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      Trump news at a glance: anti-Musk protesters target Tesla showrooms around the world

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      People around the world joined protests against Elon Musk and his attempts to dismantle the US federal government on Saturday, gathering outside Tesla showrooms from Australia to Switzerland and California.Protest organizers asked people to do three things: don’t buy a Tesla, sell off Tesla stock and join the “Tesla Takedown” movement. “Hurting Tesla is stopping Musk,” reads one of the group’s taglines. “Stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy.”Musk, the world’s richest person, heads Donald Trump’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which he’s tasked with slashing federal budgets in the US, including laying off tens of thousands of workers.Thousands join anti-Musk protests around the worldWith more than 200 events planned worldwide, protests kicked off midday in front of Tesla showrooms in Australia and New Zealand and then rippled across Europe in countries including Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK.Each rally was locally organized with original themes. In Ireland, it was “Smash the Fash”, and Switzerland had “Down with Doge”.Read the full storySenior FDA official resigns citing RFK Jr’s ‘misinformation and lies’A senior health official in the US, who was seen as a guardrail against any future politicisation of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of life-saving vaccines, has resigned abruptly, citing the health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “misinformation and lies”.Multiple media outlets, citing people familiar with the matter, reported late on Friday that Dr Peter Marks had been given the choice to resign or be fired by a Health and Human Services (HHS) department official. He chose to resign.Read the full storyMost employees of US Institute of Peace fired en masseMost employees at the US Institute of Peace, a congressionally created and funded thinktank now taken over by Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency”, received email notices of their mass firing late Friday, the latest step in the Trump administration’s government downsizing.Read the full storyLeaders of Harvard’s Middle Eastern Studies center step downThe leaders of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies are leaving their positions after the center faced accusations of anti-Israel bias. Faculty members who spoke to the New York Times anonymously said they believed that Cemal Kafadar and Rosie Bsheer were forced out of their roles.The departures come as the Trump administration scrutinizes institutions that have had pro-Palestinian protests over the last year.Read the full storyPeter Hegseth’s wife attended sensitive meetings with foreign officials – reportThe wife of the US defense secretary Pete Hegseth attended two meetings with foreign defense officials during which sensitive information was discussed, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. Jennifer Hegseth has been present at two meetings where sensitive information was discussed, one with the UK secretary of defense, John Healey, and one in Brussels at Nato headquarters, the WSJ reported.Read the full storyTrump grants clemency to media executive convicted of fraudFormer talkshow host and Ozy Media co-founder Carlos Watson received clemency from Donald Trump, sparing him a 10-year jail sentence. Watson was traveling to the Lompoc, California, federal correctional institution when he learned of the presidential commutation afforded to him, as CNBC reported. He published a statement that thanked the president and insulted the Trump-appointed federal judge who sentenced him, Eric Komitee, as “conflicted and unethical”.Read the full storyJob cuts at health department will pave way for private sector takeover, experts warnMassive job cuts planned for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will pave the way for takeover of crucial services by the private sector, imperiling the US in future health emergencies, health experts and Democratic politicians warn.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The New College of Florida has fired a Chinese language professor under a state law that restricts Florida’s public universities from hiring individuals they deem to be from “countries of concern”.

      US President Donald Trump said on Saturday he did not warn car industry executives against raising prices as tariffs on foreign-made autos come into force, telling NBC News he “couldn’t care less” if they do.

      The Trump administration has ordered some French companies with US government contracts to comply with his executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes, highlighting the extraterritorial reach of US policies and their potential impact on European corporate practices.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 28 March. More

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      Most employees at US Institute of Peace mass-fired via late-night email

