing the climate crisis.And it was trying to organise a game of cricket against the English.Just released papers from Britain’s National Archives shed light on intergovernmental correspondence between the governments of Australia and the UK before a prime ministerial visit to London in 2000 to mark Australia Week, and the centenary of the Australian constitution.Correspondence between the governments of the conservative prime minister John Howard and the UK Labour leader Tony Blair reveal a suite of problems still being grappled with in Australia a quarter of a century later.“Personality notes” written for Blair describe Howard as a leader who had “started well” as prime minister, particularly on gun control after the Port Arthur massacre, but who “appeared to lose his way” during his first term. Importantly for the UK, it saw Howard as an “instinctive monarchist … well-disposed towards Britain”. The sketch says Howard was a “strong family man”, significantly influenced by his wife, Janette, that he was a “fanatical follower” of cricket, and a “great admirer” of Sir Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi.In a scene-setting cable dated June 2000 prepared for Blair, the UK high commissioner noted: “Australia is going through one of its periodic bouts of angst over its place in the Asia-Pacific and the wider world”.It said Australia took “enormous national pride” in its intervention in Timor-Leste the year before (despite significant damage to its relationship with Indonesia), saying that the Australian-led peacekeeping mission “raised Australia’s stock in Asia”.

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      However, “critics argue that it simply hardened a view widely held in Asia that Australia is ambivalent, even antagonist, towards Asia”.Timor-Leste, the cable noted, had also strained Canberra’s relations with Washington DC.“The [US’s] perceived reluctance to assist Australia is seen as an indication that the US could not be relied on automatically in circumstances that are of little interest to it.“More broadly, some are doubting that the US will retain interest in the alliance unless Australia increases its commitment, in terms of defence spending.“The litmus test is Taiwan: having to choose between the US and China is the nightmare scenario on Australia’s strategic and diplomatic horizon. Few doubt Australia would choose the US but the calculations are becoming less clearcut.”In 2025, the US defense secretary has insisted Australia lift defence spending to 3.5% of its GDP, while Trump administration officials have demanded assurances from Australia it would support the US in any conflict over Taiwan.On climate, Blair was briefed that although Australia had signed the Kyoto protocol to cut emissions, it had not ratified the treaty.The British government suspected Howard would not raise the matter during the two leaders’ meeting.“If Howard doesn’t mention it, you should raise climate change,” Blair’s brief states. “The Australians are in the awkward squad on Kyoto (alongside eg the Russians and the US): you should tell Howard how important we think the issues are, and encourage Australia to do more.”In the quarter-century since, Australian governments have been consistently criticised internationally for failing to adequately address the climate crisis. A federal court judge last week found previous Australian governments had “paid scant, if any, regard to the best available science” in setting emissions reductions targets.Other files reveal concern within Blair’s government about an Indigenous delegation that visited the UK in late 1999.Leading the delegation was Patrick Dodson, a Yawuru elder and later senator, often referred to as the “father of reconciliation”. During the same trip, he met Queen Elizabeth II as part of a larger effort to foster reconciliation.However, a memo written by Blair’s foreign affairs adviser, John Sawers, reflects angst within the prime minister’s office about a proposed meeting with the delegation, referring to an apparent intervention by the then Australian high commissioner, Philip Flood.“The Australians are pretty wound up about the idea of you seeing the Aborigines at all,” Sawers wrote to Blair. “Their high commissioner rang me to press you not to see them: they were troublemakers – it would be like [the then Australian prime minister] John Howard seeing people from Northern Ireland who were trying to stir up problems for the UK.”The memo suggested: “Can’t we plead diary problems?” The word “yes” is written in answer to this, in handwriting that resembles Blair’s.A quarter-century later, Dodson was a key advocate for an Indigenous voice to parliament, put to Australians in a referendum in 2023. The voice proposal was ultimately defeated.Also within the National Archives files is a prescient document from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the UK High Commission in Canberra. It reflects on a visit from a “rising star in the Australian Labor party and a useful contact for the FCO”.The “rising star” had reflected on Australia’s place in its region (and was summarised by an FCO official): “There were two main problems to Australia being part of Asia: a large slice of the region did not accept them, probably because of a common experience of European occupation – and Australia were too white; and Australians saw themselves as Australians rather than Asian, or indeed Europeans or Americans.”The visitor’s name was Kevin Rudd, the man who in 2007 would replace Howard as the next prime minister of Australia.As the 2000 Australia Week visit from prime minister Howard approached, a flurry of correspondence between the two governments sought to put the finishing touches to the trip. The files contain flight details, hotel bookings, and to-the-minute travel arrangements. There are discussions of trumpet fanfares and processional routes.One idea ultimately discarded was a cricket match proposed by Howard, to be played between Australian and English XIs at a ground near Chequers, the British prime ministerial country house.“The teams could, perhaps, consist of one or two current Test players, a recently retired great cricketer or two, with the balance being young players of promise.”Blair’s private secretary, Philip Barton, wrote in a memo to the UK prime minister: “I suspect the last thing you will want to do is go to a cricket match on the Saturday. But if we just say no, this would no doubt come out and you would look unsporting.”Barton proposed getting former Tory prime minister John Major, an avowed cricket fan, to raise an XI on Blair’s behalf, “but it may not be enough to stop the prime minister having to go to at least the start of the match”. A third option was to “turn it into a charity match”.The match did not go ahead. More

