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      ‘We’re still in this fight’: the resistance to Trump considers its options after bruising election defeat

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      LA Kauffman remembers the day hundreds of thousands of women, men and children marched in the streets of Washington. “If you’ve never been in a crowd that large, it’s hard to convey how powerful the feeling is of standing together with so many people who share your goals and that feeling of community and connection,” says the political organiser, activist and author.The Women’s March, held the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, was the biggest single-day protest in US history until the demonstrations that erupted after the police murder of George Floyd three years later. Both were among the most spectacular examples of “the resistance” to Trump’s first term as president.Now Trump is heading back to the White House and a People’s March on Washington is scheduled for 18 January, two days before the inauguration. But there are fears that it will be a pale imitation of the historic first protest. The mood feels more muted this time. Some people speak of feeling jaded and disillusioned and turning off the news because they are simply Trumped out.Bill Maher, the comedian and political commentator, argues that there is a “marked difference” between the reactions in 2016 and 2024. “2016 Trump won and there was 3 million people in the streets,” he said on his HBO talkshow. “Remember the pussy hats and all that? I mean, it was the biggest demonstration ever. This year: nothing. What is this, resignation?”Jen Psaki, an MSNBC host and former White House press secretary, commented at the Washington screening of a documentary about Trump’s family separations policy at the border: “People are just exhausted of fighting against policies that they feel are immoral, policies they’re opposed to – people who voted for Kamala Harris and feel disappointed with the outcome. It feels a little bit like the same opposition or calling-out energy is not there in this moment.”The sense of malaise around “Resistance 2.0” may in part be because, whereas Trump’s first victory felt like shocking accident of history, his second was delivered by an electorate that knows exactly what it is getting. Whereas he lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, he gained more votes nationwide than Harris and claims a mandate. For many liberals, that result was a gut punch that seemed to undermine the work of three election cycles.Teja Smith, the Los Angeles-based founder of Get Social, a social media agency that specialises in political advocacy and social awareness, said: “I got into social justice work almost a decade ago and truly have been working tirelessly to keep Trump out of office, essentially.“The first time it was a lot of people not really being interested in the election; we had Hillary running and she won the popular vote. There was just a lot of like, ‘Ah, well, these things happen.’ This time it was just overwhelmingly people voted for him and that’s where we are. This is what you voted for: how much else can we fight it?”After Trump was declared the winner over Harris, who would have been the first woman of Black and south Asian descent to win the presidency, many politically engaged Black women said they were so dismayed by the outcome that they were reassessing their enthusiasm for electoral politics and prioritising self-care.Smith noted that Black women have consistently shown up and voted at a 92% rate for the Democratic candidate. “At this point, Black women are just tired,” she continued. “The act of resistance right now that we’re calling on is to rest because we can only keep so much sanity. I have a husband, I have a two-year-old, and I spent my entire year campaigning, going all around America to fight this good fight, to fight for our rights, and misinformation won.”But Smith does not doubt that Black women will keep fighting. “Next year we’re going to understand what this presidency is going to mean and what electing him is actually going to do. That’s going to be the time where we’re not going to have a choice but to step up. Do we want to? Yes. But are we tired of having be the ones to be called on? Absolutely.”View image in fullscreenThe sentiment was echoed by LaTosha Brown, cofounder of the voting rights organisation Black Voters Matter. She said: “We going to always fight to protect our communities but I can tell you, for me personally, I’m going to be much more strategic with how I use my time and what fights I take on. I’m going to be much more intentional about protecting myself and my family, which I feel like I have neglected over the last decade, and I’m going to be much more discerning.”Indeed, for all the gloom, it is far too conclude that the second resistance will turn into resignation. There are also signs of resilience and adaptation. Once Trump takes office, and launches policies such as mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, the backlash could be spontaneous and swift.Kauffman, the political organiser and writer who attended the first Women’s March, said: “I don’t know what will be the spark that will bring people out in the streets but I don’t think Americans are so easily cowed. The atmosphere of fear that was carefully cultivated throughout the election campaign works in the short term but people are not going to stay in that kind of fear in the long term.