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      Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order

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      Transgender women incarcerated in the US prison system have been transferred to men’s facilities under Donald Trump’s executive order, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president’s policy, according to civil rights lawyers and accounts from behind bars.Trump’s day-one “gender ideology” order, one of several sweeping attacks on trans rights, said the attorney general “shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” and that no federal funds go to gender-affirming treatment or procedures for people in custody.The executive order was quickly challenged in court. In three lawsuits filed on behalf of trans women housed in women’s prisons, federal judges have ruled that the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) cannot withhold their medical treatment and was barred from moving them to men’s facilities. One judge said the plaintiffs had “straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow”.Lawyers fighting Trump’s directive say the court rulings prevented the transfers of 17 trans women who are plaintiffs in the cases, but others not included in the litigation are now facing placements in men’s facilities.“I’m just continuing to be punished for existing,” said Whitney, a 31-year-old trans woman who was transferred from a women’s facility to a men’s prison this week. The BOP changed her records from “female” to “male”, records show. In messages before her transfer, she said she felt like a “pawn in others’ political games”. The Guardian is not using her full name due to concerns about retaliation.Kara Janssen, an attorney representing trans women in litigation, said she learned of another trans woman not included in the lawsuits who was recently transferred to a facility that houses men, and also had the gender marker in her records changed. Janssen also learned of a trans woman newly entering the BOP system who had gender-affirming surgeries before her incarceration, but was placed in a men’s facility.Prisons are required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea), a longstanding federal law, to screen incarcerated people for sexual assault risk and consider LGBTQ+ status when making housing decisions. Legal experts say Trump’s blanket policy of housing trans women in men’s facilities clearly violates Prea.“This is incredibly unnecessary and cruel,” said Janssen. “Our clients are desperate and scared.”The BOP did not respond to requests for comment.Trans people have long faced high levels of sexual violence and discrimination behind bars, and the implementation of Trump’s order has unleashed chaos, panic and significant violations of their rights beyond the threats of housing transfers, attorneys said.Internal BOP memos seen by the Guardian show that officials are now requiring staff to refer to trans residents by their legal names and incorrect pronouns, as well as deny requests for gender-appropriate clothing accommodations. The BOP has also rescinded policies that allowed trans women to have their pat-down searches conducted by female guards.Susan Beaty, a senior attorney for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, who represents roughly 20 trans people in federal prisons, said they have received reports that some trans people were forced under threat of discipline to hand over their underwear, including bras and boxers, as if they were contraband. They said they’ve also heard accounts of male guards searching trans women in encounters several of the women described as “groping”. Some staff have been emboldened to harass and taunt trans people, Beaty said.“It is already so difficult to be a trans person in prison in this country, and now this administration’s measures are intentionally terrorizing and traumatizing incarcerated trans people even further,” Beaty said.“It is essentially sanctioning sexual assault in some instances,” added Janssen, of the male pat-downs of trans women. Some trans people had told her they were suffering suicidal thoughts and daily nightmares.Whitney, who was recently transferred, said in interviews prior to her move that staff for weeks gave her conflicting information. In mid-February, she and another trans woman were placed into a form of isolation called a “special housing unit” and told they could be there for months, she said. The other woman attempted suicide out of fear of being transferred, she said.Days later, the women were moved back to the general population. Whitney’s doctor, however, then told her that her hormone therapy medications would start to be tapered down. Whitney said going off those medications would wreak havoc on her body and mind, describing it “like a slow death”. The doctor also said staff would start using male pronouns for her, though she said that had not happened yet. She said she was also told she would be allowed to keep women’s underwear she already owns, but would not be issued new garments.Last week, medical staff told Whitney her medications would not be changed after all, she said, but then days later, she was told to pack because she was being transferred to a men’s facility.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m nervous. Worried. Apprehensive. Anxious. Scared. You name it,” Whitney said before her transfer. “One moment I am feeling relief, and the next I am growing gray hairs. That’s probably one of the most stressful things about all this. Are you safe or are you not?”The litigation is ongoing and is most immediately focused on maintaining trans people’s housing and medical care, attorneys said. But Janssen said lawyers would also be fighting for trans women who have long been housed in male facilities and were in the pipeline to be transferred, and advocating against the rollback of basic accommodations across the system. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment because you’re punishing this group for no reason other than you don’t think they should exist.”One judge criticized the US government for failing to address plaintiffs’ concerns that their gender dysphoria would be exacerbated in men’s prisons “whether because they will be subject to searches by male correctional officers, made to shower in the company of men, referred to as men, forced to dress as men, or simply because the mere homogenous presence of men will cause uncomfortable dissonance”.Alix McLearen, who was the acting director of the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) in 2022 before she retired in 2024, said Trump’s order endangers trans people and staff. The NIC is part of the BOP and does training and policy development for corrections officials. McLearen led the drafting and implementation of the “transgender offender manual” when she oversaw women and special populations at BOP. That manual has recently been rescinded.“If you yank this away, no one knows what to do,” McLearen said. “If you are going to change a policy, you [should] do it slowly and thoughtfully.”Confusion in a prison setting increases stress levels and the potential for conflict among staff and incarcerated people, McLearen said.Trump’s order also increases the already high risk of sexual and physical assault of trans people in prison, said Julie Abbate, the national advocacy director of Just Detention International, a human rights group focused on sexual abuse in prisons and jails.Putting a target on trans people in prison only increases their risk of assault, which in turn also puts staff in the dangerous position of intervening in violent situations, said Abbate, who spent 15 years at the civil rights division of the US justice department and helped draft national Prea standards.Trump’s policy has no benefit, McLearen said. The order purports to “defend women” in prisons, but McLearen said it addresses a problem that does not exist.“This is fake – this whole executive order is false on its face,” McLearen said. “It’s scapegoating. Trans people are easy to scapegoat.” More