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      Trump news at a glance: immigration agents to ‘flood’ US sanctuary cities as marines withdraw from LA

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      The Trump administration is targeting US sanctuary cities in the next phase of its deportation drive, after an off-duty law enforcement officer was allegedly shot in New York City by an undocumented person with a criminal record.Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline border tsar, vowed to “flood the zone” with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents, saying: “Every sanctuary city is unsafe. Sanctuary cities are sanctuaries for criminals and President Trump’s not going to tolerate it.”In Los Angeles, meanwhile, 700 active-duty US marines was being withdrawn, the Pentagon confirmed, more than a month after Trump deployed them to the city against the objections of local leaders.Here’s more on these and the day’s other key Trump administration stories at a glance.Trump’s border tsar to target US sanctuary cities Tom Homan has vowed to “flood the zone” of sanctuary cities with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents in an all-out bid to overcome the lack of cooperation he said the government faced from Democrat-run municipalities in its quest to arrest and detain undocumented people.The pledge from Donald Trump’s hardline border tsar followed the arrest of two undocumented men from the Dominican Republic after an off-duty Customs and Border Protection officer suffered gunshot wounds in an apparent robbery attempt in New York City on Saturday night.Read the full story700 active-duty marines withdrawn from LAThe Pentagon confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the full deployment of 700 active-duty US marines was being withdrawn from Los Angeles more than a month after Donald Trump deployed them to the city in a move state and city officials called unnecessary and provocative.Read the full storyTrump tax bill to add $3.4tn to US debt over next decadeThe president’s signature tax and spending bill will add $3.4tn to the national debt over the next decade, according to new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released on Monday.Major cuts to Medicaid and the national food stamps program are estimated to save the country $1.1tn – only a chunk of the $4.5tn in lost revenue that will come from the bill’s tax cuts.Read the full storyLegal group asks DoJ to look into ‘illegal DEI practices’ at Johns HopkinsA legal group founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller has requested the justice department investigate “illegal DEI practices” at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.In a letter to the justice department’s civil rights division, America First Legal asked an assistant attorney general to investigate and issue enforcement actions against the prestigious medical university for embracing “a discriminatory DEI regime as a core institutional mandate”.Read the full storyHundreds of Nasa workers rebuke ‘arbitrary’ Trump cutsAlmost 300 current and former US Nasa employees – including at least four astronauts – have issued a scathing dissent opposing the Trump administration’s sweeping and indiscriminate cuts to the agency, which they say threaten safety, innovation and national security.Read the full storyTrump officials release FBI records on MLK JrThe Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.Read the full storyEpstein accuser urged FBI to investigate Trump decades ago – reportAn artist who first accused Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell of sexual assault almost three decades ago has told the New York Times that she had urged law enforcement officials back then to investigate powerful people in their orbit – including Donald Trump.The artist, Maria Farmer, was among the first women to report Epstein and his partner Maxwell of sexual crimes in 1996 when, according to the new interview with the Times, she also identified Trump among others close to Epstein as worthy of attention.Read the full storyHarvard argues Trump’s $2.6bn cuts are illegalHarvard University appeared in federal court on Monday to make the case that the Trump administration illegally cut $2.6bn from the college – a major test of the administration’s efforts to reshape higher education institutions by threatening their financial viability.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Michael Bloomberg is calling on Senate Republicans to oust Robert F Kennedy Jr from his post as Trump’s health secretary.

      The US Federal Reserve is pushing back against claims from the White House that it is undergoing extravagant renovations with a video tour showing the central bank’s ongoing construction.