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      Most employees at the US Institute of Peace, a congressionally created and funded thinktank now taken over by Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency”, received email notices of their mass firing late Friday, the latest step in the Trump administration’s government downsizing.The emails, sent to personal accounts because most staff members had lost access to the organization’s system, began going out about 9pm, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal.One former senior official at the institute said that among those spared were several in the human resources department and a handful of overseas staffers who had until 9 April to return to the United States. The organization employs about 300 people.Others retained for now are regional vice-presidents who will be working with the staff in their areas to return to the US, according to one employee who was affected.An executive order last month from Donald Trump targeted the institute, which seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, and three other agencies for closure. Board members, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and the institute’s president were fired. Later, there was a standoff as employees blocked Doge members from entering . Doge staff gained access in part with the help of the Washington police.A lawsuit ensued, and the US district judge Beryl Howell chastised Doge representatives for their behavior but did not reinstate the board members or allow employees to return to the workspace.A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, said in an email Saturday that the institute “has failed to deliver peace” and that Trump “is carrying out his mandate to eliminate bloat and save taxpayer dollars”.The letter to employees said that as of Friday, “your employment with us will conclude”, according to one longtime employee who shared part of the communication. A second email, obtained by the AP, said the terminations were at the direction of the president.Workers were given until 7 April to clear out their desks.Mary Glantz, a former foreign service officer who was working as a senior adviser at the institute, said she was not surprised by the late-night firings, calling it part of Doge’s playbook.Glantz studied how Russia has fomented conflicts around the world and analyzed options for resolving them. She hoped her research could be continued and used elsewhere. She said the institute plays a unique role because of its narrow focus on conflict resolution.“We are the other tool in the tool box,” she said. ”We do this work so American soldiers don’t have to fight these wars.”George Foote, a former institute lawyer fired this month who is with one of the firms providing counsel in the current lawsuit, said lawyers were consulting Saturday to discuss possible next steps. He said employees are not part of the pending lawsuit, so they would have to file separate cases. More

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      How Indigenous basketball teams are preserving culture: ‘This is a healing process’

