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      A tale of two suckers: Donald Trump’s plastic straws and Keir Starmer | Stewart Lee

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      It’s difficult to know whether to set any store by Donald Trump’s bleak and yet also often banal pronouncements, which read as if handfuls of offensive concepts have been tossed into the air by a monkey, read out in whatever order they landed and then made policy. Until it’s clear they can’t work. At which point, the monkey must toss again.But this month, Trump, whose morning ablutions increasingly appear to consist of dousing himself in sachets of the kind of cheap hot chocolate powder I steal from three-star hotels, like a flightless bird stuck in the machine that glazes Magnum lollies, declared he wanted to build his hotels on the mass graves of Gaza. Hasn’t Trump seen The Shining? It won’t end well. Pity those whose children have the misfortune to die next to a monetisable stretch of shoreline. And hope humanity’s next wave of mass killings happens somewhere uneven and way inland that hopefully wouldn’t even make a decent golf course.Is Ukraine the frontier upon which the future of European democracy hinges, or is it just a massive stretch of undeveloped fairway, its leisure/conference utility value currently compromised only by the desire of some losers to continue living in the country they consider home? Where we see the falling domino chain that starts with Poland and ends in your back garden, does Trump see only a succession of 18-hole courses full of men in caps and enormous flapping flares brokering manly deals at the tee? Drive your golf carts over the bones of the dead!But maybe Trump’s horrible mouth-cack is just continuing evidence of his former acolyte Steve Bannon’s advice to “flood the zone with shit”? Does Trump really hate all sea creatures so much that he has to reinstate the plastic straws Joe Biden successfully, and commendably, outlawed? Perhaps he was once told to keep his hands to himself by a mermaid. “These things don’t work,” Trump said of paper straws. “I’ve had them many times, and on occasion, they break, they explode.” Must millions of seabirds, turtles, manatees and dolphins die because Trump imagines that paper straws explode? Or so he can suck up his Diet Coke fast enough to amuse Elon Musk, Pete Hegseth and JD Vance by burping a smelly chorus of YMCA in Biden’s face next time there’s a gathering of ex-presidents.Because Trump, a fully grown man with unlimited funds, loves Diet Coke, and it’s tempting to wonder how many of his seemingly incomprehensible policy decisions can be traced back to his desire to be continually saturated by the soft drink. Maybe there is a subterranean lake of the stuff somewhere deep beneath the Greenland tundra that the climate crisis, which doesn’t exist, will soon make accessible to Trump’s deep Diet Coke drills? Delighted Inuit strip off their sealskins and dance in the showering liquid as they realise they have just struck a rich seam of their new master’s black gold. Like some kind of infantilised diaper king, Trump has genuinely had a special Diet Coke-summoning button installed in the Oval Office. Hopefully, he won’t get it mixed up with that other button. It will be a shame if all life on Earth is fatally irradiated just because Trump wanted a 500ml bucket of fizz to swill down his Big Mac and fries.But are we meant to take Trump’s erratic announcements seriously? While the last concerned voices of the dying liberal press pen outraged articles to their dying liberal readers about Gaza hotels, the invasion of Canada and Trump making it compulsory to drink everything through a Trump Plastic Freedom Straw Company Deluxe Plastic Freedom Straw ™ ®, even cauliflower cheese soup, his homunculus Musk has been quietly dismantling the infrastructure of American government as you knew it. There are cup-and-ball tricksters on Parisian street corners with more subtle moves.Half a dozen of Musk’s own hand-harvested incels-in-waiting, the kind of people who under normal circumstances would have got rich by inventing a way in which hardcore digital pornography could have been mainlined directly into the bloodstream in liquid form, have, under the spurious authority of Musk’s imaginary “department of government efficiency”, gone in and stolen all the data about everyone and everything in the US ever. Never mind. I am sure they will use it responsibly. What can possibly go wrong?Some people gathered at the scenes of Musk’s cost-cutting exercises and waved placards. Others sat and gawked at news footage of Kanye West’s naked wife’s arse or enjoyed disappointing trailers for the new Captain America movie, while the world as they knew it crumbled beneath their king-sized sofas. Keir Starmer backed away, as one might from a neighbour’s unpredictable weapon dog, avoiding direct comment, dodging a commitment to the AI declaration like a coward and hoping for the best, while Trumpy growls and foams. Which simply won’t do.Look. I’m as disappointed as the next metropolitan liberal elitist champagne socialist by Starmer’s government. While I accept, for example, the migration crisis must be addressed, I didn’t expect Starmer, who once left his “village and went to the city of Leeds” and “discovered a whole new world of indie bands – like Orange Juice and the Wedding Present”, to do it with Nigel Farage-style performative cruelty. Address the migration crisis, by all means, but don’t be a c*** about it. Did Orange Juice suffer the indignity of their eponymous third album not even entering the top 50 in 1984 just so, 41 years later, Starmer could send Yvette Cooper out to downgrade the desperate, like Paul Golding in heels.Currently, as Putin puffs up under Trump’s protection and unregulated AI threatens to rewrite history in real time, Starmer is on his knees sucking the paper straw of Trump’s presidency. I fear it may be about to explode in his mouth.

      Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July

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      ‘They may be Russian some day’: was this the week that changed the war in Ukraine?

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had some tough weeks in the past three years, but this past one may be up there with the worst of them.Back on Monday, in an hour-long interview with the Guardian at his Kyiv offices, the Ukrainian president was in a cautiously optimistic frame of mind. He said he had received “positive signals from the Americans” over upcoming negotiations. His team was working to fix a date for a meeting with Donald Trump, he said, and he was sure that the US president understood the importance of coordinating his position with Kyiv before talking to Russia.Zelenskyy’s main message, which he returned to several times in the interview, was that it was vital for the US to play a key role in enforcing any potential peace settlement. If Ukraine was to be denied Nato membership, it at least required Nato-style guarantees that would deter Vladimir Putin from coming back to bite off more chunks of the country in a year or five. “Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said, unequivocally.But the reality of Trump’s second term can come at you fast. By Wednesday, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had ruled out both Nato membership for Ukraine and any US role in enforcing a peace deal. Later that day, in a surprise announcement, Trump said he had conducted a 90-minute phone call with Putin, and gave a press conference afterwards during which he proceeded to rip up three years of US rhetoric on supporting Ukraine.In Kyiv, the announcements hit with a shock as jarring as the wall-shaking booms from Iskander missiles that had been shot down on the outskirts of the city in the early hours of that morning.It had been a “bad war to get into” for Ukraine, said Trump, suggesting it was Kyiv’s choice to be invaded. He declined to say that Ukraine would be an equal partner in future negotiations, disparaged Zelenskyy’s poll ratings and repeatedly emphasised that his priority was regaining the money the US had spent on aid to Ukraine over the past few years, bandying around figures that appeared to have been plucked from thin air.View image in fullscreenHe doubled down on Hegseth’s insistence that Ukraine restoring its territorial integrity was unlikely, and even suggested that Russia might in some way deserve to keep the occupied territory because “they took a lot of land and they fought for that land”. The readout of the call said Trump and Putin had talked about the “great history” of their respective nations and discussed the second world war, all of which will have been music to Putin’s ears.Perhaps the Trump comment that caused the most anger in Ukraine was the casual remark in a television interview that “they may be Russian some day, they may not be Russian some day, but we’re gonna have all this money in there and I said I want it back.” It was a flippant dismissal of Ukraine’s existential fight to defend itself from Russian occupation, wrapped up in a demand for cash.In response, Zelenskyy has been walking an unenviable diplomatic tightrope. He knows that if he starts even to gently criticise the US president, it could make things worse for his country. On Monday, he offered careful compliments, tipping his hat to Trump’s “decisiveness”. He repeated the description on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, when JD Vance, the US vice-president, made the keynote speech and hardly mentioned Ukraine, and when there were surely many different words in Zelenskyy’s private thoughts.There is a depressing sense of deja vu to the situation. In the early months of Zelenskyy’s presidency, back in 2019, he got dragged into an impeachment drama after Trump tried to pressure him to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine. When Trump released a memo of the call, Zelenskyy appeared to be trying to sidestep entering a criminal conspiracy by flattering Trump. (“You are absolutely right. Not only 100%, but actually 1,000%,” he said, when Trump criticised European support for Ukraine.)This time, with the stakes even higher and Ukraine’s survival as a state on the line, Zelenskyy’s team has come up with a “victory plan” designed to catch Trump’s eye. Instead of appealing to shared values or European security, neither of which get Trump excited, they instead suggested joint exploitation of Ukraine’s “rare earths” and potentially lucrative contracts for US companies in the reconstruction of postwar Ukraine.“Those who are helping us to save Ukraine will [have the chance to] renovate it, with their businesses together with Ukrainian businesses. All these things we are ready to speak about in detail,” Zelenskyy said on Monday.The pitch worked, and on Wednesday, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, arrived in Kyiv with a draft agreement on natural resources. But reports of the contents suggest it requires Ukraine to hand over 50% of its mineral wealth without being provided with any security guarantees in return. “It made people quite upset,” said one source in Kyiv. Zelenskyy has so far declined to sign.For some officials from other allied nations, many of whom have become deeply personally invested in Ukraine’s fight to throw off Russian domination, the crumbling of US support over the last week has felt like a betrayal.The EU ambassador to Ukraine, Katarína Mathernová, wrote on Facebook that she had attended the funeral of two Ukrainian soldiers in the western city of