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      Culture wars: Trump’s takeover of arts is straight from the dictator playbook

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      In 1937, leaders of Germany’s Third Reich hosted two simultaneous art exhibitions in Munich. One, titled the Great German Art Exhibition, featured art viewed by the regime as appropriate and aspirational for the ideal Aryan society – orderly and triumphant, with mostly blond people in heroic poses amid pastoral German landscapes. The other showcased what Adolf Hitler and his followers deemed “degenerate art” (“Entartete Kunst”). The works, chaotically displayed and saddled with commentary disparaging “the sick brains of those who wielded the brush or pencil”, were abstract, profane, modernist and produced by the proclaimed enemies of the Reich – Jewish people, communists or those suspected of being either.The Degenerate Art exhibition, which later toured the country, opened a day after Hitler declared “merciless war” on cultural disintegration. The label applied to virtually all German modernist art, as well as anything deemed “an insult to German feeling”. The term and the dueling art exhibitions were part and parcel of Hitler’s propaganda efforts to consolidate power and bolster the regime via cultural production. The Nazis used culture as a crucial lever of control, to demean scapegoated groups, glorify the party and “make the genius of the race visible to that race”, argued the French scholar Eric Michaud in The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany. Political control and suppression of dissent were one thing; art, said Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, was “no mere peacetime amusement, but a sharp spiritual weapon for war”.Earlier this month, Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of naming himself as chair of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, one of the nation’s premier cultural centers, after purging the board of Biden appointees and installing a slate of unqualified donors and loyalists. “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA”, the US president wrote on Truth Social. (The center hosted a nominal amount of acts with drag elements.) Days later, Trump was formally voted in by the board – “unanimously”, he noted on Truth Social in a Putin-esque flourish. “There’s no more woke in this country,” he told reporters.The move drew outcry from performers, artists and more, but still went through. The Kennedy Center’s trustees are presidential appointees, so technically it is vulnerable to such flexes of control, as are other federally supported institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and DC’s consortium of national museums. Some of Trump’s cultural decrees trend ridiculous, such as an executive order calling for a “national garden of American heroes”, or the continued presence of Kid Rock. Others are more insidious – after long threatening to defund the National Endowment for the Arts during his first term, Trump has imposed restrictions on its terms, barring federal grants for projects concerning Maga’s favorite targets – diversity and “gender ideology”.View image in fullscreenWhile the takeover of the Kennedy Center may seem less dire and court less furor than, say, his dismantling of the civil service, Trump’s efforts to exert control over art typify the strategy of a dictator. Comparisons of the Trump presidency to Nazi Germany may be overdone and easily dismissed – even with Republican efforts to ban books in schools deemed “inappropriate”, among many other parallels, Maga and the Third Reich are not the same – but the new administration’s cultural decrees are very much a part of the authoritarian playbook to suppress dissent, scapegoat select groups and seize power.Pick your oppressive regime throughout time and you will find efforts to control the arts. Some of the most renowned artefacts from ancient Rome, from Virgil’s Aeneid to Trajan’s Column, were commissioned by emperors to vivify their divine right to power, celebrate military conquests and cement preferred narratives. The Stalinist regime in the 1930s Soviet Union abolished all independent artistic institutions, required cultural production to exist in absolute allegiance to the party, and systemically executed all of the country’s Ukrainian folk poets. Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution identified “old culture” as one of the four threats to be eradicated as part of his reshaping of Chinese society, which killed more than a million people. After Augusto Pinochet took over Chile in 1973, the regime arrested, tortured and exiled muralists. In her 2012 book Brazilian Art Under Dictatorship, the art historian Claudia Calirman recalls how the museum director Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt hid artworks and advised artists on how to leave the country after officials from the country’s military regime entered her museum and demanded the removal of “dangerous” images – a claim not far removed from the Trump administration’s fearmongering around “gender ideology” and “threats” to children.These tactics continue in the present, carried out in some cases by Trump’s expressed allies. The same Brazilian dictatorship that overtook and blocked art exhibitions between 1968 and 1975 is today championed by the Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro, who worked during his time as president to rewrite the regime’s reputation. On his first day in office in 2019, Bolsonaro dissolved Brazil’s ministry of culture. He also halved funding for the Rouanet Law, a measure that publicly supports artists, and appointed rightwing cultural figures with little relevant experience to prominent cultural positions. In Poland, the rightwing Law and Justice party has tried to rewrite history at the second world war museum in Gdańsk and dismissed its director, Paweł Machcewicz; in recent years, Italy’s rightwing minister of culture, Alberto Bonisoli, threatened to not renew the contracts of non-Italian museum directors. Much ado was made in the western press when Cuba jailed the performance artist Danilo Maldonado for criticizing the Castro regime in 2017, or when China’s ruling party placed the renowned artist Ai Weiwei under house arrest.View image in fullscreenBut perhaps no one models what Trump aspires to be, and hopes to do, more than Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who since his election in 2010 has rewritten the constitution, changed electoral law to favor his Fidesz party, positioned allies as heads of most media outlets and overhauled the justice system. And as part of his consolidation of power into full dictatorship, he has taken control of the country’s cultural institutions, managing their output and enshrining censorship. Starting when Fidesz first gained municipal power in 2006, the party has purged the boards of local theaters and installed Fidesz loyalists. In 2010, Orbán took over public institutions via appointment of governing bodies that could grant or withhold funds according to the organization’s willingness to heed demands. In 2013, he dismissed the artistic director of the National Theatre in Budapest, Róbert Alföldi, on account of his resistance to political interference and his sexuality, viewed as offensive by the homophobic regime.By 2019, Orbán could feasibly declare an era “of spiritual order, a kind of prevailing mood, perhaps even taste … determined by cultural trends, collective beliefs and social customs. This is the task we are now faced with: we must embed the political system in a cultural era.” His government subsequently banned funding for gender studies at universities and passed a “culture law” tying funding of theaters to their ability to “actively protect the interests of the nation’s survival, wellbeing and growth”, a censorship measure that significantly chilled the country’s art scene.Such a measure is not dissimilar, in intent and execution, from Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center, nor his new mandates on the National Endowment for the Arts, which has already been subject to decades’ worth of US culture wars. Those wars are heating up – if history and very recent precedent are anything to go by, then Trump and his party’s efforts to chip away at US cultural autonomy, at individual and institutional creative expression, will be one of his most corrosive and anti-democratic legacies. More