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      Long before Michael Jordan changed the sport of basketball, another Jordon transformed the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) history by breaking the league’s racial barrier as its first Native American player.In 1956, Phil “the Flash” Jordon, a descendant of the Wailaki and Nomlaki tribes, was drafted by the New York Knicks and played 10 seasons in the league. Though he may not carry the same cultural cache as other hoopers throughout professional basketball’s century-plus existence, Jordon embodies a longstanding Native American fixation on the sport – especially at the community level. Throughout the years, Native Americans have embraced basketball and made it their own. One way they’re doing so today is with “rez ball”, a lightning-fast style of basketball associated with Native American teams.Although the notion of Native Americans in basketball hasn’t fully permeated the mainstream sports consciousness (basketball gyms on reservations are still among the most overlooked in the country by talent scouts), the NBA, Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and other basketball entities have begun to acknowledge native hoopers and their rich legacy more fully.Rez Ball, a LeBron James-produced film currently streaming on Netflix, is based on Canyon Dreams, an acclaimed book about a Navajo high school team in northern Arizona. The Toronto Raptors unveiled an alternate team logo designed by Native American artist Luke Swinson in honor of the franchise’s annual Indigenous Heritage Day; the illustration depicts two long-haired, brown-skinned hoopers flowing inside of a basketball silhouette, which doubles as an amber sunrise. And earlier this season, NBA superstar Kyrie Irving – whose family belongs to the Lakota tribe of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota – went viral for meeting with a group of Native American fans after a Dallas Mavericks game. The eight-time All-Star also debuted Chief Hélà, his pair of Indigenous-inspired sneakers, during the 2024 NBA finals last June.View image in fullscreenAs for the WNBA, the league boasts the only professional sports franchise owned by a Native American tribe. The Mohegan Tribe purchased the Connecticut Sun (formerly the Orlando Miracle) in 2003 and relocated the team to the Mohegan Sun arena in Uncasville, Connecticut.Still, there’s much left to be desired for Native American representation and their conservation of traditions and identity at large, both on and off the court. It’s something Native basketball players and coaches are hustling to retain and defend.“Imagine not being able to speak your language, that’s having your identity stolen,” says Adam Strom, a member of the Yakama tribe in Washington state. “I’m not fluent in Ichiskíin [a Yakama dialect]. I only know a few words. But there’s a big push in Indian country to preserve and hold on to your language. Basketball is a conduit for that.”For Strom and others invested in the Native American basketball community, the sport offers a chance to celebrate Native American history, retain Indigenous languages and provide an inviting, accessible space for intergenerational exchange.Strom is the head coach of the women’s basketball team at Haskell Indian Nations University – the only Native American institution in the country that offers a sanctioned four-year athletic program for Native Americans, and which Strom compares to an HBCU equivalent for Indigenous students. For that reason, it’s unlike any other campus in the nation.But Strom’s role – along with various staff positions at Haskell – have come under fire by the Trump administration’s budget cuts. The recent executive order has put the Native American institution directly at risk. After slashing tribal funds and attempting to revoke Native American birthright – a draconian move which a federal judge has deemed as “unconstitutional” – it’s an especially precarious moment for Haskell and its students. That hasn’t stopped Strom or his basketball program from trying to instill a winning mindset imbued with cultural awareness in the next generation of Native American community members. Despite formally losing his job, Strom – a 24-year veteran and son of the late basketball coach, Ted Strom – is leveraging his basketball prowess to proverbially level the playing field. Or, in his case, the hardwood court.“At Haskell, we play for Indian country,” Strom says, who is now working without pay as a volunteer due to Trump’s unprecedented firings. “Any time my players step on the court, they represent Native Americans throughout the United States. My recruiting pool is a sliver compared to those other universities we participate against. Players have to meet that bloodline. There’s a lot of pride in that.”View image in fullscreenAccording to the NCAA, only 544 student athletes out of 520,000 are Native Americans competing in Division I sports. As the least represented ethnic group in all of college sports, it speaks volumes that Native American women account for roughly 19% of all Native Americans in Division I competition. Players such as Jude and Shoni Schimmel, two Indigenous sisters who were raised on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, are examples. The sisters went on to have successful careers at the University of Louisville, with Shoni becoming an All-American first-round draft pick of the Atlanta Dream in 2014.In a New York Timesarticle about the Schimmels, Jude referenced basketball as “‘medicine’ that ‘helps and heals’ Native Americans”. Shoni (who pleaded guilty to abusing her domestic partner in 2023) has since retired from the WNBA, while Jude, after playing overseas in Spain, is currently signed to Athletes Unlimited Pro Basketball.More than any institutional accolades or professional achievements, though, the Native American spirit for basketball is most visible at the grassroots level, where significant assists are being made to carry forth a vibrant legacy. For basketballers in Indian country, it’s a way to stay interconnected by passing generational knowledge on to the next player.“Without language you lose culture; without culture you lose your people. Kids from this community, their great-great-great-grandparents spoke [Indigenous] languages. So how do you count, pass, catch, run in that language?” says Mitch Thompson, co-founder of Bilingual Basketball and an assistant coach with the Seattle Storm.The program is designed to support marginalized communities by providing free basketball camps that utilize bilingualism and sociolinguistics as part of their core mission to reclaim historically overlooked spaces through basketball.Thompson, a basketball coach with experience working for NBA and WNBA organizations in the United States and Mexico, is a passionate advocate for social equity and cultural empowerment through the sport. Having grown up in northeastern Oregon, Thompson became familiar with rez ball through the nearby Yakama, Cayuse, Walla Walla and Umatilla reservations.View image in fullscreenHis vision for Bilingual Basketball came to life in 2021 after Adrian Romero, a Mexican American basketball player he had formerly coached, and their friend, Irma Solis, decided to offer the program to local youth. At the time, that meant serving a predominantly immigrant, Spanish-speaking demographic. To date, they’ve served around 2,000 participants, mostly in the Pacific north-west.Everything changed in 2024 when Thompson teamed up with his former colleague, Strom, to bring the program to Native American reservations for the first time – starting with the Yakama in White Swan, Washington.“Adam and I worked closely with the Yakama language department. I believe it was the first ever basketball camp offered in Ichiskíin,” says Thompson. “There are only around 100 conversational speakers of this language on earth. Everything needs to be approved by tribal elders. But if you can combine that identity and those nuanced cultural aspects with basketball, that’s powerful.”The weekend-long camp mixed English with Ichiskíin. The program offered Indigenous prayers, a “basketball powwow” (dances and songs used to pass down Native American traditions), and dribbling routines led by ceremonial drummers. It may be the first and only basketball camp of its kind, according to Thompson, who has extensive experience working with non-traditional basketball communities around North America.“This is culturally sensitive. These communities had boarding schools and the kids were stolen from their families and forced into spaces where only English was spoken,” says Thompson. “They had to practice Christianity [and] cut their hair. This is the opposite of that. We’re celebrating language. This is a healing process.”Bilingual Basketball followed up their Yakama camp by working with the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (PBPN) in Kansas – a tribe with even higher linguistic preservation needs. In 2019, the PBPN language and cultural department coordinator, Dawn LeClere, declared the Potawatomi language as nearly extinct, with only five known fluent speakers, a dwindling fraction of the estimated 10,000 that once flourished in the 1700s.Language preservation – outside of basketball – is a lifeline for North American tribes. To be sure, translating modern basketball jargon into an ancient language that isn’t fluently spoken isn’t easy. It requires tremendous creativity, and the phrases often don’t match on a 1:1 basis.There is no word in Ichiskíin for “basketball”, for example, so professional linguists and community members teamed up to invent a literal translation that combines the native words for basket and ball. For participants and coaches alike, it’s all a new experience.View image in fullscreen“We have learned so much working with the Yakama and Potawatomi nations,” says Romero, one of the program’s co-founders and directors. “The involvement from the language programs has been huge by providing translation of basketball terminology and everyday phrases. There have also been many volunteers to help teach the language throughout the duration of the camp. The kids got a chance to enhance their language skills and also learn cheers and cultural dances like Native American hoop dance.”As a bilingual speaker in English and Spanish, Romero learned new phrases including “kgiwigesēm” (“you all did good”) and “tuctu” (“let’s go”). If you try Googling those words, nothing appears. And that’s exactly the kind of gap that Strom and Bilingual Basketball are trying to bridge – rather than destroy – with basketball as their tool. While these native communities face persecution in other arenas outside of basketball, the 134-year-old recreational sport has offered an unlikely pathway towards cultural preservation. It’s something that Strom and the founders of Bilingual Basketball are committed to passing forward in real time.“There’s a sense of amnesia in American culture that [Indigenous] communities and people don’t exist anymore. They absolutely do,” says Thompson. “Their language and culture has persevered through genocide, boarding schools, and other intentional ways to keep them impoverished. Most Americans don’t have any real, interpersonal connection to tribal communities. Really connecting to the communities, going into the spaces. But they’re still there. It’s important for non-Indigenous Americans to realize it’s not just something of the past.” More