Lviv on Friday, and “cried like a child” as they were laid to rest. “How can a deal about Ukraine be made without Ukraine? How could such an agreement ever be explained to the families of the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers who have fallen defending the integrity of their homeland?” she asked.Many Ukrainians say they are willing to see concessions made for the sake of a peace deal, after three long years of disrupted lives and thousands of deaths. But the key question of what security guarantees could enforce such a deal looks even harder to answer satisfactorily for Kyiv after Trump’s comments this week.On the other hand, if no deal is done, Ukraine will face an extremely difficult situation militarily. Late last month, the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet quoted Kyrylo Budanov, the head of military intelligence, as telling a closed parliamentary committee that if negotiations did not begin in earnest by summer “dangerous processes could unfold, threatening Ukraine’s very existence”. Budanov later denied making the remarks, and the SBU security service opened an investigation to try to discover the outlet’s sources, showing the sensitivity of the topic.Several sources in Kyiv said that while the frontline has stabilised since late last year, by the beginning of the summer Ukrainian forces may be in trouble, particularly if US military aid deliveries cease. The army is currently dealing with a desertion problem, difficulty in mobilising new troops and intense exhaustion among those at the frontline.View image in fullscreenHowever, some caution against the dangers of rushing into a quick deal, especially now that the spectrum of possibilities on offer from Trump appears to be so troubling. “The earlier we get to the table the worse the outcome will be,” said Vadym Prystaiko, a former foreign minister. “It’s counterintuitive, and I know it’s painful. But there are still ways. We don’t have to give up. There is a Ukrainian saying: ‘Don’t fall down before you’re shot,’” he said.Prystaiko said there ought to be ways to engage Europe more forcefully in the context of a Trump retreat, notably by finally pushing through an agreement on sending Ukraine money from frozen Russian assets. And while the outcomes for Ukraine may look bleak now, many Ukrainians remind outsiders that the country has been written off before. In February 2022 many observers expected the Russian army to overrun Kyiv in days. Instead, the capital remained standing and the population launched a fightback.“Ukraine survived for three years and Russia is still fighting for some villages in the Donbas. It’s a miracle,” said one senior security source. “I don’t believe the front will collapse, but it will get harder. We have time, but we are paying heavily for that time, first of all in the lives of our people.”As well as the future of Ukraine, Zelenskyy has his own political future to consider in the coming weeks. Both Trump and his envoy Keith Kellogg have raised the question of elections, a topic also frequently mentioned by the Kremlin as a supposed reason why they cannot negotiate with him, after his official term ended last year.In the interview on Monday, Zelenskyy bristled and came the closest to a direct criticism of the Trump administration when asked about these demands. “It’s an internal question… nobody, not even someone with a very serious position, can just say, ‘I want elections tomorrow.’ That’s the sovereign right of Ukraine and Ukrainians,” he said.Zelenskyy pointed out the challenges of holding an election in the current climate. Martial law precludes it, and even if there were a ceasefire it is hard to imagine how the logistics of a countrywide vote would work, given the millions of voters living in occupied territories, frontline areas and abroad as refugees.“Will the elections be only when we’ve solved everything in 20 years’ time? No. But we cannot just shout loudly, ‘We want elections.’ Let’s be honest, today our people would see this as something shocking,” he said.Increasingly strident criticism of Zelenskyy can be heard from some Ukrainians, amid complaints about his leadership style and a centralisation of power in the presidential administration. There was also confusion and anger over an ill-timed move this week to place financial sanctions on former president Petro Poroshenko, in what appears to be an act of political revenge. But there are few voices who think that now is the time for a vote.“Our position is that during a war there is no room for politics and especially not for elections,” said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, an MP from the Fatherland party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and a former head of the SBU security agency. “It would be the end for Ukraine. To start political or election activity would mean Putin’s victory the next day.”If some kind of sustainable peace deal is concluded in the coming months, elections might happen later in the year, analysts suggest. The big question will be whether Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the popular former army commander who now serves as ambassador to London, would stand. If he does, informal polls suggest he is likely to win; against other candidates, Zelenskyy has a much better chance.It is widely assumed that Zelenskyy himself plans to stand for another term, although when asked, he claimed that – like so much else in Ukraine – that will depend on what happens in the coming months. “That’s really a rhetorical question for me… I really don’t know. I don’t know how this war will finish,” he said. More