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      UK populists mix faith and politics with parroting of ‘Judeo-Christian values’

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      The splendours of the Parthenon, Colosseum and Great Pyramid of Giza were in stark contrast to the utilitarian conference centre in London’s Docklands, but they were there to make a point.As 4,000 people from dozens of countries filed in for a three-day jamboree of rightwing discourse this week, the images were a reminder that great civilisations of the past had risen, declined and fallen. A commentary warned that western civilisation was at a tipping point, in crisis because it had lost touch with its “Judeo-Christian foundations”.The message greeted those attending a sold-out conference for politicians, policymakers, businesspeople and “culture formers” organised by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) at the ExCeL centre in east London, where non-discounted tickets cost £1,500.The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, addressed the gathering in person. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, and the billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel joined via video link from the US.It was not explicitly a faith-based event, but a distinctly religious flavour ran through the proceedings. The Arc’s co-founders and principal faces are Philippa Stroud, a Tory peer and devout Christian, and Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist whose lectures draw heavily on the Bible.Among the group’s known funders is the GB News investor Paul Marshall, a hedge fund boss and media tycoon whose worldview is shaped by his evangelical Christian faith. According to one well-connected former Conservative MP, Marshall’s influence on UK rightwing discourse is growing, not just through GB News but also his ownership of the Spectator magazine and the Unherd website.Marshall is not a member of any political party and said in a pre-conference interview last week that faith and politics were a “dangerous combination”. But some rightwingers – energised by Donald Trump’s victory and beguiled by the rhetoric of his Catholic vice-president, JD Vance – see populist potential in advocating for “Judeo-Christian values”.View image in fullscreenThe meaning of this phrase, much repeated at the Arc conference, is the “moral foundation of western civilisation” based on the shared values of Christianity and Judaism, according to Dennis Prager, an American conservative talkshow host. He added: “The ultimate embodiment of Judeo-Christian values has been the United States of America.”The term, drawing on both faiths’ biblical roots, was first used in the early 19th century to refer to Jewish converts from Christianity. Much later, it was adopted by conservative Christians in the US. The former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has fought court battles in an attempt to set up an academy for the Judeo-Christian west – a “gladiator school for culture warriors” – in an Italian monastery.Some believe the phrase has become code for Islamophobia. During Trump’s first term as US president, Meredith Warren of the University of Sheffield said it was a dog-whistle myth peddled by the far right “to draw a line between imagined Christian values and a perceived (but false) threat of Muslim immigration”.Farage, whose populist brand of politics has rarely made reference to the Christian faith, told this week’s conference that Britons should have more children to restore traditional Judeo-Christian culture. “We’ve kind of forgotten that what underpins everything is our Judeo-Christian culture and that’s where we need to start. And if we recognise that, and if we value that, then I think everything comes from that,” he said.Badenoch did not use the phrase in her speech to the conference but has often described herself as a “cultural Christian”. She understands the “importance of Christian values as the foundation of family and community life”, David Burrowes, a former Tory MP and co-founder of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, said last year.View image in fullscreenThe influence of evangelical Christianity in the Conservative party remains relatively marginal, but it has grown in recent years via two prominent voices: Danny Kruger, an MP since 2019 who has become a leading opponent to legalising assisted dying; and Miriam Cates, who was elected to parliament in 2019 but lost her seat last year, who is a vocal proponent of traditional family values. Kruger and Cates are on the Arc’s advisory board.Georgina Waylen, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester who has been researching the influence of evangelical Christianity on British politics, said it had “grown in recent years, and most notably in the Conservative party, following the election of a small number of rightwing socially conservative evangelical MPs who were well organised, knew what they wanted to achieve and oppose, and have been aided by the increasing influence of evangelical Christians in the rightwing ecosphere.”She added: “The evangelicals work effectively with others, including some rightwing populists, and have taken advantage of the chaos in the Conservative party. They have been active around gender identity issues and oppose assisted dying.”Evangelical conservative Christian groups have been active in lobbying MPs on issues such as abortion and assisted dying, although their involvement has not always been explicit. In November, an Observer investigation found that Christian pressure groups were secretly coordinating and funding anti-assisted dying campaigns ostensibly led by grassroots healthcare workers and disabled people.Organisations on the US Christian right have been accused of “infiltrating” the UK, lobbying MPs to restrict women’s reproductive rights. Last year, the UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom provided “briefing material and legal analysis” to MPs before a vote on introducing buffer zones to prevent anti-abortion activity outside abortion clinics.One reason for the sometimes covert involvement of such groups is the resistance of many people in a largely secular society to religious individuals or organisations seeking to impose their worldview on others. Evangelical Christians have fared poorly in UK politics whenever their views have come into conflict with principles fundamental to British liberal democracy.“Religion is much less of a factor in politics here than in the US,” said Nick Spencer of Theos, a Christian thinktank. “But the Christian right is gaining momentum. I don’t think the Arc conference would have got off the ground 10 years ago.”Those speaking at the conference appeared to be a mixture of conservative Christians, social conservatives, libertarians and “Maga-types”, he said. “It is clear what they’re against – internationalism, net zero, the denigration of national history – but these aren’t necessarily theological positions.”Rob Ford, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said there was “no comparison whatsoever between the US and UK. Britain is one of the most secular societies in the world. Very few people go to church. The largest group are the people who say they have no religion at all. The kind of highly polarised debate that the Americans have had over abortion is inconceivable in the same way.”But he added: “At the level of political elites, that’s where you get the most interesting similarity that is also a difference. In the US, evangelical Christians are a huge part of politics because they are a huge part of US life. Here you have quite a remarkably high density of evangelical Christians in elite politics.”Some evangelical Christian organisations have sought to nurture potential high-flyers in order to ensure a Christian presence in the upper reaches of public life. Half a century ago, the Iwerne Trust’s Christian holiday camps, mainly for boys attending elite public schools, had precisely this goal. Holy Trinity Brompton, London’s foremost evangelical church, has counted many high-flyers among its congregation – including Marshall.Not all evangelical Christians share the same political views. Tim Farron, the former Liberal Democrat leader who resigned in 2017 saying the role was incompatible with his Christian faith, said the use of the term “Christian values” was sometimes “a proxy for things that aren’t very Christian at all”.He said: “People who talk about the loss of Christian values often have actually lost touch with Christian values themselves. It’s really dangerous when political parties seek to appropriate Christianity for their own ends.” More