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      Protests hit Tesla dealerships across the world in challenge to Elon Musk

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      Thousands of people worldwide protested Elon Musk and his efforts with Donald Trump to dismantle the US federal government on Saturday, with rallies held in front of nearly every Tesla showroom in the US and many around the world – a concerted effort to go after the billionaire’s deep pockets as the CEO of the electric vehicle maker.Protest organizers asked people to do three things: don’t buy a Tesla, sell off Tesla stock and join the “Tesla Takedown” movement.“Hurting Tesla is stopping Musk,” reads one of the group’s taglines. “Stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy.”On Saturday, with more than 200 events planned worldwide, protests kicked off midday in front of Tesla showrooms in Australia and New Zealand and then rippled across Europe in countries including Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK. Each rally was locally organized with original themes. In Ireland, it was “Smash the Fash”, and Switzerland had “Down with Doge”. Photos posted to Bluesky by Tesla Takedown showed demonstrators in San Jose, California, close to where Tesla was previously headquartered, and Austin, Texas, where its headquarters are now.Musk, the world’s richest person, heads the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which he’s tasked with slashing federal budgets in the US, including laying off thousands of workers, though he said in an interview Thursday: “Almost no one has gotten fired.” He’s gone after the Social Security Administration, the Department of Education, the National Park Service and several more departments and agencies, causing widespread backlash and criticism. Musk and Tesla did not return requests for comment.View image in fullscreenIn San Francisco, a crowd of around 200 people gathered in front of the Tesla showroom. Protesters spilled into the busy street and onto the median, confusing the self-driving Waymos trying to get around people darting back and forth.A boombox blasted We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister and cars drove by honking enthusiastically. Even passing postal trucks, public buses and fire engines honked in support. People propped up signs with slogans like “Burn your swastikar before it burns you” and “No Doge bags”. Others flew massive American flags mounted upside down.The block-long Tesla showroom was emptied of all cars, and only a few security guards stood inside, with some San Francisco police outside. At one point, a group of four men wearing red Maga hats and black Doge shirts walked through the crowd, but everything remained calm.“I’m out here protesting because what I see is a hostile takeover of our country,” said Myra Levy, who was holding a sign that said “Pinche Ladrón” (“fucking thief”). “That is not OK for me. That is not OK for all of us.”Her friend, Karen Heisler, emphatically added: “We did not vote for this.”View image in fullscreenIn Berkeley, California, the Tesla showroom has shut down every Saturday for the last month because of the weekly protests, according to salespeople from neighboring retailers. Only security guards have stayed on to guard the building. It’s been the scene of lively demonstrations that have included a mariachi band and a 10-foot cardboard Cybertruck for people to spray-paint. Earlier this month, the showroom’s front door was splattered with red paint. The showroom manager declined to comment.In New York City, several hundred anti-Tesla protesters gathered outside the EV company’s Manhattan showroom on Saturday. Sophie Shepherd, 23, an organizer with Planet Over Profit, explained that the rally was not about protesting electric cars. “We’re here to protest Musk, who has essentially held a Tesla car show on the White House lawn,” she said. “We want to disrupt his business as much as possible, so that includes all Teslas, and not just the Cybertruck.”Marty, 82, said he was attending the New York City rally “because I’m worried about my country”. In the 1960s, he protested the Vietnam war. “Now, it’s the overthrow of our country by oligarchs,” he said. The rally, he went on, was a message to “this guy Elon who is buying our government”.On Friday, the New York police department said its officers were searching for two suspects who allegedly carved the word “Nazis” and a swastika on the doors of a Tesla Cybertruck in Brooklyn this week, part of an uptick in attacks on Tesla vehicles and facilities across the US since Trump took office.View image in fullscreenIn Washington DC, organizers planned a rally in front of a new Tesla showroom in Georgetown, making the theme “Tesla Takedown Dance Party”. “Dump the meme stock, join dance lines,” read the flyer. “The stakes couldn’t be higher but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun!”“The hypocrisy is so deep,” said Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied anti-tech protests and points out that Tesla has received billions in government funding. “It’s this company that’s been subsidized in a lot of ways by the government, but now the CEO is trying to dismantle the government because he thinks he knows better than everyone, because he comes from the tech industry.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenIn the US, protests happened in nearly every state, across the north-east, south and midwest through to the west coast. States with the most planned rallies included Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Texas, Washington and California, totaling more than 100. Several protests also took place throughout Canada.In London, dozens of demonstrators gathered at a Tesla showroom along the three-lane A40 in West London.“Musk is hugely abhorrent. He is funding the far right, and meaning that any Republicans who speak out end up not being funded in their next election,” said gay rights campaigner Nigel Warner.“It’s too overwhelming to do nothing,” said Louise Cobbett-Witten, who has family in the US and was protesting at the Tesla dealership in west London. “There is real solace in coming together like this. Everyone has to do something. We haven’t got a big strategy besides just standing on the side of the street, holding signs and screaming.”Tesla Takedown organizers reiterated the need for people to continue to speak out and protest against Musk, Trump and Doge. The stakes are high and “no one is coming to save us”, they say on their website.Maharawal, from American University, said she was struck by that sentiment, saying: “For there to be a nationwide and global protest saying ‘no one’s coming to save us’ just speaks to the level of anger and desperation right now.”Organizers have also been careful to distance themselves from the violent vandalism that has been carried out against Tesla showrooms. Dozens of Tesla facilities have been attacked in the middle of the night with molotov cocktails, gunshots or graffiti saying things like “Fuck Elon” and “Tesla Is Fascist”.Trump has vowed to designate any violence against Tesla dealerships as domestic terrorism.Tesla Takedown organizers condemn the vandalism. “We are a non-violent grassroots protest movement,” the group says. “We oppose violence and destruction of property. Peaceful protest on public property is not domestic terrorism.”Harry Taylor contributed reporting More

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      Trump has managed to spin Signalgate as a media lapse, not a major security breach | Andrew Roth

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      When it comes to Trump-era scandals, the shameless responses to “Signalgate”, in which top administration officials discussing details of an impending strike in Yemen in a group chat without noticing the presence of a prominent journalist, should set alarm bells ringing for its brazenness and incompetence.In a particularly jaw-dropping exchange, Tulsi Gabbard, the United States’ director of national intelligence, was forced to backtrack during a house hearing after she had said that there had been no specific information in the Signal chat about an impending military strike. Then, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published the chat in full, contradicting Gabbard’s remarks that no classified data or weapons systems had been mentioned in the chat.“My answer yesterday was based on my recollection, or the lack thereof, on the details that were posted there,” said Gabbard. “What was shared today reflects the fact that I was not directly involved with that part of the Signal chat.”Then there was the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth who – staring straight down the camera – baldly stated: “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.” The next day, Goldberg revealed that Hegseth himself had texted the precise timing of the attacks and the weapons systems to be used, specifically F-18 jets and MQ-9 drones.And Michael Waltz, the White House national security adviser, was left scrambling on live television as he was quizzed by a Fox News anchor on how Goldberg’s number had ended up on his phone. “You’ve never talked to him before so how is the number on your phone?” asked conservative television anchor Laura Ingraham. “It gets sucked in,” Waltz, a former congressman and army special forces soldier, replied – without explaining how a number can get “sucked in” to a phone.But despite all this, no one is really taking the prospects of an investigation seriously. At heart, this is about politics – and the fact is that Democrats simply don’t have the votes or the sway to deliver a body blow to the administration at this point.It’s unlikely that anyone will be punished. Donald Trump has told his aides that he doesn’t want to give the Atlantic a scalp, and vice-president JD Vance responded forcefully during a trip to Greenland on Friday: “If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody you’ve got another think coming … I’m the vice-president saying it here on Friday: we are standing behind our entire national security team.”For decades, national security was broadly seen as the last bastion of bipartisanship in Washington, an area where Democrats and Republicans put aside their differences for a general consensus on supporting the national interest. Members of Congress on the intelligence and foreign affairs committees often maintained cordial relationships. There was also an understanding that big scandals could jump the partisan line, and lead to serious repercussions even with tensions between the parties at their highest.Scooter Libby, once chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney, was sentenced to prison after an investigation into the leak of the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. The Department of Justice under Barack Obama launched more Espionage Act investigations for leaking sensitive information than all previous administrations combined.And the FBI, of course, launched a years-long investigation into Hillary Clinton for keeping emails on a home computer server that ultimately may have helped sway the elections. “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity,” Clinton wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Friday. “We’re all shocked – shocked! – that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws … What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”Observers have remarked that the scandal would have been far greater if it had taken place at a lower level in the intelligence community. Mid-level officers and defence officials would all face far harsher blowback if they were caught divulging the kind of information that Hegseth sent into the chat, including the specific timing of the strikes and the weapons systems to be used.But the Trump administration believes that it can simply divert and divide public attention until there is a new scandal. That may be a winning strategy. Trump is to introduce tariffs this week that will probably dominate the news agenda for weeks. And his deputies are out on cable news every day, pushing back at the media for covering the scandal and suggesting that Goldberg somehow sneaked his way into the chat rather than being added directly by Waltz, the national security adviser.“They have treated this as a media event to be spun rather than a grievous error to be rectified,” wrote Phil Klay, a military veteran and guest columnist for the New York Times. The early indications are that the Trump administration will skate through this scandal, crossing into new territory in Washington where even a major security leak can be repainted as the fault of the media for covering it. More

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      Protesters picket London Tesla showroom on global anti-Musk day