      Hunter Biden gave a profanity-laced interview during which he attacked George Clooney, denied owning the cocaine found in the White House and spoke about his father’s last efforts in the 2024 race before dropping out.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 20 July 2025. More

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      Trump tax bill to add $3.4tn to US debt over next decade, new analysis finds

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      Donald Trump’s new tax bill will add $3.4tn to the national debt over the next decade, according to new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released Monday.Major cuts to Medicaid and the national food stamps program are estimated to save the country $1.1tn – only a chunk of the $4.5tn in lost revenue that will come from the bill’s tax cuts.The cuts will come through stricter work requirements and eligibility checks for both programs. The CBO estimates the bill will leave 10 million Americans without health insurance by 2034.The bill also makes permanent tax cuts that were first introduced by Republicans in Trump’s 2017 tax bill. The cuts included a reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 35% to 21%, and an increase to the standard deduction. It also includes a tax dedication for workers receiving tips and overtime pay, and removes tax credits that support wind and solar power development, which could ultimately raise energy costs for Americans.Increased costs will also come from boosts to immigration and border security funding. The bill allocates nearly $170bn to immigration law enforcement, including the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency and funding for a wall along the southern border.The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that, with interest, the bill will actually add $4.1tn to the deficit. The US national debt currently stands at more than $36tn.“It’s still hard to believe that policymakers just added $4tn to the debt,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement. “Modelers from across the ideological spectrum universally agree that any sustained economic benefits are likely to be modest, or negative, and not one serious estimate claims this bill will improve our financial situation.”Trump signed the bill into law earlier this month after weeks of debate among congressional Republicans. The bill passed the Senate 51-50 before it passed the House 218-214.While Republicans largely celebrated the bill, with Trump calling it “the most popular bill ever signed in the history of the country”, only a quarter of Americans in a CBS/YouGov poll said that the bill will help their family.Democrats meanwhile universally criticized the bill, with Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee saying that while “the GOP continues to cash their billionaire donors’ checks, their constituents will starve, lose critical medical care, lose their jobs – and yes, some will die as a result of this bill.” More

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      Pentagon withdraws all 700 marines from Los Angeles – live updates

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      The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the entire deployment of 700 active-duty US marines is being withdrawn from Los Angeles.The redeployment of the marines comes after 2,000 National Guard troops were withdrawn from the city last week. The troops were sent to the city last month by the federal government after violence broke out on the fringes on protests against immigration enforcement sweeps in LA.According to Parnell, the deployment of the marines, which state and city officials called unnecessary and provocative at a time when protests against immigration raids were already under control, had achieved it aim.“With stability returning to Los Angeles, the Secretary has directed the redeployment of the 700 Marines whose presence sent a clear message: lawlessness will not be tolerated”, Parnell said in a written statement. “Their rapid response, unwavering discipline, and unmistakable presence were instrumental in restoring order and upholding the rule of law. We’re deeply grateful for their service, and for the strength and professionalism they brought to this mission.”Citing concerns over possible violations of bribery laws, senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden wrote on Monday to David Ellison, whose company Skydance is about to buy CBS owner Paramount, to ask if he struck a “secret side deal” with Donald Trump in exchange for federal approval of the purchase, or played any part in the decision to cancel Trump critic Stephen Colbert’s late-night CBS show.In their letter, the senators asked Ellison, whose father Larry Ellison is the co-founder of Oracle and a friend of Trump, to reply to 7 detailed questions, probing whether he was involved in any “quid-pro-quo arrangement” that could violate the law.The questions about a possible secret side deal were prompted, in part, by Trump’s own claims, after he accepted $16 million from Paramount to drop his lawsuit over the routine editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris last year, that the deal was worth twice as much.There have been recent reports that Ellison has been considering a possible role for the conservative journalist Bari Weiss in remaking CBS News.Among the questions Ellison is asked to reply to by 4 August are:

      “Is there currently any arrangement under which you or Skydance will provide compensation, advertising, or promotional activities that in any way assist President Trump, his family, his presidential library, or other Administration officials?” the senators ask Ellison in the letter.

      “Have you personally discussed with President Trump, any of his family members, any Trump Administration officials, or presidential library fund personnel any matters related to the Paramount-Skydance transaction?”