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      Europeans are right to be angry with Donald Trump, but they should also be furious with themselves | Andrew Rawnsley

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      It was, Sir Keir Starmer told members of his inner circle, one of his most meaningful visits abroad. In the middle of last month, he flew to Kyiv to double-down on the commitment to back Ukraine’s struggle for freedom, a pledge he first made a defining feature of his leadership when Labour was in opposition. Hands were warmly clasped with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wailing air raid sirens greeted a Russian drone attack, financial promises were made, and signatures were inscribed on a 100-year partnership treaty. The prime minister solemnly intoned the western mantra about backing the resistance to Russian tyranny “for as long as it takes” for Ukraine to become “free and thriving once again”.All of which now sounds for the birds, thanks to Donald Trump. It was with his trademark contempt for his country’s traditional allies that the US president blindsided them by announcing that he had initiated peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin over the heads of Ukraine and the European members of Nato. The UK received no more warning of this bombshell than anyone else. So much for the vaunted “special relationship”. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, then unleashed another punch to the solar plexus of European security by publicly declaring that Ukraine would have to accept the surrender of large chunks of its territory and should forget about becoming a member of Nato. The future defence of Ukraine, he went on to declare, would be down to Europe, because the US wouldn’t be sending any of its troops to sustain a security guarantee.Humiliated and anguished, European leaders are crying “betrayal”. The UK government is not adding its voice to that charge in public, but it privately agrees. There is astonishment that the US president blithely conceded to several Russian demands before negotiations have even begun. “What happened to the Art of the Deal?” asks one flabbergasted minister. There is disgust at the Kremlin’s undisguised glee with what it interprets as a vindication of the barbarity it has inflicted on its neighbour. There is fear of the consequences for the Baltic states and others by rewarding Russian predation. There is horror at Trump’s subsequent suggestion that Putin be invited to rejoin the G7, as if the bloody slate of war crimes perpetrated by the Russians can simply be wiped clean.A hideous idea doing the rounds is that Trump will make a state visit to Moscow timed to coincide with the May Day parade, which celebrates Russia’s military. What a grotesque spectacle: the supposed leader of the free world sitting with the Kremlin’s tyrant watching a march across Red Square by the army that has committed so many atrocities in Ukraine.The biggest surprise is that so many people claim to be surprised. We knew that this US president despises America’s historic allies among the European democracies as he disdains the architecture of international security that his predecessors built. His geopolitics is one in which carnivorous great powers cut deals with each other and the smaller ones fall into line or get crushed underfoot. If you are genuinely shocked by these developments, I can only assume you haven’t been paying much attention.The perils are acute. A dictated peace will embolden Putin and other predators by sanctifying the redrawing of international borders by force. Were the US in concert with Russia to dismember Ukraine over the protests of Kyiv and European capitals, the transatlantic alliance would be mortally fractured.Europeans are right to be angry with Trump, but they should also be furious with themselves. They are to blame for leaving their continent so vulnerable to this danger-infused turn in world events. Trump has always had a point when he’s railed about Uncle Sam being treated as Uncle Sucker and he isn’t the first US president to tell Europe to take more responsibility for its security, even if none before have been so brutal about it. Under the lazy assumption that the US would always ultimately have their backs, European countries have spent too little on their own defence. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was often described as a wake-up call, but too much of Europe responded by hitting the snooze button. Three years on, the latest authoritative report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies finds that Moscow is feeding more resources into its war machine than the entirety of non-Russian Europe is spending on defence. Some frontline Nato countries, notably Poland, have ramped up their military budgets in response to the ravaging of Ukraine. The Poles grasp that the cost of deterrence is worth paying to avoid the far greater price of leaving yourself exposed to devastation. Others are still asleep. Last year, eight of Nato’s 32 members were still failing to meet the modest obligation to spend at least 2% of GDP.It is not that Europe lacks the resources to protect itself without US assistance. Russia’s population is about 144 million. The total population of Nato countries, excluding the US, is over 636 million and their combined economic heft is about 12 times that of Russia. The means are there; what’s been lacking is the will.Defence spending is about to become a lively issue in British politics. George Robertson, defence secretary during Tony Blair’s time at Number 10 and subsequently a secretary general of Nato, has been leading a strategic defence review. Lord Robertson is a shrewd Scot who has overseen a serious piece of work that has come to conclusions which will be jolting. His grim findings have just been delivered to the desks of the defence secretary and the prime minister. They will have landed with a thump.The Robertson review will add further detail to an already alarming picture of escalating threats out-matching inadequate protections. It suggests innovations designed to extract more bangs for taxpayers’ bucks by improving the efficiency of defence spending. It also recommends the reprioritisation of roles and activities. It makes the argument that it’s not just how much you spend that matters, it is also how well you spend. Yet the bluntest message of the review will be that Britain is not adequately resourcing its security. John Healey, the defence secretary, has effectively conceded that already by decrying the “hollowed-out” armed forces left behind by the Tories, a “dire inheritance” which includes the smallest army since the Napoleonic wars and an air force losing pilots faster than it can train replacements.One of Mr Healey’s junior ministers has said that the British army could be wiped out in as little as six months if it engaged in a war on the scale of the conflict in Ukraine. In the realm of cyberwarfare, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre recently warned that Britain’s shields aren’t strong enough to protect from the myriad bad actors who are menacing us.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLabour’s election manifesto made a pledge to get spending up to 2.5% of GDP, but not until some distant and undefined point in the future. At an imminent meeting with the prime minister at Number 10, the heads of the armed forces are expected to argue that there will be more cuts to our enfeebled capability unless they get an additional £10bn a year than has been budgeted for.People in a position to know tell me that Sir Keir is becoming swayed by the case to spend more. For that to happen, three big obstacles will have to be overcome. One is the Treasury, which has ever viewed the MoD as a prodigiously wasteful spender, as it often has been. When money is already tight, Rachel Reeves is going to take a lot of persuading to make a special case of defence. There will be baulking by the many Labour ministers and MPs who will flinch at more money for missiles when it will mean less for public services. There’s also a job of persuasion to do with the British public for whom defence and security has not recently been a priority. At last summer’s election, just one in 50 named it as their top issue in deciding how to vote.It is going to take a lot of effort to shift the dial, but the need to do so is becoming pressing. There’s an old diplomatic saw: “If you’re not at the table, you’ll probably be on the menu.” In this era of international relations, exemplified by Trump seeking to do a strongman-to-strongman deal with Putin to carve up Ukraine, the law of the jungle is beginning to prevail. If the UK and the rest of Europe don’t want their vital interests to be on the menu, we’re going to have to stump up the cost of a seat at the table. More