“People are going to respond when they see injustice as they have at other crucial points, as they did not only the week of Trump’s first election but with the announcement of the Muslim ban. At airports all over the country people rushed to speak up for targeted immigrants. We may see that kind of rapid response again.”There is a growing emphasis on “Trump-proofing” blue states, with calls for Democratic governors and legislatures to take proactive measures to protect progressive policies. There are also signs that activists are shifting strategies, moving away from mass protests and focusing on more targeted, localised efforts such as state-level initiatives and issue-specific campaigns.Speaking from the Hudson valley of New York, Kauffman added: “What I’m seeing is that people are looking to find a way to meet those needs for community connection in quieter, more intimate ways. There’s a lot of gatherings that are happening in people’s homes and community centres and neighbourhoods. It’s not a mass coming together that gave us a feeling of enormous collective togetherness. It’s happening in smaller, tighter, face-to-face communities.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, there is a sense of deja vu. The former congressional staffers co-founded the progressive group Indivisible in response to Trump’s first win in 2016. Over the weekend after Thanksgiving that year at Levin’s home in Austin, Texas, they started writing the Indivisible Guide to help people organise locally to fight back against the Trump agenda.The guide captured the public imagination and inspired the creation of thousands of Indivisible groups that played a crucial part in saving former president Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. The Indivisible movement also helped Democrats regain the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections.Since the 2024 election, Greenberg and Levin have released a new guide, Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Democracy on the Brink, focusing on local action and targeted campaigns, and note that about a hundred new Indivisible groups have since formed in red, blue and purple states.Levin said: “I’m encouraged that the general response I’m getting from our folks on the ground is that they’re determined. That was the word that came up in the poll of Georgia Indivisibles when I joined them the weekend after the election. They’re going through a lot of different parts of the stages of grief but they do not show signs of just totally checking out.”A further question mark concerns the media. Some outlets are reaffirming a commitment to accountability journalism but grappling with fatigue, audience disengagement and loss of trust while trying to avoid amplifying every Trump outburst. Ominously, the Washington Post declined to endorse a presidential candidate ahead of election day.The first resistance was not entirely liberal and Democratic. It was a coalition that also included “Never Trump” Republicans. Among the most pugnacious was the Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded in December 2019 by moderate conservative operatives to eviscerate Trump and noted for its eye-catching, hard-hitting adverts.One of its cofounders, Rick Wilson, is determined to keep at it. He said: “People say, we’re done, we’re out, we can’t keep fighting. I’m sorry, I’m just not wired that way as a person or as an activist and neither is our organisation. We’re still in this fight.“We lost an election as part of a big coalition. We were on the wrong side of the electoral fight but we’re not on the wrong side of history so we’re going to keep punching and trying to make sure that both the people and the policies he wants to impose on America aren’t successful.”For all the monument scale of the Women’s March, it did not prevent women losing a fundamental right the following year when the supreme court ended the constitutional right to abortion. Wilson, who worked as a consultant and political ad maker for numerous candidates and state parties, commented: “As excited people were by the whole pussy hat thing, it didn’t work, so if people are taking a beat in the broad movement to decide what messaging they need to do and what’s the smart way to do it, that’s a good outcome.“That’s not a sign of weakness. That’s a sign of strategic caution and posture, taking a moment to figure out what’s going to work. Because, again, pink pussy hats didn’t close the deal. They didn’t change the outcomes that we needed to have.”He added: “I’m results-oriented and win-oriented and even though some people are depressed and down and beat up right now, you got to at some point lick your wounds and get back up, get back in the fight. Because die on your feet or die on your knees, one of the two, and I prefer to go standing if I’m going to have to go.” More