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      The Guardian view on Trump and media: attention is power. Can Democrats grab it? | Editorial

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      Donald Trump won the White House not with money, though he spent plenty of it, but by dominating the conversation. He hasn’t stopped campaigning. He uses attention to bolster his political power, and uses his office to make sure that everyone keeps watching.He was barred from leading social media platforms after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but four years later, their owners attended his inauguration. Many of his key hires appear picked for their media presence as well as their ideological bent and sycophancy. Tuesday’s interminable address to Congress was garnished with the kind of wild claims or outright lies that he knows take off on social media. For him, posting online ultimatums to Hamas and a disturbing AI-generated “Trump Gaza” video is all part of foreign policy. One of the most chilling, and telling, moments of last week’s attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy was Mr Trump’s remark: “This is going to be great television.”Strikingly, key members of the Trump circle have consistently championed the self-styled misogynist Andrew Tate, one of the rightwing influencers who drove young men towards Mr Trump. Romanian authorities allowed Mr Tate and his brother to fly to the US last week, despite outstanding charges including rape, human trafficking and money laundering, all of which they deny. (The brothers are also wanted by UK authorities over allegations of sexual aggression in a case dating back to 2012, and four British women are pursuing a civil case against them.) Though Romania denies any US pressure, and the president claimed to know nothing, the travel ban was lifted days after Mr Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, raised the case with Romania’s foreign minister.The Tate brothers are part of the far-right disinformation networks that not only promote vile and extreme views but also undermine reputable sources of information. Mr Trump embraces this, and far-right media activists are invited to “report” from the Oval Office while the Associated Press is shut out for referring to the Gulf of Mexico. The White House press operation has reinvented itself as a social media machine, spewing out endless memes, attack lines and deliberate provocation to drown out rival voices. “They’re all offence, all the time,” said Steve Bannon approvingly.Like a social media algorithm made flesh, the president himself serves up an endless but unpredictable (and increasingly extreme) stream of material. It keeps admirers coming back for more and overwhelms critics, who don’t know where to focus. This strategy may offer diminishing returns, not least because it requires a constant ratcheting-up of content. Mr Trump can only do so much to bend reality: administration failures, U-turns and the costs of policies such as tariffs will probably temper voters’ enthusiasm.But even without commanding political leadership or control of any branch of government, Democrats can’t just sit back and wait to find out. The political commentator and author Chris Hayes notes that they have been defined by risk aversion, preferring no attention to critical coverage. Finding ways to seize the initiative is essential. Mr Trump’s lies must be challenged. But fact‑checking his provocations, without compellingly promoting political alternatives, will not be enough. Procedural and legal responses are essential, but so is the ability to grab back the megaphone – or find another one.

      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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      Trump to host crypto leaders after creating strategic reserve of bitcoin