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      Blaring car horns on the three-lane A40 in west London are nothing new. However, on Saturday, they weren’t aimed at other drivers for a change; instead it was Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, who was the target of their anger as part of the “Takedown Tesla” movement, which has spread from the United States.“It’s too overwhelming to do nothing,” said Louise Cobbett-Witten, who has family in the US. “There is real solace in coming together like this, everyone has to do something. We haven’t got a big strategy besides just standing on the side of the street, holding signs and screaming.”The protest was part of a global day of protests planned under the umbrella of the Tesla Takedown movement. Organizers say the rallies will take place in front of more than 200 Tesla locations worldwide, including nearly 50 in California. Musk has not commented on the demonstrations.Cobbett-Witten has family in Washington DC, and is planning to move back to the US. The 39-year-old NHS worker, who lives in south London, said: “The checks and balances have just failed. As much as people are trying to not say these words, they are fascists, they are white supremacists, they’re xenophobes, they’re misogynists, and they’re coming for everyone. And what starts in America comes over here.”In the last fortnight, Tesla has responded to the protests outside its showroom and charging point in Park Royal by stationing a lone security guard at its gate, who said protesters had been friendly and peaceful. Dozens turned up on Saturday, their largest turnout since they began weeks ago.While Tesla sales have fallen in Europe, they rose in the UK by more than a fifth in February, according to new car registration figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.View image in fullscreenGay rights campaigner Nigel Warner MBE was attempting to hand out stickers to Tesla drivers entering or leaving the site in Park Royal. “This is the only thing you can do to make a difference,” the 77-year-old retired accountant from London said. “We are pretty helpless over here, the same as Europe, the only thing we can do is try to affect Tesla’s share prices and sales. It is something that has been done already with the Tesla sales dropping in many places. If he can’t sell his cars he is finished.”Documentary film-maker Jim Green, 56, who lived in New York and Los Angeles before moving back to the UK 18 months ago, had worked with Musk on a film a decade ago.Green said: “He was a different person, and he was very charismatic. He was talking when I was hanging out with him about the gigafactory where the batteries were being built, and he had a very compelling argument to make about the importance of batteries, an argument he made extraordinarily articulately. So I was very much leaning in to believing this guy wouldn’t turn into the fascist he has become.”He said Musk had attacked typical Tesla buyers, whom he described as wealthy liberals who care about the environment: “Musk has gone out of his way to insult that exact group of human beings. I lived in LA during the time when everyone who was wealthy and liberal traded their Toyota Prius in for their Tesla during 2014-2015.”Retiree Anne Kajava, 59, who is originally from Minnesota but lives in Cambridgeshire, said she was concerned about the United States’ change in policy on Europe and Ukraine.She said: “I am truly concerned about a world war three. I am concerned about a civil war within the United States. You could say those are extreme views but Trump is talking about war. You have JD Vance in Greenland; it’s not impossible.”Holding a banner attached to a Donald Trump toilet brush, she said: “I used to not hesitate to say I’m an American. Now actually I’m working with an acting coach, to fake a British accent so I can turn it on and off when I want to. I don’t want to be identified as American.” More

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      A tip for JD Vance: Greenland doesn’t care about your frail human ego | Sarah Ditum