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      Trump fires Black joint chiefs chair Hegseth accused of promoting diversity

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      Donald Trump abruptly fired the air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making Black fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to purge the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.The ouster of the second Black general to serve as chair of the joint chiefs comes three months after Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, outlined a plan for ridding the US military of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts during a podcast interview.“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs,” Hegseth said during a November interview on the Shawn Ryan Show. “Any general that was involved, general, admiral, or whatever, that was involved in any of that DEI woke shit has got to go.”Although Hegseth had been meeting regularly with Brown since the former Fox News host took over the top Pentagon job last month, he had openly questioned whether Brown had been named chair because he was Black. “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt – which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote in one of his books.Brown had been praised, including by Time, for breaking racial barriers in the military and for his “warfighter” credentials. When he was sworn in as the air force chief of staff in 2020, during the first Trump administration, Brown acknowledged previous US military service members who had been denied advancement because of their race, Time reported. “It is due to their trials and tribulations in breaking barriers that I can address you today as the air force chief of staff,” Brown said.In 2020, Trump himself had celebrated Brown’s confirmation on social media “as the USA’s first-ever African American military service chief” and noted that he had appointed him to that role. Brown’s experience as the former commander of Pacific air forces also meant he was “highly qualified to deter China and reassure allies in the Indo-Pacific”, Time noted that year.“Under President Trump, we are putting in place new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars,” Hegseth said in a statement after Brown’s firing, calling Brown a “thoughtful adviser”.In a post on his social media platform Friday evening, Trump announced he would replace Brown with retired Lt Gen Dan “Razin” Caine, a retired military leader Trump said had been “passed over for promotion by Sleepy Joe Biden”.Trump has repeatedly said that Caine impressed him during his first administration by assuring him that the Islamic State could be defeated very rapidly.“Many so-called military ‘geniuses’ said it would take years to defeat Isis. General Caine, on the other hand, said it could be done quickly, and he delivered,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday.At CPAC in 2019, Trump previously recounted a conversation in which he recalled asking Caine how fast the Islamic State could be defeated, and claimed that Caine had told him: “Sir, we can have it totally finished in one week,” a story that fact-checkers said at the time “didn’t add up”.Caine, who is white, previously served as the associate director for military affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency, and had played a direct role in the air defense of Washington DC during the 11 September attacks. Caine recently became a venture partner at Shield Capital, a venture capital firm, which touted his experience as an entrepreneur who “co-founded and successfully exited multiple aerospace, defense, and healthcare companies”.Trump’s announcements set off a period of upheaval at the Pentagon, which is already bracing for firings of civilian staff, a dramatic overhaul of its budget and a shift in US military deployments under Trump’s new America First foreign policy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump also wrote that he would soon swap out five other high-level positions in an unprecedented shake-up of the leadership of the US military.In a statement shortly after Trump’s Truth Social post, Hegseth clarified which five positions Trump appeared to be looking to fill, saying that he was “requesting nominations for the positions of Chief of Naval Operations and Air Force Vice Chief of Staff”, firing Adm Lisa Franchetti and Gen James Slife, who currently hold those positions.“We are also requesting nominations for the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy and Air Force,” Hegseth added.Caine’s military service includes combat roles in Iraq, special operations postings and positions inside some of the Pentagon’s most classified special access programs. However, it does not include key assignments that were identified in law as prerequisites for the job, with an exemption for the president to waive them if necessary in times of national interest.The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act states that to be qualified, a chair must have served previously as either the vice-chair, as a combatant commander or a service chief – but that requirement could be waived if the “president determines such action is necessary in the national interest”.Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Pentagon lays off 5,400 civilian workers, with tens of thousands more firings due