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      MSNBC faces uncertain future amid Comcast sale and Trump election win

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      For years, the cable news channel MSNBC has been a reliable liberal voice in the US media landscape, but amid the return of Donald Trump to the White House and its own business upheavals the network is now in crisis.The world’s richest man, and close Trump ally, Elon Musk has even – possibly jokingly – repeatedly publicly touted the idea of buying MSNBC after the parent company of the channel, Comcast, recently revealed that it would spin off the cable news network.Audience fatigue with Trump’s re-election and high-profile MSNBC hosts’ potential missteps in reaction to that event could make it difficult for the new company to boost the channel’s ratings, which were already declining before the election, and continue providing a leftwing perspective on global events, US media analysts told the Guardian.The negative reports about the channel over the last month are just the latest examples of an established US media company struggling to find its footing as people continue to drop cable television packages and instead use streaming services.But the particularly sharp recent ratings decline and reports of Musk perhaps buying the network could make it especially difficult for high-profile programming such as Morning Joe and The Rachel Maddow Show to continue providing a progressive alternative to Fox News, the analysts say.During Trump’s first term, “MSNBC really stood as a center for resisting and critiquing Trump,” said Kathryn Cramer Brownell, associate professor of history at Purdue University and author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.“It remains to be seen if they are able to forge an identity and a political viewership in opposition to Trump or not,” she added.In 2016, an average of 4.2 million people tuned into CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2022, that number decreased to 3.8 million.MSNBC briefly saw a significant ratings increase during the 2020 tumult of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests and presidential election, but they later again declined.In October, the Comcast president said the company was considering spinning off its cable networks, including CNBC and MSNBC into a separate company. Then last week, the company made an official announcement.Since election day, MSNBC has averaged about 521,000 viewers each day, a 38% decrease from its 2024 average before 5 November, according to data from Nielsen.Then Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort to speak with him about “abortion, mass deportation” and his threats of “retribution against political opponents and media outlets”, Scarborough said on air about the meeting.“We didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so,” Scarborough said, but they agreed to continue a dialogue.Afterwards, the hosts faced a significant backlash and ratings decrease.“They made a fundamental business error,” Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor and author, said. “There is now a large new ecosystem of independent media, and people left the Washington Post and they are leaving MSNBC, and that worries me.”Brownell said she was not surprised by the morning show hosts meeting with the president-elect.“Media businesses frequently rely on cultivating relationships with political leaders and presidential administrations. It’s part of how they remain relevant,” she said. “But you can see the backlash with a show that kind of leans left and relies on those critics of Trump as their audience members.”The future of such shows is also uncertain because of Comcast’s decision to spin off the cable news networks along with channels such E!, USA and the Golf Channel into a separate company.“When you look at our assets, talented management team and balance-sheet strength, we are able to set these businesses up for future growth,” said Brian L Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast.After the announcement, Donald Trump Jr, joked on X that Musk should buy MSNBC, to which Musk replied: “How much does it cost?”A spinoff does not mean the company is for sale. Musk, who owns X, was one of Trump’s biggest backers this election and is now reportedly part of his inner circle, had previously described MSNBC as the “utter scum of the Earth”.CNN reported that billionaires with “liberal bona fides” have also expressed interest in buying MSNBC.“I fear that [Musk] could try to buy MSNBC, and I fear that Comcast could be immoral enough to sell it to him,” Jarvis said.Even if one of the liberal billionaires buys the network, its ability to be profitable in the long-term while providing left-leaning news and commentary is uncertain as people stop subscribing to cable.But after the 2016 election and the victor’s constant attacks on the media, many news organizations, including MSNBC, got a so-called “Trump bump”.Could that happen again once he takes office?“If there is a Trump bump, I suspect it will be delayed,” said Marty Kaplan, who holds the Norman Lear Chair in entertainment, media and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “It may take a few beats for doomscrollers to get past the nausea. On the other hand, a media fast may be a popular new year’s resolution.”Even if the cord-cutting and recent events do lead to MSNBC’s demise, Brownell said she sees podcasts doing great journalism and thinks “the diversifying media landscape opens up a lot of possibilities”.“The challenge is the economic issue. How do you fund and sustain some of these other alternative journalistic projects?” she said. “You can have nonprofit organizations step in, foundations. It’s an opportunity to be creative … [and rethink] economic approaches to funding really good and hard-hitting and necessary journalism.” More

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      Democrats ignored pleas to address price of ‘eggs and gas’, campaigners say