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      Cryptocurrency industry elite are set to meet with Donald Trump at the White House on Friday to discuss how the government will enact Trump’s vision of making the country the “crypto capital of the world”. The day before, the president signed an executive order creating a strategic reserve of cryptocurrency for the United States.Trump will host players including Michael Saylor, co-founder and the executive chair of MicroStrategy, and Zach Witkoff, one of the founders of the president’s own crypto business, World Liberty Financial, according to the executives’ social media posts.Vlad Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood Markets, will also attend, according to a spokesperson for Robinhood. Witkoff and Saylor did not respond to requests for comment. Attenders expect the event to focus on Trump’s plans to build the strategic reserve, which the president said will contain bitcoin and four other coins. Trump directed the secretaries of treasury and commerce to develop “budget-neutral strategies” for acquiring additional bitcoin that have no “incremental costs” on taxpayers.“For the first time, industry leaders feel they’re walking into a collaborative discussion,” said Les Borsai, co-founder of Wave Digital Assets, a crypto investment adviser, who said he did not receive an invitation.Participants said they were focused on any further details on the strategic reserve, a government stockpile of crypto assets.The reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, the White House “crypto czar”, billionaire David Sacks, said in a post on social media platform X.“This [strategic reserve] is going to be the biggest point of contention for many of us,” said JP Richardson, co-founder and CEO of Exodus, a bitcoin wallet developer. Although he owns the four other coins that Trump has suggested including in the reserve, he does not think they have a place in a strategic reserve.“Crypto has made big strides, but it’s still a relatively nascent industry,” Richardson said. The other coins are smaller and function in a very different way, one he said may create more risk. Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, posted on X on Sunday that a bitcoin-only reserve was “probably … the best option”. Both Richardson and Armstrong will attend the summit.In a post on X, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple, who also confirmed his attendance at the summit, hailed Trump’s recognition that “we live in a multichain world” stretching beyond bitcoin. XRP, the coin tied to Ripple, is one of the four other cryptocurrencies Trump has suggested may be added to a crypto reserve. Attendees said they were optimistic about working with an administration that views crypto as a mainstream asset class and expressed hope for a straightforward regulatory process.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What everyone really needs to have at this point is clarity on what the level of scrutiny and intensity of regulation will be, who the key regulators will be,” said Yesha Yadav, the associate dean and a professor of law at Vanderbilt University. That could speed up the process of approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission of a flurry of new listings of exchange-traded funds.Trump’s family has launched cryptocurrency meme coins and he also holds a stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform, which has sparked some conflict-of-interest concerns. His aides have said Trump has handed over control of his business ventures, which are being reviewed by outside ethics lawyers. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      US exits fund that compensates poorer countries for global heating

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      The Trump administration has withdrawn the US from a global agreement under which the developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.The loss and damage fund was agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in late 2023 – a hard-won victory after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy by developing nations that bear the brunt of the climate crisis despite having contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The fund signalled a commitment by developed, polluting countries to provide financial support for some of the irreversible economic and noneconomic losses from sea level rise, desertification, drought and floods already happening.The US has a long record of delay tactics and obstructionism, and had so far pledged only $17.5m (£13.5m) to the loss and damage fund, which became operational on 1 January this year. Now the US, the biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, will no longer participate in the initiative.“On behalf of the United States Department of the Treasury, I write to inform you that the United States is withdrawing from the board for the fund for responding to loss and damage, effective immediately,” said Rebecca Lawlor, the deputy director at the US Office of Climate and Environment, in a letter to the fund.The decision to abandon the loss and damage fund was condemned by climate advocates from the global north and south.“The US decision to step away from this commitment at such a crucial moment sends the wrong message to the global community and to those in dire need of assistance,” said Mohamed Adow, a climate policy analyst and director of the thinktank Power Shift Africa. “We urge the United States to reconsider its position in the interest of the planet and future generations … this regrettable decision risks undermining collective progress and erodes the trust necessary for effective international cooperation.”Rachel Rose Jackson, a research director at Corporate Accountability, said: “Let’s be clear – the US has never been a climate champion. Yet the Trump administration’s anti-climate action agenda – including its withdrawal from the loss and damage fund board – is a wrecking ball made of dynamite. It’s dangerous, it’s malicious and it will destroy lives.“We cannot allow the Trump administration, and the greedy corporations pulling the strings, to get away with destroying the planet. It’s time for the United States to pay up its climate debt and do its fair share of climate action.”Ali Mohamed, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators, a coalition of African nations participating in UN climate negotiations, said: “This decision, made by the nation with the largest historical responsibility for climate change, jeopardises vital support for vulnerable countries facing irreversible climate impacts.”Trump has already pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate accords – for the second time after the US was reinstated under Joe Biden – claiming the international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions and preventing climate catastrophe ripped off the US.“I’m immediately withdrawing from the unfair, one-sided Paris climate accord rip-off,” he said, signing the executive order on his first day in office. “The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity.”China currently ranks as the top greenhouse gas emitter but is also the global leader in the manufacture and deployment of renewable energy. The US is the largest historical emitter and, while emissions have fallen alongside reductions in coal, it has become the world’s largest oil and gas producer by a huge margin in recent years.Record-breaking ocean and atmospheric temperatures have caused chaos around the world and across the US, including devastating wildfires in Los Angeles and deadly flooding across Florida and southern Appalachia. Meanwhile, several of Trump’s policies, including his pledge to “drill, baby drill”, dismantle federal agencies, and impose tariffs that threaten a trade war, risk derailing the burgeoning US renewables sector.The loss and damage fund is a work in progress. As of late January, 27 countries had pledged a combined total of $741m – the equivalent of about 0.2% of the irreversible losses developing countries are facing from global heating every year.The US withdrawal appears to be another rejection of global diplomacy and the reality of the climate crisis.Harjeet Singh, a climate activist and founding director of the Delhi-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said: “The decision by the Trump administration exemplifies a longstanding pattern of obstruction by the US government in securing necessary finance for addressing climate impacts, [and] undermines global efforts to deliver climate justice.“As the largest historical emitter, the United States bears a significant share of the blame for the climate adversities affecting vulnerable populations worldwide. We must hold them accountable and ensure they contribute their fair share towards global climate reparations.” More

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      Trump administration to drop case against plant polluting Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’

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      The Donald Trump administration has formally agreed to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region, marking a blow to clean air advocates in the region and a win for the Japanese petrochemical giant at the centre of the litigation.Legal filings made public on Friday morning reveal that Trump’s Department of Justice agreed to dismiss a long-running lawsuit against the operators of a synthetic rubber plant in Reserve, Louisiana, which is allegedly largely responsible for some of the highest cancer risk rates in the US for the surrounding majority-Black neighborhoods.The litigation was filed under the Biden administration in February 2023 in a bid to substantially curb the plant’s emissions of a pollutant named chloroprene, a likely human carcinogen. It had targeted both the current operator, the Japanese firm Denka, and its previous owner, the American chemical giant DuPont, and formed a central piece of the former administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts to address environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. A trial had been due to start in April 2025 following lengthy delays.Community leaders in Reserve had expressed grave concerns about the case’s future following Trump’s return to the White House after the president moved to gut offices within the EPA and justice department responsible for civil rights and environmental justice.On Friday, 84-year-old Robert Taylor, a resident in Reserve who has lost a number of family members to cancer, described the move as “terrible” for his community.“It’s obvious that the Trump administration doesn’t care anything for the poor Black folk in Cancer Alley,” Taylor said. “[Trump’s] administration has taken away what protections we had, what little hope we had.”Filings show that parties involved in the litigation, including lawyers for Denka and DuPont, met on Wednesday and agreed jointly with the US justice department to dismiss the case.The EPA referred all questions about the lawsuit to the US justice department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.DuPont did not immediately respond to a request for comment.A spokesperson for Denka did not respond to questions from the Guardian but issued a statement thanking the Trump administration and lauding Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, for his “unwavering support”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe chemical firm pointed to a $35m investment in emissions offsets and said “the facility’s emissions are at an historical low”. The company “remains committed to implementing the emissions reductions achieved as we turn the page from this relentless and draining attack on our business”, the statement added.According to the complaint filed in 2023, emissions from the plant pose “an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare”. The lawsuit had specifically singled out the risk to children living near the plant and those attending an elementary school situated close to the plant’s fence line. It noted that average readings at an air monitor near the school between April 2018 to January 2023 showed that those under 16 could surpass the EPA’s excess cancer risk rate within two years of their life.On Friday, Taylor vowed to continue pushing back against pollution.“We are going to fight them and prepare ourselves to keep going. We were preparing for the worst, and I don’t know how it could get any worse now that the government has totally abandoned us, it seems.” More

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      View from the couch: therapists on sessions in new Trump era

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      In his conversations with trans clients, Will Williams, a therapist in Oakland, California, sees the psychic toll exacted by the fusillade of recent executive orders targeting transgender protections. Many of his patients are filled with fear – and for legitimate reasons.In the days after Donald Trump took office, the administration required passports to be marked with sex assigned at birth, banned trans people from serving in the military and cut funding for gender-affirming care. On some federal websites, the “T” was removed from “LGBT”.“There’s this literal embodied experience of ‘Oh I’m a target,’” said Williams, who is trans. “[We are] the 1% that is going to be targeted and blamed, and when it comes down from the theoretical into daily life – psychically there’s an experience of being erased.”When clients ask him “Do I even exist?”, Williams can at least offer some comfort. He asks: “How is it to be in a room with another trans person?” The question makes plain what is in front of them: yes, they both exist. “The medicine is in that,” Williams says. “Trump can say the moon doesn’t exist anymore, but the moon still shines, and it still waxes and wanes.”Williams is among the many therapists who are figuring out how to navigate a profession that has been plunged into uncharted territory during a tense second Trump term. It’s a new atmosphere, and therapists say they are “learning beside” their clients as they go.Many of those who spoke with the Guardian requested anonymity so they could speak freely about sensitive issues.Liberal therapists say they sometimes incorporate their political views into the healing process to provide support for clients distressed by Trump’s actions. “You’re taught in school that therapists aren’t supposed to be political, but it’s very political,” one liberal practitioner said. “Now, at least in my therapist friend group, we’re like, ‘Screw that, no, this is very political.’”Trump’s policies, such as deporting immigrants, go against therapists’ code of ethics that requires them to uphold client’s dignity and worth, she said. That hasn’t precluded her from working with Trump-supporting clients. Some don’t return “and that’s OK”, but she successfully works with a range of conservative patients.On the other end of the spectrum, some therapists say they are encountering liberal clients who are fearful of coming to therapy: “They want to know if their therapist voted against their human rights.” Providing assurance to anxious clients is an instance in which many are choosing to share their political views. “When appropriate, I want to let them know that it’s really safe,” one therapist said.Liberal therapists, conservative clientsThe relationship between liberal therapists and conservative clients has demanded a slight revision of therapeutic calculus. A few said they find themselves revolted by their clients’ beliefs but figure out how to work with them effectively despite the fraught dynamic.None of the therapists I interviewed said they try to change clients’ political views, but therapy is often about getting people to think about problems in their lives differently – and sometimes there’s overlap.One therapist I spoke with used the example of some of her clients’ fear and hatred of transgender people. She asks them where those fears stem from, because they are often passed on generationally.“What kind of things were you taught as a child? If you heard your parents talking about this – do all of your values align with your parents’ values? Have you ever broken from them? Will you feel rejected by your family or community if you think differently?” she asks.As therapy progresses, fears are often unlocked, and some of those questions are answered. “Even if the client isn’t focused on the political aspect, we can work on some of those themes, like fear, without getting into politics,” she said.Another liberal practitioner who took on a Trump-supporting client had doubts about their potential for growth in part because of the latter’s very religious, conservative beliefs. The client was upset with their church’s liberal positions on some issues, and that was causing a problem in their life.The therapist encouraged the client to talk with church leadership and to try to understand a different viewpoint. “I didn’t look at it as an opportunity or say, ‘Oh, I got a chance to try to win them over,’” she said. “It was, ‘Oh, you have this conflict, and maybe if you can see another perspective that would help you.’”Sometimes, the roles are reversed and fear is on the other foot. A practitioner who fears fascism and societal collapse, and has stocked up on supplies in case “the shit hits the fan”, said the money she makes taking on conservative clients is worth it.“You know, I’m billing $90 an hour, and I can listen to that bullshit for 50 minutes for $90,” she said. “I feel gross saying that because I do think my [Trump-supporting] clients are doing something awful, and are the personification of the problems I deal with.”A website, ConservativeCounselors.com, highlights the work of conservative therapists around the country. The Guardian sent emails to five of them, but only one responded in a brief email.