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      US civil rights agency seeks to dismiss gender-identity discrimination cases

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      The US commission that enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination has moved to dismiss six cases it brought on behalf of workers alleging gender-identity discrimination, it was revealed on Saturday.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964, said in court papers it was looking to dismiss the cases in Illinois, Alabama, New York and California, because they now conflict with a Trump administration executive order to recognize only two “immutable” sexes, male and female.Each of the six complaints alleges discrimination against transgender or gender-non-conforming workers.The case in Alabama charged a hospitality group with discriminating against an employee who identifies as gay, non-binary and male by firing him hours after co-owners learned of his gender identity.The New York lawsuit alleged that a hotel group fired a transgender housekeeper who complained that a supervisor repeatedly misgendered them and made anti-transgender statements, referring to the housekeeper as a “transformer” and “it”.The complaint in Illinois alleged that a Wendy’s franchisee subjected three transgender employees to pervasive sexual harassment and claimed a supervisor demanded to know whether one employee had a penis.In two other cases in the state, a transgender Reggio’s Pizza cashier at Chicago O’Hare international airport was “outed” by her manager, called a racist, homophobic slur by co-workers, and fired when she complained.In southern Illinois, at a hog farm called Sisbro Inc, a man allegedly exposed his genitals to a transgender co-worker and touched her breasts.In California, lawyers with the EEOC charged that a Lush handmade cosmetics store manager sexually harassed three gender non-conforming employees with “offensive physical and verbal sexual conduct”.The request to dismiss the cases marks a significant shift in the commission’s interpretation of civil rights law and contrasts with a 2015 ruling that determined that discrimination against transgender employees fell under federal sex-discrimination law.That decision found that the department of the US army had discriminated against Tamara Lusardi, a transgender employee who transitioned from male to female on the job, by barring her from using the same bathroom as all other female employees, and by her supervisors’ continued intentional use of male names and pronouns in referring to Lusardi after her transition.Last year, the EEOC updated its guidance to specify that deliberately using the wrong pronouns for an employee, or refusing them access to bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, constituted a form of harassment.The request to dismiss the six cases comes as federal agencies have begun removing references to transgender identity from their websites but not sought to weaken protections against discrimination based on sexual preference.Last week, the National Park Service eliminated all references to transgender people from its website for the Stonewall national monument in New York that commemorates a 1969 riot, led by trans women of color, that ignited the contemporary gay rights movement.David Lopez, a former EEOC general counsel and professor at Rutgers law school, told the Associated Press that the commission has never previously dismissed cases based on substance rather than merit.For the country’s anti-discrimination agency “to discriminate against a group, and say: ‘We’re not going to enforce the law on their behalf’ itself is discrimination, in my view,” Lopez said. “It’s like a complete abdication of responsibility.”The commission’s website states that it received more than 3,000 charges alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in 2023, up more than 36% from the previous year. But a link for more information on discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity appears to have been removed.Two weeks ago, Trump dismissed two Democratic commissioners of the five-member EEOC before their terms expired. Soon after, the acting EEOC chair, Andrea Lucas, a Republican, signaled her intent to put the agency’s resources behind enforcing Trump’s executive order on gender.Lucas announced that one of her priorities would be “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights”.“Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters,” Lucas said in her statement. “Sex is binary (male and female) and immutable. It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths – or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly.”Lucas later ordered that the EEOC would continue accepting any and all discrimination charges filed by workers, but that complaints that “implicate” Trump’s order would be elevated to headquarters for “review”.Jocelyn Samuels, one of the EEOC commissioners who was fired last month, said that Trump’s executive order and the EEOC’s response to it “is truly regrettable” and that the administration’s “efforts to erase trans people are deeply harmful to a vulnerable community and inconsistent with governing law”. More

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      Trump administration fires 20 immigration judges with no explanation

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      The Trump administration fired 20 immigration judges without explanation, a union official said on Saturday amid sweeping moves to shrink the size of the federal government.On Friday, 13 judges who had yet to be sworn in and five assistant chief immigration judges were dismissed without notice, said Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents federal workers. Two other judges were fired under similar circumstances in the last week.It was unclear whether they would be replaced. The US Department of Justice’s executive office for immigration review, which runs the courts and oversees its roughly 700 judges, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.Immigration courts are backlogged with more than 3.7m cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, and it takes years to decide asylum cases. There is support across the political spectrum for more judges and support staff, though the first Trump administration also put pressure on some judges to decide cases more quickly.The Trump administration earlier replaced five top court officials, including Mary Cheng, the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s acting director. Sirce Owen, the current leader and previously an appellate immigration judge, has issued a slew of new instructions, many reversing policies of the Biden administration.Last month, the justice department halted financial support for non-governmental organizations to provide information and guidance to people facing deportation but restored funding after a coalition of non-profit groups filed a federal lawsuit.The firings touch on two top Trump priorities: mass deportations and shrinking the size of the federal government. On Thursday, it ordered agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers. Probationary workers generally have less than a year on the job.Biggs, the union official, said he didn’t know whether the judges’ firings were intended to send a message on immigration policy and characterized them as part of a campaign across the federal workforce.“They’re treating these people as if they’re not human beings,” he said. “It’s bad all around.” More

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      Trump administration backtracks on firing nuclear arsenal workers

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      The US agency charged with overseeing nuclear weapons is looking to contact workers who were fired on Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s federal cost-cutting measures, but are now needed back.Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) attempted to notify some probationary employees who had been let go that they are due to be reinstated – but they struggled to find them because their contact information was missing.“The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel,” the agency said in an email, obtained by NBC News.“Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people’s personal contact emails,” the notice added.The NNSA, which sits within the department of energy, oversees the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory in California, which is responsible for the safety and reliability of nuclear warheads; the Los Alamos national laboratory in New Mexico; the Pantex plant in Texas; the Y-12 national security complex in Tennessee, a source of enriched uranium nuclear weapon components; and other sites.The agency runs off a $25bn annual budget, and is now overseeing a weapon modernization program. It currently employs more than 65,000 federal and contract employees nationwide. The US is projected to spend approximately $756bn on nuclear forces between 2023 and 2032, according to a congressional budget office report.Last year, the Biden administration approved a US nuclear strategy to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea. Two years earlier, the same administration amended the longstanding “no first use” policy.The 2022 US nuclear posture review said the US nuclear arsenal “is intended to complicate an adversary’s entire decision calculus, including whether to instigate a crisis, initiate armed conflict, conduct strategic attacks using non-nuclear capabilities, or escalate to the use of nuclear weapons on any scale”.Last week, Trump said he wants all countries to move toward denuclearization once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.“There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said on Thursday at the White House. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs of September 2023, the US maintains 3,748 nuclear warheads, a decrease from the stockpile of 22,217 nuclear warheads in 1989 and 31,255 in 1966, according to the Department of Energy.Russia has an estimated stockpile of 4,380 nuclear warheads, and China boasts an arsenal of roughly 600, according to the Federation of American Scientists.Trump signaled his interest in denuclearization talks with Russia and China at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month.“Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it,” Trump said on 23 January. More

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      US Forest Service and National Park Service to fire thousands of workers

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      The US Forest Service is firing about 3,400 recent hires while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000 workers under Donald Trump’s push to cut federal spending and bureaucracy, according to a report on Friday.The terminations target employees who are in their probationary employment periods, which includes anyone hired less than a year ago, according to Reuters, and will affect sites such as the Appalachian trail, Yellowstone, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr and the Sequoia national forest.The cuts represent about 10% of the Forest Service workforce and about 5% of National Park Service employees, but excludes firefighters, law enforcement and certain meteorologists, as well as 5,000 seasonal workers, from the cutbacks.“Allowing parks to hire seasonal staff is essential, but staffing cuts of this magnitude will have devastating consequences for parks and communities,” the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) president, Theresa Pierno, said in a statement.The association warned in a statement this month that staffing levels were not keeping pace with increasing demands on the national park system, which saw 325m visits in 2023 alone – an increase of 13m from 2022.Kristen Brengel, the NPCA’s senior vice-president of government affairs, warned that visitors from around the world expecting a once-in-a-lifetime experience could now be faced with “overflowing trash, uncleaned bathrooms and fewer rangers to provide guidance”.Like other government agencies, the National Park Service was taken by surprise by a late January order from the White House office of management and budget pausing federal grants. The administration rescinded the order two days later and is re-evaluating it.Across the federal government, about 280,000 employees out of the 2.3 million-member civilian federal workforce were hired in the last two years, with most still on probation and easier to fire, according to government data.In addition to the visits to national parks, about 159 million people visit national forests annually. The Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said it could not comment on personnel matters.The agriculture department said in a statement that protecting people and communities, as well as infrastructure, businesses and resources, remains “a top priority”.“Our wildland firefighter and other public safety positions are of the utmost priority,” it added.However, the federal funding freeze is affecting programs meant to mitigate wildfire risk in western states as well as freezing the hiring of seasonal firefighters.The reduction in resources for wildfire prevention comes a month after devastating blazes in Los Angeles that are expected to be the costliest in US history.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Oregon-based Lomakatsi Restoration Project non-profit said its contracts with federal agencies, including the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, to reduce hazardous fuels in Oregon, California and Idaho have been frozen.“The funding freeze has impacted more than 30 separate grants and agreements that Lomakatsi has with federal agencies, including pending awards as well as active agreements that are already putting work on the ground,” the project’s executive director, Marko Bey, said in a letter to the senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.A spokesperson for the interior department, the parent agency of the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, said it was reviewing funding decisions.Senate Democrats have called on the administration to unlock fire-mitigation funding, and separately have asked interior and agriculture department leadership to exempt seasonal firefighters from a broad federal hiring freeze.Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group for federal firefighters, said its members have been unable to hire the hundreds of firefighters that are typically brought on at this time of year to gear up for the summer fire season.“The agencies already have had a recruitment and retention problem,” Riva Duncan, vice-president of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, said in an interview. “This just exacerbates that problem.” More

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      Democrats in Congress see potential shutdown as leverage to counter Trump

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      With the US federal government expected to shut down in one month unless Congress approves a funding bill, Democratic lawmakers are wrestling with just how far they are willing to go to push back against Donald Trump’s radical rightwing agenda that has thrown American politics into turmoil.Specifically, Democrats appear divided on the question of whether they would be willing to endure a shutdown to demonstrate their outrage over the president’s attempted overhaul of the federal government.The stakes are high; unless Congress passes a bill to extend funding beyond 14 March, hundreds of thousands of federal employees may be forced to go without pay at a time when they already feel under attack by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”. And given Trump’s eagerness to flex his presidential authority, the fallout could be particularly severe, depending on how the office of management and budget (OMB) handled a shutdown.To be sure, Republicans are taking the lead on reaching a funding deal, as they control the White House and both chambers of Congress, but party leaders will absolutely need Democrats’ assistance to pass a bill. While Republicans hold a 53-to-47 advantage in the Senate, any funding bill will need the support of at least 60 senators to overcome the filibuster.In the House, Republicans hold a razor-thin majority of 218 to 215, and hard-right lawmakers’ demands for steeper spending cuts will likely force the speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to also rely on Democratic support to pass a funding bill.“There’s no reasonable funding bill that could make its way through the Senate that wouldn’t cause uproar in the Republican party on the House side,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible. “That is the fault of the Republicans in the House, not anybody else. But because of that, it is something that is giving Democrats in the House leverage.”In recent weeks, a bipartisan group of congressional appropriators from both chambers have met to hash out the details of a potential funding agreement, but Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, suggested on Thursday that Johnson had instructed his conference members to “walk away” from the talks.“At this moment, there is no discussion because the speaker of the House has apparently ordered House Republican appropriators to walk away from the negotiating table,” Jeffries told reporters. “They are marching America toward a reckless Republican shutdown.”Johnson shot back that Democrats appeared “not interested in keeping the government funded”, adding: “So we will get the job done. We’re not going to shut the government down. We’ll figure out a path through this.”The dynamics of the funding fight have empowered some Democrats to suggest that the negotiations could become a powerful piece of political leverage as they scramble to disrupt Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding, unilaterally shutter the foreign-aid agency USAid and carry out mass firings across the government.“I cannot support efforts that will continue this lawlessness that we’re seeing when it comes to this administration’s actions,” Andy Kim, a Democratic senator of New Jersey, said on NBC’s Meet the Press last weekend. “And for us to be able to support government funding in that way, only for them to turn it around, to dismantle the government – that is not something that should be allowed.”Progressive organizers have called on Democratic lawmakers to hold the line in the negotiations to ensure Congress passes a clean funding bill that Trump will be required to faithfully implement.On Monday, prominent congressional Democrats rallied with progressive groups outside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, and 15 of them pledged to withhold their support from a funding deal until Trump’s “constitutional crisis” comes to an end.“We’re not just looking for statements. We’re not looking for protest votes. We’re also asking them to identify where they have power, where they have leverage and use that power,” Levin said. “And because of the nature of this funding fight, this is a clear opportunity.”Other Democrats have appeared much more cautious when it comes to the possibility of a shutdown, even as they insist that Republicans should shoulder the blame for any funding lapse.The senator Cory Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey, argued that Democrats must now embrace their role as “a party of protecting residents, protecting veterans, protecting first responders, protecting American safety from [Trump’s] illegal actions”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Republican party has shown year after year that they’re the party of shutdowns. They’re the party of government chaos,” Booker said on CNN’s State of the Union last weekend. “So we’re not looking to shut down the government. We’re looking actually to protect people.”The political fallout of past shutdowns may give Democrats pause as well.The last shutdown occurred during Trump’s first term and began in December 2018, eventually stretching on for 35 days and becoming the longest shutdown in US history. It started after Trump demanded that Congress approve billions of dollars in funding to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border, and it ended with Trump signing a bipartisan bill that included no money for the wall. At the time, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed 50% of Americans blamed Trump for the shutdown, while 37% said congressional Democrats were responsible.“Historically, I think it has been the case that shutdowns are costly, and they’re disruptive. When they conclude, you look back and wonder, what did we get for all of that? The answer is usually nothing,” said Gordon Gray, executive director of Pinpoint Policy Institute and a former Republican staffer for the Senate budget committee. “For people who have to interact with the government during a shutdown [and] for the workforce, there’s real downsides. Politically, there just seems to be more downside than upside.”This shutdown, if it occurs, could be unlike any other.Trump has shown an extraordinary willingness to test the bounds of executive power, and while past presidents have taken steps to alleviate the pain caused by shutdowns, he may choose not to do so. Considering his apparent fixation on eliminating government “waste”, some fear Trump and the new OMB director, Russell Vought, might use the shutdown as an opportunity to sideline federal agencies and departments that the president deems unimportant.“There’s a tremendous degree of discretion that OMB can exert in its interpretation of this,” Gray said. “Clearly this administration is willing to contemplate its discretion more expansively than we’ve seen. It would not surprise me if we saw novel developments under Trump.”Levin agreed that it is entirely possible Trump and some of his congressional allies may want to “shut down the government so that they can more easily steamroll” federal agencies. He expects some House Republicans to propose funding provisions that will be absolute non-starters with Democrats, such as eliminating the health insurance program Medicaid, to potentially derail negotiations.“I absolutely think it’s possible that the Republicans’ plan is to drive us into shutdown. I think that it is giving them the benefit of the doubt to say that they are interested in making any kind of deal,” Levin said. “Democrats have some amount of leverage here, but if we head into shutdown, there should be no illusion of who benefits and whose grand plan this is.” More