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      Saru Jayaraman tried. As far back as January, the president of low-pay campaign group One Fair Wage recalls telling Democratic leaders in Washington DC that voters were worried about the cost of living.“It just went on deaf ears,” she said. “One of the biggest challenges we faced was they kept wanting to talk about the economy. And we kept saying, it’s not about the economy, it’s about our economy: it’s about my economy, my ability to pay for eggs and gas.”“And so, it was no surprise to us that people did not turn out, why people did not feel incredibly motivated – whether they didn’t vote or they voted for Kamala or they voted for Trump,” said Jayaraman, director of the food labor research center at University of California, Berkeley. “There was a universal feeling of ‘you’re not listening to us.’”A single mom working three jobs as a waitress, and struggling to make ends meet on a sub-minimum tipped wage, is “not going to take time out of her three jobs to vote for either person”, she added. “There’s no future for the party unless they really address the needs of working people. And I use the word ‘address’. It isn’t just running on the issue.”Democrats face calls to actSam Taub has worked as a server for the past 10 years in Michigan, one of the key election swing states, which swung from Joe Biden in 2020 to Donald Trump in 2024. Taub was not that surprised by this year’s result.“You see a lot of generalizations of people who live in the midwest, people who are working class and people who are working-class in the midwest,” he said. “And as somebody who is one of those people, it is a little bit frustrating to hear people say that they’re listening to you – and then not actually listen to you.“The message that Democrats really need to understand is that they can’t assume that they already know what people think and what people need.”View image in fullscreenTaub is one of hundreds of service industry workers who backed an open letter, organized by One Fair Wage in the wake of the 2024 election results, urging the Democratic party to do more to address the needs of working people.Democrats at the state level need to fight to protect workers rights even more given the upcoming second Trump administration, he argued, and push back against industry efforts to scale back or prevent policies, such as raising the sub-minimum wage for servers in Michigan, from taking effect.“It’s pretty obvious Donald Trump is not going to protect workers’ rights, so it’s really important for politicians at the state level to do everything that is within their power to protect workers,” said Taub. “By getting rid of the sub-minimum wage, which is something that’s happening gradually, we can help a lot of people.”Juan Carlos Romero, a bartender in New York City, has worked in the restaurant industry for 16 years. “It’s really hard to try to make ends meet” in this economy, he said.Under Trump workers in the service industry aren’t going to see improvements, he suggested, arguing that the incoming administration’s proposals – such as eliminating taxes on tips – overlook the fundamental issue that so many service workers are in precarious economic circumstances because they rely on tips and sub-minimum hourly wages.Democrats must use the final weeks before Trump takes office “to support us”, he added. “I think our desperation comes from the reality that we see, and especially if wages stay like this, [that] they’re going to continue to affect people on a daily basis. So it really is a call to action that is desperately needed by folks in the industry.”Fears of recessionCampaigners and academics fear the Democratic party’s losses of the White House and Senate majority, and its failure to retake the House majority will leave workers on lower incomes – especially immigrants – vulnerable.“One of the consequences of this election is that the government backs away from having people’s back when they want to join a union,” said Sharon Block, executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School. “There’s just a cool irony to that that I think is just devastating: this is a time when people need to be in a union more than ever.”Deportation plans targeting undocumented and temporary workers are already inciting fear among these workers. Immigration groups are pushing Biden to solidify protections for immigrants before he leaves office in January.“I think that the anti-immigrant fervor out of Trump and his acolytes is terrifying and defies humanity,” said Judy Conti, director of government affairs at the National Employment Law Project. “And I think immigrant workers everywhere have reason to be worried about discrimination, potential violence, workplace raids.”Trump’s proposed tariffs, and the impact they may have on the costs of basic goods and necessities, are also causing concern.“If they’re not talking about raising wages, which they’re not, but they’re talking about making all of the goods and services that we need for our day-to-day lives 20% more expensive,” warned Conti. “I have fears of recession, and certainly fears that things are going to be less affordable for the people who can’t afford it most.”Democrats who still hold office nationwide are facing calls to help such people when Trump reaches the White House. “Even if you fail,” the One Fair Wage letter said, “at least we’ll see you fighting for once.” More

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      Trump maintains hard line on Canada after meeting with Trudeau