“Conservative therapists have formed a pretty tight group, and many of us have shared that you’ve reached out for an interview,” the therapist, Maria Coppersmith, said. “The general consensus is that the Guardian is so ultra-liberal, that any conservative therapist that shares his or her viewpoint is likely to have their words twisted and will be highly misrepresented. You might get a naive newbie therapist that will agree to an interview, but I am respectfully declining.”‘Screw that, this is very political’To describe what’s occurring in the interplay between therapy and politics, Bill Doherty, co-founder of Braver Angels, a non-profit that works toward depolarization, borrowed a term from practitioners in destabilized Latin American countries: political stress. “It’s the anxiety and psychological preoccupation that stems from what’s happening in our political situation, how government officials are behaving and how we’re treating each other when we disagree,” Doherty said. “The challenge is therapists have their own viewpoints – they vote – this is not external to their lives. So the major challenge that’s now happening is therapists trying to keep their own political leanings from influencing clients.”Broadly speaking, therapists say the profound shock and sharp sense of fear that was almost universal among liberal clients after Trump’s first win has been replaced with variations of numbness, hopelessness and resignation.“After Trump won in 2016 everyone was like, ‘Oh my God what’s going to happen? What are we going to do?’ And during Covid they were like, ‘Oh my God, there are no adults in Washington! What are we going to do?’” a therapist said. Now his clients are much more despondent. “They’re like, ‘Fuck it, let it burn,’” he said.Williams said there was indeed less “fear and scrambling” in November 2024, but it has been more difficult for trans clients this time around. Many are running against the clock to make changes to identification cards, birth certificates, passports and other documents.Similarly, a therapist who works with federal employees says there is a broad sense of “whiplash”. The administration has also attacked minorities and women employed at federal agencies, claiming that they are unqualified and were only hired due to DEI initiatives. That takes a toll on some clients, who may end up questioning how people view their worth.And then there’s intra-family strife. One therapist certified to practice in Michigan and California said familial stress is greater in Michigan, a purple, more religious state. His clients feel a dissonance: “They say, ‘I love my parents, and they’re showing up for me, but then I also know that they voted for this person who’s completely appalling.’”Start honoring the numbnessEach therapist who spoke with the Guardian said anger and numbness over the second administration are initially appropriate responses. “Anger is a protective force,” Williams added.But to help his clients to settle their nervous systems, he directs them inward: “In the stillness they can access the greater wisdom – usually the message is there of what’s going to be supportive to them.” He also urges them to “go to nature and connect to systems older and larger than this moment, and put energy toward something life-affirming and creative”.Another therapist has clients accept this new reality. “Normalize that there is this threatening energy that is closing down certain civil liberties and trying to change social norms,” he said, adding that he also urges people to be curious about their numbness.This doesn’t mean embracing being inactive, however. “Find ways to start honoring the numbness, while starting to move energy, whether that’s physical movement, or getting out, seeing people and finding light in what feels like a dark time for some folks, whether that’s through art, music or nature,” he added.Doherty recommends what he calls “buffering”: limiting intake of news and conversations with friends and family about politics. That’s an especially helpful strategy for couples he counsels who have differing political viewpoints. Many still make it work, Doherty said.Most therapists tell their clients to focus on what they can control. Some suggest putting energy into mutual aid projects or partaking in local political action. One therapist is seeing her siblings more, making herself an ally to trans folks. She also likes to listen to the Moth story hour as a healthy escape from reality.However, another therapist pointed to a meme in which a person is lying in the road, about to get hit by a large truck. In the meme, a nearby therapist waves, shouting: “Just focus on the things you can control!” She finds the advice to be ludicrous. “I feel like an asshole as a therapist sometimes, so I try to not say shit like that.”Liberal therapists often face many of the same fears as their clients. Williams recounted how he worked with some of his youngest clients who were “heartbroken”, and how there was synergy in that process.“What I tried to do in those situations was reconnect them to: ‘We’re here, we’re alive, there’s a purpose,’” Williams said. “I actually left those sessions feeling more purposeful, and feeling more power from what I witnessed after reconnecting them with themselves.”Another therapist said she felt a similar energy by opening up about her political views and fears: “It feels more like we’re in this together,” she said. More

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      Trump’s attacks on South Africa are a punishment for independence | Achille Mbembe and Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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      On 7 February, less than three weeks after taking office, Donald Trump issued an executive order: “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The order directed US agencies to halt aid to South Africa, condemned South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) as an “aggressive position”, and declared that white Afrikaners be prioritized for resettlement in the US based on the duplicitous claim that they are “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.The humanitarian consequences of this executive order are devastatingly clear. On 26 February, notices were sent out terminating support for HIV organizations funded by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), initiated in 2003 by then president George W Bush. The termination of funding to Pepfar is catastrophic for South Africa. Studies predict this could result in more than half a million unnecessary deaths and up to half a million new infections.But Trump’s order is an escalation of an existing strategy to condemn, isolate and punish South Africa for charting an independent course for its people and their relationship to the international community at large.On 11 January 2024, the South African government presented its case at the ICJ, arguing that Israel’s military actions in Gaza – endorsed, funded and armed by the United States – constituted genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The ICJ case was not the first time that South Africa had broken with Washington on the global stage; in 2003, South Africa strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, warning that the war amounted to “a blow to multilateralism”, in the words of its then president Thabo Mbeki.South Africa’s renewed appeal to multilateralism did not keep the Biden administration from responding to the ICJ case against Israel with immediate hostility. On 3 January, before arguments were even made, the state department spokesperson Matthew Miller declared: “We find this submission to be meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”While South Africa’s ICJ case was widely welcomed at home, some white actors with significant power in the country’s public sphere were hostile. Strident demands for South Africa to align with the west were issued by organisations such as the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, among others. They found easy allies in Washington. In early 2024, several members of Congress argued that South Africa’s stance on Israel should disqualify it from receiving preferential trade benefits, including removal from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which aims to improve economic ties between the US and sub-Saharan Africa.Last month’s executive order marks a dangerous new phase in the efforts to strangle South Africa’s international solidarities – but this time with an explicitly white supremacist twist, focused on the country’s efforts to redress the compounded, multi-generational inequalities of apartheid. Trump has long supported the far-right conspiracy theory that falsely claims white farmers in South Africa are subject to a government-backed campaign of violence. In August 2018, he tweeted that he had asked then secretary of state Mike Pompeo “to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers”.These views have been nurtured by organisations such as AfriForum, a rightwing Afrikaner group that has actively cultivated relationships with American conservative institutions since around 2017. In 2018, AfriForum representatives met with then National Security adviser John Bolton and conducted interviews on Fox News, promoting conspiracy theories about a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa. A network of far-right white South Africans in the US, including Elon Musk, has similarly gained access and influence. Joel Pollak, an editor at Breitbart, is widely tipped to be Trump’s new ambassador to South Africa.These conspiracy theories aim to present white farmers as victims as South Africa moves toward remedy for dispossession. A 2017 government land audit found that white people, 9% of the population, owned approximately 72% of all privately owned farmland – a direct result of colonial dispossession that must be addressed as an urgent moral priority, as indicated in South Africa’s 1996 constitution.But if the target of Trump’s executive order is South African land reform, its principal casualty will be the beneficiaries of Aids treatment. One of the great successes of South Africa’s democracy has been its HIV treatment program. With approximately 5.9 million people receiving antiretroviral therapy through the public healthcare system, it is the largest HIV public health program on the planet. Pepfar has been funding a fifth of these costs, part of a program estimated to have saved 25 million lives worldwide.The Trump administration makes an intentional target of South Africa’s health policy. The deadly cruelty is the point.From Mexico to Greenland, Panama to Ukraine, the Trump administration is bullying allies to align with its vision of national primacy and ethnic supremacy. The rapid implementation of this new Trump doctrine requires Americans to join together with people across the world not only to oppose reactionary measures – but also to remain steadfast in their joint commitment to internationalism that enhances wellbeing. That commitment will require richer countries to spend in solidarity, not charity.The immediate task is of course the most urgent: rapid multilateral action is needed to secure the safety of the huge numbers of HIV patients whose lives are now in danger. The many pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities dotted through the global south should be turned to producing what people need, even as land and housing reform also necessarily shape regional agendas.But the risks posed by this executive order transcend its particular measures. There is enough; the problem is allocation, and the symbolic and conceptual as well as material means to realize human well-being.