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      The Pentagon announced plans Friday to fire 5-8% of its civilian workforce, staring next week with layoffs of 5,400 probationary workers, a Department of Defense official said in a statement.The initial civilian layoffs will be followed by a Department of Defense hiring freeze to analyze the military’s personnel needs in compliance with Donald Trump’s political goals, Darin Selnick, the acting under-secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in the statement.“We anticipate reducing the department’s civilian workforce by 5-8% to produce efficiencies and refocus the department on the president’s priorities and restoring readiness in the force,” Selnick said.“It is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission-critical. Taxpayers deserve to have us take a thorough look at our workforce top-to-bottom to see where we can eliminate redundancies.”The announcement of sweeping firings of civilian workers was followed by Donald Trump’s firing of the current chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General CQ Brown Jr.The initial Pentagon job cuts planned for next week are a fraction of the 50,000 defense department job losses that some had anticipated, but they might not be the last. The defense department is the largest government agency, with the Government Accountability Office finding in 2023 that it had more than 700,000 full-time civilian workers.A 5-8% cut in that force would mean layoffs of between 35,000 and 60,000 people.The announcement of the cuts comes after staffers from Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative, or Doge, were at the Pentagon earlier in the week and received lists of such employees, US officials said. They said those lists did not include uniformed military personnel, who are exempt.Probationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has supported cuts, posting on X last week that the Pentagon needs “to cut the fat (HQ) and grow the muscle (warfighters).”Hegseth also has directed the military services to identify $50bn in programs that could be cut next year to redirect those savings to fund Trump’s priorities. It represents about 8% of the military’s budget.Most of recently terminated employees throughout the federal government began their current position in the last year and were therefore considered probationary, giving them less job protection. Roughly half of them live in states that voted for Trump in the 2024 election, government figures show.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump administration briefing: top immigration official removed and judge clears way for USAid firings

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      The Trump administration made several moves Friday regarding US immigration policy, including the removal of the top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official and restoring legal aid for unaccompanied immigrant children. Meanwhile, the Senate passed a budget resolution to fund Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan and US officials made more comments about Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president.Here are the biggest stories in US politics on Friday, 21 February.Trump removes Ice chief amid apparent frustrationThe Trump administration has reassigned its top official at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) after the agency’s arrests and deportations were slower than expected, Reuters reported, citing a senior administration official and two other sources familiar with the matter.Read the full storyTrump fires Black joint chiefs chair whom Hegseth accused of ‘DEI woke shit’Donald Trump abruptly fired the air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making Black fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to purge the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, previously questioned whether Brown got the job because of his skin colour as he outlined a plan for ridding the US military of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.Read the full storyUS judge clears Trump to put more than 2,000 USAid workers on leaveA federal judge on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to put more than 2,000 US Agency for International Development (USAid) workers on leave, a setback for government employee unions that are suing over what they have called an effort to dismantle the foreign aid agency.Read the full storyKellogg hails Zelenskyy in stark contrast with TrumpThe US envoy to Ukraine, Gen Keith Kellogg, has praised Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war”, striking a dramatically different tone from Donald Trump, who has called Ukraine’s president a “dictator”.Read the full storyAP sues Trump officials over barred access The Associated Press sued three officials in Donald Trump’s administration over access to presidential events, citing freedom of speech in asking a federal judge to stop the 10-day-long blocking of its journalists.Read the full storyUS Senate passes budget to fund Trump’s deportationsThe US Senate has passed a budget resolution that paves the way for funding Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan after his “border tsar” said there were insufficient funds for the operation. Voting concluded in the early hours of Friday morning with a 52-48 vote, almost entirely on party lines, in favor of a spending structure that includes $175bn reserved for border security and a $150bn boost to the Pentagon budget.Read the full storyZelenskyy will sign minerals deal, Trump aide predictsMike Waltz, the White House national security adviser, said on Friday that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was expected to sign a minerals agreement with the United States imminently, as part of broader negotiations to end the war with Russia. Waltz told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC): “Here’s the bottom line: President Zelenskyy is going to sign that deal.”Read the full storyMass firings could cause ‘monumental’ billDonald Trump’s administration could rack up a “monumental” bill and is breaking the law by firing government workers on spurious grounds, according to a top labor lawyer. Officials have cited “poor performance” when terminating thousands of federal workers. In many cases, it’s not true, according to employees embroiled in the blitz, many of whom are now seeking legal advice.Read the full storyFrench far-right leader cancels US speech over Bannon ‘Nazi’ saluteJordan Bardella, the French far-right leader, cancelled a speech at CPAC after Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon flashed an apparent fascist-style salute there hours earlier. Bannon, who helped Trump win office in 2016, finished his speech on Thursday with an outstretched arm, fingers pointed up and palm down – a sign that echoed both the Nazi salute and a similar gesture made by the tech billionaire Elon Musk at the US president’s second inauguration in January.Read the full storyTrump axes support for any research that mentions ‘climate’The Trump administration is stripping away grants and support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contain the word “climate”. The US president, who has said the climate crisis is a “giant hoax”, has already stripped mentions of climate change and global heating from government websites and ordered a halt to programs that reference diversity, equity and inclusion.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A judge said he would not immediately dismiss Eric Adams’s corruption case, but ordered the New York mayor’s trial delayed indefinitely after the justice department asked for the charges to be dismissed.

      Trump faced pushback from the Maine governor after threatening to withhold federal funds over trans athletes’ participation in female sporting events. Janet Mills calmly told the president: “We will see you in court” as she refused to be cowed during an exchange at a White House event.

      Two polls show Americans are becoming worried that Trump is overreaching, though he still remains more popular than he was in his first term.

      The United States might actually be serious about airstrikes on Mexican drug cartels, but experts don’t think they’d make much of a difference, the Los Angeles Times reports. More

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      US judge temporarily blocks Trump’s anti-DEI purge

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      A federal judge in Maryland on Friday temporarily blocked Donald Trump from implementing bans on diversity, equity and inclusion programs at federal agencies and by businesses that contract with the federal government.US district judge Adam Abelson said the directives by Trump and an order urging the Department of Justice to investigate companies with DEI policies likely violate the first amendment of the US constitution.“The White House and attorney general have made clear, through their ongoing implementation of various aspects of the J21 order, that viewpoints and speech considered to be in favor of or supportive of DEI or DEIA are viewpoints the government wishes to punish and, apparently, attempt to extinguish,” Abelson wrote in one widely shared passage.“The supreme court has made clear time and time again, the government cannot rely on the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion’ to suppress disfavored speech.”Abelson blocked Trump and several federal agencies from implementing the orders pending the outcome of a lawsuit by the city of Baltimore and three groups.“As plaintiffs put it, ‘efforts to foster inclusion have been widespread and uncontroversially legal for decades’,” Abelson wrote. “Plaintiffs’ irreparable harms include widespread chilling of unquestionably protected speech.”Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump removes Ice chief amid apparent frustration over rate of deportations

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      Donald Trump’s presidential administration has reassigned its top official at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) after the agency’s arrests and deportations have been slower than expected, Reuters reported, citing a senior administration official and two other sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.The official, Caleb Vitello, was in the role in an acting capacity and had been grappling with pressure to step up enforcement after other top Ice officials were reassigned days earlier.According to a spokeswoman for the homeland security department who spoke to the Wall Street Journal, Vitello is “actually being elevated so he is no longer in an administrative role, but is overseeing all field and enforcement operations: finding, arresting, and deporting illegal aliens”.The outlet went on to report that Vitello will remain at Ice and lead the office that is responsible for arrests and deportations.Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, one Trump administration official said that the White House is expected to announce a new acting director. Another administration official told the outlet that the Ice team is going to be expanded.Vitello was hand-picked by Trump last December and has 23 years of experience with Ice.In a statement on Truth Social explaining his pick, Trump said: “A member of the Senior Executive Service, with over 23 years of service to [Ice], Caleb currently serves as Assistant Director of the Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs, where he oversees Agency-wide training, equipment, and policy to ensure Officer and Public Safety.”Trump added: “Caleb’s exceptional leadership, extensive experience, and commitment to [Ice]’s mission make him an excellent choice to implement my efforts to enhance the safety and security of American communities who have been victimized by illegal alien crime.”The latest reshuffling follows the recent reassignment of Russell Hott and Peter Berg at Ice due to frustrations from the Trump administration over the rate of deportations and arrest numbers.Speaking to the Washington Post which first reported the reassignments of Hott and Berg, a DHS spokesperson said: “Ice needs a culture of accountability that it has been starved of for the past four years. We have a president, DHS secretary, and American people who rightfully demand results, and our Ice leadership will ensure the agency delivers.”According to the outlet, Hott was reassigned to Ice’s local office in Washington while Berg was reassigned to the office in St Paul, Minnesota.Since Trump’s return to the presidency on 20 January, immigration officials have been arresting 826 people daily. At that rate, Trump’s administration would make nearly 25,000 immigration-related arrests in the first 30 days of his second presidency, more than any other month in the past 11 years, which included his first presidency from 2017 to 2021. More

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      Trump says he ‘had very good talks with Putin’ and again criticizes Ukraine – live

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      Donald Trump repeated his criticisms of Ukraine in remarks to a group of governors, while also speaking fondly of his interactions with Vladimir Putin.“I’ve had very good talks with Putin” and “not such good talks with Ukraine”, the president told a meeting of the National Governors Association, which featured Democratic and Republican leaders of states nationwide.He went on to accuse Kyiv of talking “tough” but having little in the way of bargaining chips.The remarks are the latest swings in the feud that began earlier this week between Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Here’s more about that:The Associated Press has sued three Trump administration officials over access to presidential events, citing the first amendment.“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” the AP said in its lawsuit, which names the White House chief of staff, Susan Wiles; deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich; and the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.“This targeted attack on the AP’s editorial independence and ability to gather and report the news strikes at the very core of the first amendment … This court should remedy it immediately,” the AP said.A Washington DC judge has denied a preliminary injunction in a suit over the Trump administration’s efforts to wind down operations at USAid, Bloomberg’s Zoe Tillman reports.As a result, a temporary restraining order that paused placing thousands of workers on paid leave is no longer in effect.“The Court will accordingly deny plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, ECF No 9, and will dissolve its previously issued temporary restraining order, ECF No 15,” US district judge Carl Nicholas wrote.The Guardian’s Joan E Greve went and checked out the Principles First summit, the anti-Trump conservative response to the Maga-loving Conservative Political Action Conference. Here’s what she found:While Donald Trump and his acolytes take a victory lap at the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, some of the president’s staunchest right-leaning critics will convene for their own event just 10 miles away.The Principles First summit, which will be held in Washington from Friday to Sunday, has become a venue for anti-Trump conservatives to voice their deep-seated concerns about the “Make America great again” faction of the Republican party, and the gathering has now grown in size and scope. As its organizers confront another four years of Trump’s leadership, they are stretching beyond party lines with speakers such as the billionaire Mark Cuban and Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, to craft their vision for a new approach to US politics.That vision looks quite different than it did six years ago, when the conservative attorney Heath Mayo founded Principles First. At the time, Mayo, formerly a rank-and-file Republican who supported the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, hoped to present an anti-Trump alternative to fellow conservatives.“It started as disgruntled Republicans and conservatives, but that was back in 2019 when that objective seemed to be perhaps more realistic or people were holding out hope that the party would come to its senses,” Mayo said. “Over the years, it’s grown.”The White House is working to develop a network of military bases where immigrants will be held prior to deportation, the New York Times reports.The first hub is expected to be at Fort Bliss in Texas, near the border with Mexico, but further sites are being considered at bases across the US. Here’s more on the plan, from the Times:Fort Bliss would serve as a model as the administration aims to develop more detention facilities on military sites across the country – from Utah to the area near Niagara Falls – to hold potentially thousands more people and make up for a shortfall of space at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a plan that is still in its early stages and has not yet been finalized.Previous administrations have held some immigrants at military bases, most recently children who would then be released into the country to the care of relatives or friends. The bases served as an emergency backup when the federal government’s shelter system for migrant children reached capacity.But the Trump administration plan would expand that practice by establishing a nationwide network of military detention facilities for immigrants who are subject to deportation. The proposal would mark a major escalation in the militarization of immigration enforcement after Mr Trump made clear when he came into office that he wanted to rely even more on the Pentagon to curtail immigration.For Trump officials, the plan helps address a shortage of space for holding the vast number of people they hope to arrest and deport. But it also raises serious questions about the possibility of redirecting military resources and training schedules. Military officials say the impact would depend on the scale of arrests and how long detainees remained in custody. And advocates for immigrants point to a history of poor conditions for immigrants held in military facilities.Gil Kerlikowske, the former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said military facilities are not designed for a project like this.“It’s beyond odd,” Mr Kerlikowske said. “Securing the people is labor intensive and it could also be resource intensive.”Donald Trump has ordered the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) out of the job, after data showed deportations lagged during his first month in office, Reuters reports, citing an administration official and two other sources.The president’s decision to reassign Caleb Vitello, who took over as acting Ice director when Trump was sworn in, came after government data showed that 37,660 people had been deported in his first month in office, below the 57,000 monthly average during the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency. The homeland security department said that Biden’s numbers were “artificially high” because of the large number of people crossing the southern border.Reuters reports that Vitello was under pressure to increase the pace of deportations.As bad as Donald Trump’s feud with Volodymyr Zelenskyy may be, the Guardian’s Luke Harding reports that the president’s opinions do not appear to be shared by everyone in his administration:The US envoy to Ukraine, Gen Keith Kellogg, has praised Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war”, striking a dramatically different tone from Donald Trump, who has called Ukraine’s president a “dictator”.Kellogg left Kyiv on Friday after a three-day visit. Posting on social media, he said he had engaged in “extensive and positive discussions” with Zelenskyy and his “talented national security team”. “A long and intense day with the senior leadership of Ukraine,” he said.The general’s upbeat remarks are in glaring contrast to those of the US president and his entourage, who have heaped abuse on Zelenskyy during a tumultuous week. Trump claimed Ukraine was to blame for starting the war with Russia, and accused Zelenskyy of doing “a terrible job”.On Friday, Trump returned to the theme, saying he did not consider it essential for the Ukrainian president to be present at negotiations. “I don’t think he’s very important to be in meetings,” Trump told Fox News. “He’s been there for three years. He makes it very hard to make deals.”The Trump administration wants Ukraine to sign a deal that will allow the United States access to its supply of critical minerals, as a way of paying Washington back for its support against the Russian invasion.But Democratic senator Adam Schiff views the proposed deal a different way. Writing on X, Schiff said:
      Translation:
      That’s a nice country you’ve got there.
      Would be a shame if something happened to it.
      The justice department is investigating one of America’s largest health insurers for potentially bilking Medicare, the Guardian’s Jessica Glenza reports:The US Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the insurance giant UnitedHealthcare for its Medicare billing practices.The federal government is examining whether UnitedHealthcare is using patient diagnoses to illegally increase the lump sum monthly payments received through the Medicare Advantage program, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.Although it is best known for its insurance operations, UnitedHealthcare is one of the largest corporations in the world with a $457bn market capitalization. Its businesses touch health technology, pharmacy benefits and physician practices.The company is so large that one industry analyst estimated 5% of US gross domestic product flowed through its infrastructure each day. It is the largest employer of doctors in the US with more than 90,000 physicians in 2023, or nearly one in 10 American doctors.This Valentine’s Day, a new political power couple took their vows on the plush white couches of Fox & Friends in midtown Manhattan: Donald Trump’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, and the New York City mayor, Eric Adams.The pair appeared on the conservative TV show to discuss an agreement they had reached the day before. Their deal reversed longstanding New York City policy by letting federal immigration agents back on to Rikers Island, the city’s jail complex that largely holds people who have been charged with but have not yet been convicted of crimes. The surprise agreement came as the newly installed leaders of Trump’s Department of Justice were making an extraordinary push to dismiss criminal corruption charges that the agency had been pursuing against Adams.As Adams grinned beside him, Homan said that allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to once again roam the city’s jail complex was just “step one”.“We’re working on some other things that we don’t really want to talk about,” Homan said, alluding to their joint efforts to circumvent New York’s “sanctuary city” law.Then Adams, a Democrat who had risen to power vowing to protect immigrants from the president’s agenda, publicly pledged his acquiescence to the White House’s hardline immigration enforcement agenda: “Let’s be clear: I’m not standing in the way. I’m collaborating.”You can read the full story here:After the US Department of Justice asked federal judge Dale Ho to dismiss Adams’ corruption charges, Ho responded with a decision that he would not immediately dismiss the case, but delay his trial indefinitely. Ho is also appointing an outside lawyer, Paul Clement from the law firm Clement & Murphy PLLC, to present arguments against the prosecutors’ bid to dismiss to help him make a decision.Adams stands accused of bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal campaign donations from Turkish foreign nationals.Things got heated between Donald Trump and Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, after the president threatened to withhold federal funds from the state if it continues allowing transgender athletes to compete in female sports. Trump recently signed an recent executive order which seeks to prevent trans girls and women from participating in female sports teams. “We will see you in court,” the Democratic governor said as she stood up and confronted Trump during a White House event.Here’s video of the exchange:Senate Republicans had a late one, staying up all night and into the morning to approve a budget framework that will fund Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans, despite howls from Democrats. It was a key step on the Republican-controlled Congress’s path to implementing Trump’s agenda, even as signs of discontent over the president’s aggressive moves against the federal government have emerged. A Republican congressman was condemned by his constituents in a deep-red district, another GOP lawmaker publicly objected to the rapid pace of Trump’s executive orders, and the Pentagon reportedly had to pause plans to fire civilian employees en masse over concerns the move could harm military readiness. Meanwhile, the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said Trump would win the Nobel peace prize for all the wars he plans to end, even as he simultaneously threatened military action against Mexican drug cartels.Here’s what else has happened today:

      Trump continued his feud with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing Ukraine of talking “tough” but not having much leverage, while saying he enjoyed his talk with Vladimir Putin.

      Two polls show Americans are becoming worried that Trump is overreaching, though he still remains more popular than he was in his first term.