      “Has Skydance agreed or have you personally agreed to make changes to Skydance’s content or Paramount’s or CBS’s content at the request of the Trump Administration, to facilitate approval of the transaction?”
      The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the entire deployment of 700 active-duty US marines is being withdrawn from Los Angeles.The redeployment of the marines comes after 2,000 National Guard troops were withdrawn from the city last week. The troops were sent to the city last month by the federal government after violence broke out on the fringes on protests against immigration enforcement sweeps in LA.According to Parnell, the deployment of the marines, which state and city officials called unnecessary and provocative at a time when protests against immigration raids were already under control, had achieved it aim.“With stability returning to Los Angeles, the Secretary has directed the redeployment of the 700 Marines whose presence sent a clear message: lawlessness will not be tolerated”, Parnell said in a written statement. “Their rapid response, unwavering discipline, and unmistakable presence were instrumental in restoring order and upholding the rule of law. We’re deeply grateful for their service, and for the strength and professionalism they brought to this mission.”Democrats this afternoon are forcing another vote to push for the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents, further placing pressure on Republican lawmakers, according to a report from Politico.The Democratic lawmakers are planning to offer Republican representative Thomas Massie’s bill as an amendment during a Rules Committee meeting Monday afternoon. Massie’s bill, a bipartisan effort, seeks to push for the release of Epstein-related documents.On Monday, Politico also reported that the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson does not have plans to put forward a Republican-led alternative Epstein bill before August’s recess break.The White House is removing the Wall Street Journal from the group of reporters covering Trump’s trip to Scotland, Politico reports.The Wall Street Journal’s removal from this upcoming weekend’s press pool follows the paper’s report that alleged Trump wrote a sexually suggestive letter to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. Trump has sued the paper and its owners for its report, demanding $10 billion.“Due to the Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the thirteen outlets on board,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Politico. “Every news organization in the entire world wishes to cover President Trump, and the White House has taken significant steps to include as many voices as possible.”According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump wrote a “bawdy” note to Epstein for his 2003 birthday.The Trump administration has flouted court orders in just over one-third of the lawsuits filed against its policies, a Washington Post analysis found. The Post’s analysis says it suggests a “widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system” by the White House.A number of plaintiffs that have sued the Trump administration say that agencies and officials are ignoring rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence and quietly acting in defiance of court rulings.Since Trump took office, there has been a battle between the White House and the judiciary, during which officials have defied numerous court orders. Trump administration officials have repeatedly criticized federal judges as “activist judges.”According to the Post, despite judges appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents agreeing that the administration is flouting court orders, “none have taken punitive action to try to force compliance.”The Post analyzed 337 lawsuits filed against the Trump administration since January. Courts have ruled in 165 of the lawsuits. And the Post found that the Trump administration is accused of defying court orders in 57 of those cases.Two suspects are in custody for the alleged shooting and wounding of a customs officer in New York, officials said on Monday, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports.During a press conference on Monday, homeland security secretary Krsiti Noem and Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, also said the episode was a direct result of New York’s sanctuary city policies and the approach to border security under Joe Biden’s presidency.On Saturday night, an off-duty customs officer was shot and wounded during an apparent attempted robbery. The officer was not in uniform at the time and police said there was indication he was targeted because of his occupation.A suspect in the incident, Miguel Francisco Mora Nunez, was later taken into custody after turning up at a hospital in the Bronx with gunshot wounds to the leg and groin.During Monday’s press conference, Noem also focused on the profile of Nunez, who she said had been arrested four times since entering the US illegally in 2023. She also discussed the profile of his accomplice, Christhian Aybar-Berroa, saying he had “entered the country illegally in 2022 under the Biden Administration and was ordered for final removal in 2023 by an immigration judge.”“There’s absolutely zero reason that someone who has scum of the earth like this should be running loose on the streets of New York City,” Noem said, referring to Nunez. “Arrested four different times in New York City and because of the mayor’s policies and was released back to do harm to people and to individuals living in the city. Make no mistake, this officer is in the hospital today, fighting for his life because of the policies of the mayor of the city and the city council and the people that were in charge of keeping the public safe.”Homan said “sanctuary cities are cities for criminals.” He said the administration would “flood the zone” with immigration, customs and enforcement (Ice) officials to detain undocumented people in sanctuary cities.“What we’re going to do [is deploy] more agents in New York City to look for that bad guy so sanctuary cities get exactly what they don’t want – more agents in the community and more agents in the worksite,” he said.“I’m sick and tired of reading in the media every day how Ice is not doing what the Trump administration has promised, that we’re not arresting criminals, that most of the people we arrested are not criminals. I look at the numbers every day. The numbers I looked at [are] 130,000 arrests and 90,000 criminals. Do the math. That’s 70%.”Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has blamed the sanctuary city policies applied by Democratic mayors for the wounding of an off-duty Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer in an attempted robbery, allegedly carried out by undocumented immigrants, one of whom was reportedly subject to a deportation order, the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports.The 42-year-old officer sustained gunshot wounds to his face and arm after being attacked in a Manhattan park shortly before midnight on Saturday night.He was shot after drawing his service weapon after being approached by two men on a scooter as he sat on a bench with a female companion. The officer was not in uniform at the time and police said there was indication he was targeted because of his occupation.At a news conference on Monday, Noem, flanked by Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, and several law enforcement officials, said the episode was a direct result of the sanctuary city policy adopted by New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, as well as the approach to border security adopted during Joe Biden’s presidency. Noem also criticized Adams during the conference.Noem’s criticism of Adams came despite widespread reports of a deal made between the mayor and the Trump administration that involved New York giving greater cooperation than before on immigration. The agreement was reached around the same time that the justice department moved to dismiss federal corruption charges against Adams, although the mayor has insisted there was no quid pro quo.Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles had also suffered crime waves, according to Noem, because their mayors and municipalities were “protecting criminals” by declaring them sanctuary cities, whereby local authorities give only limited cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agencies.President Donald Trump has appointed Mike Rigas, a Bush-era official from the General Services Administration (GSA), as acting administrator of the agency, Politico reports.The move is seen as a further step by the White House to curb Elon Musk’s influence in the GSA, which is one of the federal agencies that Musk’s initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) nearly fully controlled.Rigas previously worked under the Trump administration as Deputy Secretary of State for management and resources. The former acting administrator was selected by a Musk ally to lead DOGE. The Rigas appointment is seen as a strategic move by the White House to rein in DOGE leadership.Border czar Tom Homan said Monday that immigration officials will escalate operations in New York and other so-called sanctuary cities.“Sanctuary cities are now our priority,” Homan said. “We’re gonna flood the zone.”Homan’s comments follow an attempted robbery and shooting of an armed, off-duty customs officer in Manhattan this weekend. The New York City Police Commissioner said the officer was not likely targeted due to his employment.When two men approached the off-duty officer to rob him and a companion in a Manhattan park, the officer withdrew a gun and engaged in a shootout with one of the robbers. The robber was arrested after being taken to a hospital. The customs officer is recovering from gunshots.Trump administration officials have said that so-called sanctuary policies were to blame for the shooting. New York and other cities have policies that limit local government cooperation in federal immigration matters.President Donald Trump threatened to appeal a federal judge’s decision in Massachusetts amid the ongoing and escalating battle between his administration and Harvard University.In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the federal judge hearing the case is a “TOTAL DISASTER” and that when “she rules against us, we will IMMEDIATELY appeal, and WIN.”Massachusetts district judge Judge Allison Burroughs heard arguments from lawyers with Harvard and the federal government on Monday, in a case that may decide whether the Trump administration’s attempts to cut billions of dollars in university funding is legal. Burroughs has not yet ruled on Monday’s arguments.In his Truth Social post, Trump also said Harvard is “anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-America.”The US Border Patrol chief patrol agent for the El Centro Sector in southern California posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) saying that federal immigration officials “are not leaving” Los Angeles until “the mission is accomplished.”“Better get used to us now because this is going to be normal very soon,” Gregory K. Bovino, the Border Patrol agent said in a video. “I don’t work for [Los Angeles mayor] Karen Bass, the federal government doesn’t work for Karen Bass.”Border Patrol and other immigration officials have been conducting operations in Los Angeles to arrest, detain and deport undocumented immigrants. The operations gained widespread backlash in early June. Protests, opposing immigration arrests, engulfed certain areas of the city.Texas’s Republican-led state legislature is pushing to redistrict the state in a way that would favor Republicans when electing House representatives, the Washington Post reports.During the state’s special legislative session, beginning today, Trump is pushing for lawmakers to redistrict the state to add up to five more House districts.National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an anti-gerrymandering group, threatened to file lawsuits to stop attempts to redistrict the state.The special session was called by Texas’s state governor Greg Abbott after devastating floods in central Texas.Four US senators met with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney amid the looming 1 August deadline to strike a new trade and security deal.The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is being renegotiated and has faced strain from the Trump administration regarding a few key points, including lumber, digital services taxes and metal tariffs.This is the second congressional delegation to visit the Canadian prime minister in the past three months, Politico reports.Democratic senator Maria Cantwell, from Washington, is pushing for the Trump administration to bolster the US government’s weather disaster readiness, after recent tragic floods, hurricanes and wildfires, and as the administration seeks to slash resources.This comes as the Trump administration is pushing to drastically reduce the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).The Trump administration is looking to cut the NOAA’s budget by 27%, a reduction of $2.2 billion.In a letter, Sen. Cantwell made five recommendations. They include modernizing weather data collection, funding more research and modernizing alert systems.“Communities across the United States are experiencing more frequent, intense, and costly flash floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, atmospheric rivers, landslides, heatwaves, and wildfires,” Cantwell wrote. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create the world’s best weather forecasting system that would provide Americans with much more detailed and customized alerts days instead of minutes ahead of a looming extreme weather event.” More