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      Donald Trump said he had a “productive” meeting with Justin Trudeau after the Canadian prime minister paid a surprise trip to his Mar-a-Lago estate amid fears about Trump’s promised tariffs.Trudeau became the first G7 leader to meet with Trump before his second term amid widespread fears in Canada and many other parts of the world that Trump’s trade policy will cause widespread economic chaos.But Trump also seemed to double down on the threat, which he has frequently linked to trying to encourage other countries to combat drug smuggling into the US.“I just had a very productive meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, where we discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address, like the Fentanyl and Drug Crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of Illegal Immigration, Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the US has with Canada,” Trump said in a statement posted to Truth Social, his social media platform.Trudeau and a handful of top advisers flew to Florida amid expectations that Trump will impose a 25% surcharge on Canadian products that could have a devastating impact on Canadian energy, auto and manufacturing exports.The meeting over dinner between Trudeau and Trump, their wives, US cabinet nominees and Canadian officials, lasted over three hours and was described by a senior Canadian official to the Toronto Star as a positive, wide-ranging discussion.Trump added: “I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our Citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China. Too much death and hardship! Prime Minister Trudeau has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of U.S. Families.”Leaving a Florida hotel in West Palm Beach on Saturday, Trudeau said: “It was an excellent conversation.”The face-to-face meeting came at Trudeau’s suggestion, according to the Canadian official, and had not been disclosed to the Ottawa press corps, which only found out about Trudeau’s trip when flight-tracking software detected the prime minister’s plane was in the air.The two leaders discussed trade; border security; fentanyl; defense matters, including Nato; and Ukraine, along with China, energy issues and pipelines, including those that feed Canadian oil and gas into the US.Over a dinner that reportedly included a dish called “Mary Trump’s Meat Loaf”, the pair also discussed next year’s G7 meeting, which Trudeau will host in Kananaskis, Alberta – seven years after Trump abruptly left the 2018 G7 at Charlevoix, Quebec, amid a US-Canadian dispute over American steel and aluminum tariffs.The Pennsylvania senator-elect Dave McCormick posted a photo to the social media platform X late Friday showing Trudeau sitting beside Trump. Others in the picture included Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary; Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, the pick for interior secretary; and the US representative Mike Waltz of Florida, the pick for national security adviser.Canadian officials included the public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, responsible for border security, and Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford. Canada’s ambassador to Washington, Kirsten Hillman, and Trudeau’s deputy chief of staff, Brian Clow, were also at the dinner.LeBlanc said Canada was prepared to beef up border security, with more money for technology, drones and more Mounties and border guards on the 49th parallel.Earlier on Friday, Trudeau told reporters that he looked forward to having “lots of great conversations” with Trump and that the two would “work together to meet some of the concerns and respond to some of the issues”.Trudeau also said that it was “important to understand is that Donald Trump, when he makes statements like that, he plans on carrying them out. There’s no question about it.“Our responsibility is to point out that in this way, he would actually not just be harming Canadians, who work so well with the United States, he would actually be raising prices for American citizens as well, and hurting American industry and businesses.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut some observers were less than impressed.“The symbolism of Trudeau going down to Palm Beach on bended knee to say ‘Please don’t’ is very, very powerful,” Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, told Bloomberg.“The stakes are enormously high and Trudeau has to deliver on this,” Hampson said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be seen by Canadians as a failed mission, because we all know why he’s going down there and it’s not to baste the turkey for Trump.”The scramble to diffuse Trump’s tariff threats has also pre-occupied the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, in recent days.On Thursday, Sheinbaum said she had had a “very kind” phone conversation with Trump in which they discussed immigration and fentanyl. She said the conversation meant there “will not be a potential tariff war” between the US and Mexico.But the two leaders differed on Trump’s claim in a post on Truth Social that Sheinbaum had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border”.The Mexican president later said she had not. “Each person has their own way of communicating, but I can assure you, I guarantee you, that we never – additionally, we would be incapable of doing so – proposed that we would close the border in the north [of Mexico], or in the south of the United States. It has never been our idea and, of course, we are not in agreement with that.”Sheinbaum said the pair had not discussed tariffs but their conversation reassured her that no tit-for-tat tariff battle would be necessary.Trump also expanded on his economic message on tariffs to other global leaders on Saturday, threatening Brics countries – an acronym that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – with 100% tariffs if they acted on discussions to drop the dollar as their reserve currency.“The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Trump said the US would require “a commitment” from Brics nations – a geopolitical alliance that now also includes Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates – “that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs”. More

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      Trump nominates Jared Kushner’s father for ambassador to France

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      Donald Trump has nominated Charles Kushner, a businessman who is the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, to serve as US ambassador to France, the president-elect said on Saturday.Kushner, whose job requires Senate confirmation, is the latest of Trump’s picks to have close ties with the incoming president. Kushner’s son, Jared Kushner, is married to Ivanka Trump, and was a close advisor to Trump during his first presidency.“I am pleased to nominate Charles Kushner, of New Jersey, to serve as the US Ambassador to France. He is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our country & its interests,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.“Charlie is the founder & chairman of Kushner Companies, one of the largest & most successful privately held real estate firms in the nation. He was recognized as New Jersey entrepreneur of the year by Ernst & Young, appointed to the US Holocaust Memorial Council, & served as a commissioner, & chairman, of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, as well as on the boards of our top institutions, including NYU [New York University].”Kushner no longer serves on the board of NYU. In 2005, he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions and tax evasion, as well as witness tampering after he retaliated against his brother-in-law, William Schulder, who was cooperating with federal investigators.According to the US justice department, Kushner admitted to hiring a sex worker to seduce Schulder, videotaping the encounter and sending the tape to Schulder’s wife – Kushner’s sister. He was sentenced to two years in prison.Trump pardoned Kushner in 2020, stating that he “has been devoted to important philanthropic organizations and causes”.Kushner donated $100,000 to a pro-Trump group in 2015, and $1m to a pro-Trump super Pac in 2023.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Congratulations to Charlie, his wonderful wife Seryl, their 4 children, & 14 grandchildren,” Trump wrote in his post announcing the nomination. Trump did not mention that three of those grandchildren are also Trump’s grandchildren. More