      The United States might actually be serious about airstrikes on Mexican drug cartels, but experts don’t think they’d make much of a difference, the Los Angeles Times reports.
      The Trump administration is pressuring Ukraine to sign an agreement that will allow the United States access to the country’s critical minerals, and the Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon reports that national security adviser Mike Waltz today said he expected Volodymyr Zelenskyy to soon agree to its terms:The White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said on Friday that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was expected to sign a minerals agreement with the United States imminently, as part of broader negotiations to end the war with Russia.“Here’s the bottom line: President Zelenskyy is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term,” Waltz said during remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).The statement comes amid an increasingly public dispute between Zelenskyy and Trump, with Waltz telling Fox News this week that the Ukrainian leader needs to “tone it down” and sign the proposed agreement.The proposed partnership would give the United States access to Ukraine’s deposits of critical minerals including aluminum, gallium and tritium, Waltz said – materials that are essential for advanced technology manufacturing such as nuclear research and semiconductors, and have significant military applications. The so-called agreement is also being positioned as a way for American taxpayers to recoup some of their investment in Ukraine’s defense, with US aid to Ukraine having exceeded $175bn, according to Waltz.Donald Trump repeated his criticisms of Ukraine in remarks to a group of governors, while also speaking fondly of his interactions with Vladimir Putin.“I’ve had very good talks with Putin” and “not such good talks with Ukraine”, the president told a meeting of the National Governors Association, which featured Democratic and Republican leaders of states nationwide.He went on to accuse Kyiv of talking “tough” but having little in the way of bargaining chips.The remarks are the latest swings in the feud that began earlier this week between Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Here’s more about that:Here’s more from the Guardian’s Robert Tait on the budget resolution Senate Republicans passed early this morning, which will fund mass deportations and other top priorities of the president:The US Senate has passed a budget resolution that paves the way for funding Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan after his “border czar” said there weren’t enough funds for the operation.A 10-hour marathon session – dubbed a “vote-a-rama” – concluded in the early hours of Friday morning with a 52-48 vote almost entirely on party lines in favor of a spending structure that would see $175bn reserved for border security, including Trump’s prized border wall with Mexico, and a $150bn boost to the Pentagon budget.Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky, was the sole Republican to vote against the package at the end of a session that saw Democrats place numerous roadblocks in the form of amendments.Friday’s vote came ahead of an attempt by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives to fashion legislation that would roll Trump’s agenda – including a mass tax cut – into what the president has called “one big beautiful bill”.The Los Angeles Times reports that the United States is considering military actions such as airstrikes on drug cartel operations in Mexico – and that experts don’t think such a strategy would change much.Were Washington to go that route – as threatened by national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier today – it would mark a major shift in US policy towards Mexico, and the criminal organizations that hold great sway in the country. The Times reports that military action is being seriously considered:
      Todd Zimmerman, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s special agent in Mexico City, said in an interview that the administration’s decision this week to label drug cartels as terrorist organizations was a pointed message to their leadership that US military action is on the table.
      ‘They’re worried because they know the might and the strength of the US military,’ he said. ‘They know that at any time, they could be anywhere – if it comes to that, if it comes to that – they could be in a car, they could be in a house, and they could be vaporized. They’ve seen it in the Afghan and Iraq wars. So they know the potential that’s out there.’
      …
      Other experts pointed out that past efforts to deploy military might against drug traffickers have failed to slow the flow of drugs into the United States. When the Mexican government declared war on cartels in 2006 and sent soldiers into the streets to fight them, the clearest result was a massive increase in homicides.
      ‘It doesn’t work,’ said Elisabeth Malkin, deputy program director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group. ‘A whole constellation of actions are needed: to pursue proper investigations, to create cases that hold up in court, to dismantle whole networks rather than just going after the big drug kingpin, who is paraded before the cameras.’
      Mike Vigil, a former head of international operations at the DEA, described Trump’s efforts as ‘all for show.’
      ‘The military aircraft, the troops at the border, the talk of drones: It’s all a flash in the pan,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to have an impact.’
      Using multimillion-dollar munitions to strike primitive drug laboratories would be a laughable waste of resources, Vigil said.
      ‘You’re not talking about sophisticated laboratories. We’re talking about some tubs and pots and pans, kitchenware,’ he said. ‘And the labs are not fixed, they’re mobile. They move them around, they’re not operational 24/7. And these labs are easily replaced. So you’re not accomplishing anything.’
      The annual Conservative Political Action Conference is the biggest gathering of its type in the United States, attracting Donald Trump, JD Vance and fellow travelers from countries across the world.But after Trump ally Steve Bannon threw up what looks like a Nazi salute (something powerful people in the president’s orbit seem to like doing), the leader of a far-right party in France canceled his appearance. We have more on that, and all other news happening in Europe, at our live blog covering the continent:National security adviser Mike Waltz also upped the rhetoric against Mexican cartels, after the Trump administration earlier this week named six of them as foreign terrorist organizations.“We are going to unleash holy hell on the cartels. Enough is enough. We are securing our border, and the cartels are on notice,” Waltz said.It’s unclear what practical effect designating cartels as terrorist groups will have on US policy, but experts worry it could be a first step towards the United States taking military action against the criminal organizations: More