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      In August 2018, I did something that JD Vance and his wife, Usha, can only dream of: I went to Greenland, and I didn’t cause a national outcry against my presence. The not-causing-a-national-outcry part of that was easy. All I had to do was show up and not be a thinly veiled agent of Trumpian expansionism while pretending to care about dog sled races.The other part – going to Greenland in the first place – is harder to explain. I’m not an explorer, a sailor or a climate scientist. I don’t belong to any of the vanishingly few occupations with legitimate reasons to visit the Arctic Circle. I was there, inexplicably, as a literary journalist.In 2014, a 24-year-old Greenlandic writer called Niviaq Korneliussen published her debut novel, written in Greenlandic rather than the dominant Danish language. (Greenland is self-governing on domestic policy, but has been a Danish territory since the 18th century.) Four years later, it had been translated into English with the title Crimson, and become a bestseller. I had been sent to profile this unlikely literary superstar.A few days after the editor first emailed me about the assignment, a car arrived in the middle of the night to take me to Heathrow. I was halfway there when I realised that my weatherproof coat was still hanging, supposedly unmissably, next to my front door. I landed in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, with nothing but a big cardigan to protect me from the elements.My preparation was lacking in other ways too. I’d made contact with Korneliussen before travelling, but intended to call to confirm arrangements when I arrived. Except Greenland isn’t covered by EU mobile roaming agreements, so my phone didn’t work. No matter: I could use the wifi at my hotel to email.But the hotel – actually a seamen’s hostel – hadn’t put a password on its network. When I arrived, a large cruise ship was sitting in the nearby harbour, soaking up all the bandwidth. As I stood at the front desk, almost in tears about this professional disaster, a sailor walked past and called out a cheerful greeting of “Hey, English!” I’ve never felt so foreign in my life.The amazing thing, really, is that I could make it to Greenland in such chaotic fashion and not die of exposure. For millennia, the ice-smothered island had been luring travellers on to its barely habitable fringes, and then repulsing them. The earliest known settlers were Norse – walrus hunters who traded the ivory with visiting ships, and scratched out a difficult living from Greenland’s small patch of farmable land.Sometime in the 15th century, the Norse Greenlanders vanished and nothing in the historical record can say whether it was famine, disease or the sheer chilly isolation that finished them off. Their disappearance, writes the journalist Jon Gertner in his excellent book The Ice at the End of the World, “remains one of European history’s supreme mysteries”.The Inuit ancestors of today’s majority Greenlanders only arrived about 800 years ago, and maintained a healthily suspicious attitude to their home. In their folk stories, the ice caps were a place of strange creatures and unknown horrors. The few Europeans who visited tended to agree. Hans Egede, an 18th-century Danish missionary, declared that the centre of Greenland could have “no use to mankind”.Some men, though, wanted to change that. In the late 19th century, two explorers staked their claim to the strange, hostile landscape. First the Dane Fridtjof Nansen crossed the island from west to east, surviving brutal temperatures and terrifying crevasses to make the 260-mile journey by foot and on ski. It took 11 weeks.That stung the American Robert Peary into competition. He undertook an even longer and more fearsome route, crossing the northern part of Greenland. It was physically punishing, but perhaps even more so mentally, surrounded by nothing but blaring whiteness in the endless sun of the Arctic summer. On the ice, wrote Peary, “the nightmare of emptiness possessed us”.It wasn’t clear at that point in history whether Greenland would end up being Danish or American, but the Danes staked their claim first, establishing trading posts in the early 20th century. Since then technology – and climate change – have made Greenland ever more accessible.You no longer have to make iceberg-dodging approaches to the coast by ship: you can get a plane. And when you get there and find yourself improperly attired, you don’t have to get native Greenlanders to make you clothing from reindeer hide that’s been arduously chewed until it’s soft enough to stitch (which is how Peary got himself fitted out).Instead, you go to Nuuk’s shopping centre to buy yourself a new jacket, which is what I did. It was gougingly expensive (island prices), but still better than the pitying look I got from Korneliussen when we eventually met and she saw I was dressed in knitwear. Still, I wasn’t in danger of hypothermia: the temperature while I was there was a blazingly summery 10C.You shouldn’t imagine that Greenland has become too tame, though. Nuuk is the size of a small market town, and wilderness presses in as soon as you reach its limits. Hard, black volcanic rocks rear up from the shallow turf. There are no roads connecting Greenland’s settlements: the terrain is too rugged.The weather turned the day I was going home. It was touch and go whether my connection to Iceland would be able to take off at all: I believe it was the last flight to leave Greenland for 48 hours. I sat in the airport, hugging myself in my new jacket, marvelling at how ill-equipped I was to survive in a place so implacably indifferent to my plans.The lesson the Vances should take from their ill-fated expedition is that Greenland doesn’t care about human ambition and desires. Donald Trump’s attempt to take possession of it is just another episode in its contested history. But, even today, you cannot simply stroll on to the island and take it. So far, the Greenlanders themselves have made it very clear that they won’t be welcoming this new generation of American adventurers. Sarah Ditum is a journalist and the author of the book Toxic: Women, Fame and the Noughties. She lives in Bath.

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