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      Trump defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s mother called him ‘an abuser of women’

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      The family dynamics of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, have burst out into the open after an email from his mother criticizing her son over his treatment of women and calling him an “abuser of women” was leaked to a newspaper.A 2018 email from Penelope Hegseth accused her son of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character.“You are an abuser of women – that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email obtained by the New York Times.“You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth,” she added, advising her son to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself”.Penelope Hegseth told the New York Times she had written the message “in anger, with emotion” while her son was going through an acrimonious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children, and had immediately apologized to her son in a second email.She rejected her earlier characterization of her son to the outlet. “It is not true. It has never been true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She said that publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting”.The release of the letter comes ahead of Hegseth’s confirmation hearings in the Senate after Trump takes office on 20 January, in which the veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will come under scrutiny.Hegseth, a former Fox & Friends host, is already facing questions over payments he reportedly made to a woman who accused him of sexual assault – an encounter that he insists was consensual.Hegseth’s attorney has said his client was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the incident in a Monterey, California, hotel in 2017 and police who had looked into the woman’s claim had concluded that “the complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter”.In a statement, Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, said his client had agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the woman because he feared that revelation of the matter “would result in his immediate termination from Fox”.Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Times that the outlet was “despicable” for publishing “an out-of-context snippet” of Penelope Hegseth’s exchange with her son. More

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      House minority leader asks for ‘maximum protection’ after bomb threats target Democrats

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      American lawmakers are on edge after a wave of hoax bomb threats targeted figures across the political spectrum and prompted the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives to demand that Congress take action to provide “maximum protection”.Over Thanksgiving nearly the entire Connecticut congressional delegation of Democrats faced bomb threats that apparently were signed “Maga” – shorthand for Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” political movement.Those threats followed a spate of similar threats that targeted incoming Republican Trump administration appointees and their offices. Figures were also “swatted” by hoax calls to police with the apparent aim of triggering an armed police response to a target.“It is imperative that Congress provide maximum protection for all members and their families moving forward,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement.Jeffries added: “America is a democracy. Threats of violence against elected officials are unacceptable, unconscionable and have no place in a civilized society. All perpetrators of political violence directed at any party must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”According to Jeffries’ office, the incidents “ranged from detailed threats of a pipe bomb placed in mailboxes to swatting.” All were signed with “Maga” at the conclusion of the message, Jeffries’ statement said.The US Capitol police declined to offer details about the threats to news website Axios in order to “minimize the risk of copy-cats”.Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating the pre-Thanksgiving wave of threats against Trump’s incoming administration.Among those targeted were New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to serve as the next ambassador to the United Nations; Oregon congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer, whom Trump wants to lead the Department of Labor; and former New York congressman Lee Zeldin, who has been tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.Bomb threats and swatting attempts also married the run-up to November’s presidential election with politicians, election officials and election offices being subject to the threats.The election played out against a background of warnings of civil unrest if the contest had been tight or disputed. However, Donald Trump’s clear victory over the vice-president, Kamala Harris, largely defused any prospect of protest or violence. More

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      AI expert Marietje Schaake: ‘The way we think about technology is shaped by the tech companies themselves’