      Achille Mbembe is a research professor in history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa.

      Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a professor of earth and environmental Sciences, and American studies, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. More

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      in US Politics

      Crypto giant Tether CEO on cooperating with Trump administration: ‘We’ve never been shady’

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      Paolo Ardoino, CEO of the cryptocurrency company Tether, was flying over Switzerland last week as he contemplated the changing regulatory landscape.Tether used to be at war with the establishment. Now it is the establishment.The crypto giant – tether is the most traded cryptocurrency in the world – has had a strange trip. Four years ago, banks were dropping Tether as a client, and regulators in New York had the company against the wall over questions about commingled client and corporate funds. Treasury officials were complaining that dollar-backed cryptocurrencies enjoyed the international privileges of the dollar without the responsibilities of preventing its misuse. Federal investigators were looking into Tether for possible violations of anti-money-laundering and sanctions rules.The cryptocurrency industry anecdotally – and conspiratorially – describes the Biden administration’s posture toward crypto as a systematic effort to debank crypto in the form of tactics such as “Operation Choke Point 2.0”. Ardoino says Tether’s leadership needed to become globetrotters in search of someone to take their business.And it’s a lot of business. Tether currently is the 17th largest holder of US government debt, with nearly as much in treasury bonds in its digital vaults as Saudi Arabia. Tether’s value remains stable because it is pegged one-to-one to the dollar, meaning the value of each individual tether coin is $1. The company backs the total value of the cryptocurrency with dollar assets like treasury bonds in an American bank – in this case, $140bn deposited with Cantor Fitzgerald.Tether comes just behind bitcoin and ethereum as the most valuable cryptocurrency, and by most measures it is the most widely traded. Investors in countries with unstable currencies, like Turkey or Argentina with their 40%-plus inflation rates, use it to hold on to the value of their savings against the dollar. Crypto traders use tether to park their digital assets in a safe place.The degree of cooperation between Tether and law enforcement reflects an evolving shift in the government’s posture toward the company, even as federal agencies had been cracking down on cryptocurrency more broadly under Joe Biden.“We’ve never been shady,” Ardoino said. “The company has been great. It has been attacked. Debanked. You know, when you’re trying to be a disruptor – in a good sense – you are going to always be attacked by the establishment.”Previous administrations’ hostility to crypto – and perhaps to tether in particular – was the product of strategic mistakes the company had made, Ardoino said.“We were very naive. We thought: ‘Oh, we are going to keep our head down.’ We were not communicating. We were not telling what’s going on, and that was used against us,” he said. “And that’s fair, right? So, if someone is not communicating, or you feel is not transparent enough, then that is how people get to fear.”After settling its case with New York regulators in 2021, Tether began to come out of its shell, publishing quarterly statements and expanding its cooperation with the government. Today, things are different for Tether. Its banker – the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick – has been confirmed as secretary of commerce in the Trump administration. The company says it is proud of its cooperation with US law enforcement. Though Tether’s holding company is headquartered in crypto-friendly El Salvador, the cryptocurrency is expanding in a way that Ardoino says will help the United States secure its position as the world’s reserve currency.“We have 400 million users in emerging markets,” Ardoino said. “We are basically selling the US debt outside the US … We are decentralizing the US debt as well, basically pushing for dollar hegemony. That’s how the US can maintain its dominance when it comes to its currency.”It’s a line Lutnick might have written into his confirmation hearing speech himself. The Senate confirmed Lutnick on a party-line vote 51-45 in February. Ardoino said their relationship is at arm’s-length now, though.“Cantor [Fitzgerald], they are our custodian. So, we will continue to have this relationship with Cantor,” he said. “They have been a great custodian for us. They are primary dealers, so we can have basically direct access to the Fed[eral Reserve] to purchase [government] debt. With Howard, when he goes into government, we cannot talk to him.”Lutnick has been a vocal backer of cryptocurrency and tether’s position in the industry in particular. Senators had some sharp questions for him about tether at his 29 January hearing, with Senator Maria Cantwell pressing him about audited holdings.“Do you think the market needs to comply with audits about whether one-to-one ratios really exist on stablecoins?” Cantwell asked Lutnick.“I believe stablecoins, US dollar stablecoins, should be audited, should be completely backed by US treasuries 100%,” Lutnick replied.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“How do we prove that?” Cantwell then asked.“A US audit and one-to-one backed by US treasuries,” Lutnick continued. “And lastly, you can’t change the rules; meaning if someone has bought the stablecoin, you can’t change the price. If someone’s made a deposit with you, you can’t say: ‘I’m going to withdraw, you’re going to change the price.’”She also asked about reports that “as much as $19bn of Tether could be illicit activity by the North Koreans, the Russians, the Chinese. And so, what do we do about that? What is your solution?”“It’s like blaming Apple because criminals use Apple phones,” Lutnick replied. “It’s just a product. We don’t pick on the US treasury because criminals use dollars. So, I think it’s just a product … They are signed up with all US federal law enforcement. They follow all federal law enforcement instantly.”Ardoino rejects the suggestion of tether’s usefulness to criminals. “There is no financial institution – even the big banks, they don’t have this breadth of collaboration,” he said, citing more than 200 agencies in 50 countries that work with Tether.A Swiss bank might rebuff an American law enforcement agency coming for money in its accounts. Tether, however, touts its ability to return money stolen from others. For example, a notable “pig butchering” scam last year sent Shan Hanes, CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kansas, to a 293-month federal prison term for embezzling $47.1m and sending it overseas as cryptocurrency. Tether was able to recover $8.3m for the victims.The traditional banking system is more porous than a cryptocurrency wallet right now, Ardoino argued.“When [criminals are] finally trying to use blockchain and move money on the blockchain in USDT [tether’s trading symbol], we see them and we freeze them,” he said. “And it takes 15 minutes to freeze an address from our stock. We are much more granular and faster than any bank or any other financial institution. So, I’ve been saying very loudly and publicly that any criminal using USDT is a very stupid criminal, because we can see everything and we can catch it.”Ardoino does see a threat in an adversarial regulatory relationship toward crypto, both in the United States and Europe. Both Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, and EU-based exchanges removed USDT because it does not comply with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, which went into effect at the end of 2024. Traders can hold Tether in non-custodial wallets but can’t trade it on an exchange that complies with European regulations.“I think that the US understands very well that they should very, very much avoid a DeepSeek moment for finance and crypto,” Ardoino said, suggesting that it is possible that some invention in a stealth-mode lab somewhere beyond the industry’s attention could radically change the competitive environment. Ardoino was referring to the Hangzhou-based startup DeepSeek, a large language model AI that emerged seemingly from nowhere in January that could compete with Meta and OpenAI’s offerings at a fraction of the cost. Its emergence is disrupting AI business plans by changing the competitive environment.Ardoino hopes the new administration will have settled on its approach to regulations – likely to be much friendlier than its predecessor’s – by September, he said. “I think that they want to get regulations done by June. June would be very aggressive as a timeline, but September is realistic.” More