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      Marietje Schaake is a former Dutch member of the European parliament. She is now the international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Her new book is entitled The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley.In terms of power and political influence, what are the main differences between big tech and previous incarnations of big business?The difference is the role that these tech companies play in so many aspects of people’s lives: in the state, the economy, geopolitics. So while previous monopolists amassed a lot of capital and significant positions, they were usually in one sector, like oil or car production. These tech companies are like octopuses with tentacles in so many different directions. They have so much data, location data, search, communications, critical infrastructure, and now AI can be built on top of all that assembled power, which makes these companies very different animals to what we’ve seen in the past.Peter Kyle, the UK’s technology secretary, recently suggested that governments need to show a “sense of humility” with big tech companies and treat them more like nation states. What are your thoughts on that? I think it’s a baffling misunderstanding of the role of a democratically elected and accountable leader. Yes, these companies have become incredibly powerful, and as such I understand the comparison to the role of states, because increasingly these companies take decisions that used to be the exclusive domain of the state. But the answer, particularly from a government that is progressively leaning, should be to strengthen the primacy of democratic governance and oversight, and not to show humility. What is needed is self-confidence on the part of democratic government to make sure that these companies, these services, are taking their proper role within a rule of law-based system, and are not overtaking it.What do you think the impact will be of Donald Trump’s presidency? The election of Donald Trump changes everything because he has brought specific tech interests closer than any political leader ever has, especially in the United States, which is this powerful geopolitical and technological hub. There’s a lot of crypto money supporting Trump. There’s a lot of VCs [venture capitalists] supporting him, and of course he has elevated Elon Musk and has announced a deregulatory agenda. Every step taken by his administration will be informed by these factors, whether it’s the personal interests of Elon Musk and his companies, or the personal preferences of the president and his supporters. On the other hand, Musk is actually critical of some dynamics around AI, namely existential risk. We’ll have to see how long the honeymoon between him and Trump lasts, and also how other big tech companies are going to respond. Because they’re not going to be happy that Musk decides on tech policy over his competitors. I’m thinking rocky times ahead.Why have politicians been so light touch in the face of the digital technological revolution? The most powerful companies we see now were all rooted in this sort of progressive, libertarian streak of counterculture in California, that romantic narrative of a couple of guys in their shorts in a basement or garage, coding away and challenging the big powers that be: the publishers of the media companies, the hotel branches, the taxi companies, the financial services, all of which had pretty bad reputations to begin with. And surely there was room for disruption, but this kind of underdog mentality was incredibly powerful. The companies have done a really smart job of framing what they are doing as decentralising, like the internet itself. Companies like Google and Facebook have consistently argued that any regulatory step would hurt the internet. So it’s a combination of wanting to believe the promise and not appreciating how very narrow corporate interests won out at the expense of the public interest.Do you see any major politicians who are prepared to stand up to big tech interests? Well someone like [US senator] Elizabeth Warren has the most clear vision about the excessive power and abuse of power by corporations, including the tech sector. She’s been consistent in trying to address this. But broadly I’m afraid that political leaders are not really taking this on the way they should. In the European Commission, I’m not really seeing a vision. I’ve seen elections, including in my own country, where tech didn’t feature as a topic at all. And we see those comments by the UK government, although one would assume that democratic guardrails around excessively powerful corporates are a no-brainer.Have politicians been held back by their technological ignorance? Yes, I think they are intimidated. But I also think that the framing against the agency of governments is a deliberate one by tech companies. It’s important to understand the way in which we are taught to think about technology is shaped by the tech companies themselves. And so we get the whole narrative that governments are basically disqualified to deal with tech because they’re too stupid, too outdated, too poor in service delivery. The message is that if they can’t even process the taxes on time, what do you think they’re going to do with AI? It’s a caricature of government, and government should not embrace that caricature.Do you think the UK has been weakened in its position with big tech as a result of leaving the EU? Yes and no. Australia and Canada have developed tech policies, and they’re smaller in numbers than the UK population. I don’t know if it’s that. I think it’s actually much more of a deliberate choice to want to attract investment. So maybe it’s just self-interest that transcends Conservative and Labour governments, because I don’t see much change in the tech policy, whereas I had anticipated change. I was obviously overly optimistic there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYou talk about regaining sovereignty. Do you think most people even recognise that any sovereignty has been lost? One of the reasons why I wrote this book is to reach average news readers, not tech experts. Explaining that this is a problem that concerns people is a huge undertaking. I’m curious to see how the impact of the Trump government will invite responses from European leaders, but also from others around the world who are simply going to think we cannot afford this dependence on US tech companies. It’s undesirable. Because, essentially, we’re shipping our euros or pounds over to Silicon Valley, and what do we get in return? More dependency. It’s going to be incredibly challenging, but not doing anything is certainly not going to make it better.

      The Tech Coup by Marietje Schaake is published by Princeton University Press (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply More