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      Some federal workers given just 30 minutes to leave amid Trump layoffs

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      Some federal employees who have been laid off were reportedly given only 30 minutes to pack their belongings and vacate federal offices. Federal agencies were ordered by Donald Trump to fire mostly probationary staff, with as many as 200,000 workers set to be affected and some made to rush off the premises, the Washington Post reported.More mass layoffs came on Friday as approximately 2,300 employees have been fired from the US interior department.The interior department oversees the US’s natural resources and manages 500m acres of public land, including national parks. The widespread layoffs were confirmed by three sources with knowledge on the subject, who spoke to Reuters anonymously.Probationary employees at two US agriculture department research agencies were also fired, Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources. The exact number of terminated workers has not been confirmed, but layoffs reportedly happened overnight.Several federal unions have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for mass terminations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), ABC News reported. The plaintiffs argued that Russ Vought, the acting director of CFPB, plans to slash 95% of the agency’s workforce, essentially gutting the agency.The large-scale layoff strategy, led by Elon Musk’s so called “department of government efficiency”, is meant to cut costs by downsizing the federal government. Trump and Musk have both criticized the federal workforce as being oversized, with Trump calling the federal government “bloated” and filled with “people that are unnecessary”. Musk said on Thursday that the US should “delete entire agencies”, comparing them to “weeds” that needed to be rooted out.But massive layoffs have created chaos for affected federal employees. Thousands of workers were fired in group calls or via pre-recorded messages in recent days, the Post reported. Others were told they would be laid off by email, but never received such messages.Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Associated Press that firing employees on probation is flawed because it targets younger workers.“Baby boomers are retiring right and left, so actually the people you want to keep are probably most of the people who are right now on probation,” said Kamarck, who worked in former president Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration when about 426,000 federal jobs were cut over more than eight years in a deliberative effort aimed at reinventing government. “They’re younger and presumably have better skills, and that’s who you want.”About 100 employees at the office of personnel management (OPM) were fired in a Microsoft Teams group call, CNN reported, and told they had half an hour to leave the building.OPM workers were told that they were terminated because they did not accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation plan, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union told CNN. The buyout offers allowed employees who agreed to stop working to be paid through 30 September, although some have questioned if the payment offer is valid.Everett Kelley, head of the AFGE, which represents 800,000 federal workers, has condemned the layoffs and promised to use “every legal challenge available”, in comments to the Post.“Employees were given no notice, no due process, and no opportunity to defend themselves in a blatant violation of the principles of fairness and merit that are supposed to govern federal employment,” said Kelley.So far, at least six agencies have carried out widespread layoffs. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees services and benefits to military veterans, laid off 1,000 probationaries, Reuters reported. A termination notice to VA employees stated and CNN reported: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”Termination notices were also sent to employees at the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the General Services Administration (GSA).Additional layoffs are expected at the National Science Foundation and Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Post reported, citing a person with knowledge on the reductions who spoke anonymously. The US Forest Service, which manages 193m acres (78m hectares) of US public lands, is also expected to fire more than 3,000 workers.The job slashing comes as a judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s buyout offers could proceed, with officials then closing the plan to employees who may still have been weighing the decision.Approximately 3.75% of workers – or about 75,000 people – accepted the deal, Semafor reported. The figure is below the 5-10% of workers that the White House aimed to get rid of and estimated would accept the buyout offers.Send us a tip
      If you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761 More

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      Inside Trump’s ‘unprecedented’ crackdown on US consumer watchdog

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      The termination email for a score of employees at the top US consumer watchdog arrived in the late hours of the night.“Unfortunately, the Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs,” dozens of probationary staffers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) were informed on 11 February.“For these reasons, I regrettably inform you that I am removing you from your position of [job title], with the agency and the federal service [effective date],” continued the letter from Adam Martinez, CFPB’s chief human capital officer and seen by the Guardian.The CFPB has long been known as a popular agency, one that’s recovered more than $21bn for defrauded Americans since its creation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But now it faces the threat of dismantlement, and becoming the next institution under the Trump administration to potentially be rapidly hollowed out from within – a situation that could cause consumers the need to fend for themselves against predatory financial practices. More broad layoffs may be on the way.“It’s been really stressful to potentially lose my way to support my family as the primary breadwinner,” said one of several CFPB employees who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation. “But the chaos that’s happening is impacting not just the bureau, but consumers and industry.”The trouble began earlier this month, when the newly appointed acting director, Russell Vought, issued a sweeping order halting all agency operations. Staff were instructed not to perform any work tasks without explicit written approval. The agency’s headquarters was abruptly closed, its website went dark, and its social media accounts were deleted.“This has been unprecedented,” said a second CFPB employee, who joined the financial watchdog just before Trump’s first term. “No administrative tasks, no trainings, we can’t do anything. We were in the middle of exams, doing what we do. And now there are open questions about everything.”The freeze has left both CFPB staff and the financial institutions they oversee in limbo. Ongoing examinations have been suspended mid-process. Statutory deadlines loom with no one authorized to handle them. Even routine consumer-protection functions have ground to a halt.“Right now, they’re not allowed to proceed with any kind of court cases,” a third employee explained. “Any of these cases they’re litigating against any kind of bank is presumably going to be thrown out, which really sucks.”The work stoppage came with a twist: the possible installation of surveillance software on employee computers just days before the shutdown, two current staffers told the Guardian.“People are almost scared to work. There are concerns of keystrokes being monitored,” the first CFPB employee said. “No one wants to get fired for insubordination.”“I would have it open and I’d be, like, jiggling my mouse to keep it green,” the second employee said, “if only because I’m just extremely nervous about what the consequences are of a work stoppage.”The CFPB did not return a request for comment.This climate of fear has only been amplified by the tech billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” team, who were granted access to CFPB’s headquarters and computer systems. Hours after their arrival, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” with a tombstone emoji on his social media platform, X.The CFPB holds vast amounts of sensitive consumer and corporate data, raising serious security concerns. The bureau maintains one of the federal government’s largest consumer-complaint databases, containing millions of detailed records about Americans’ personal financial struggles, from mortgage difficulties to credit card disputes. This includes social security numbers, account details and comprehensive financial histories.“Companies submit confidential business information, trade secrets and information about consumers,” the third employee went on. “People reveal very personal, sensitive information, and it seems like there has been very little regard towards protecting that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, the administration is preparing for even more dramatic cuts. According to legal filings from a federal workers’ union on Thursday, plans are believed to be under way to terminate more than 95% of the bureau’s employees, in effect rendering it impossible for the agency to fulfill any of its statutory functions.Another legal filing from the union that represents CFPB employees on Friday seeks an injunction to prevent further disruption, arguing that Vought’s moves violate separations of powers by obstructing Congress’s mandate to protect American consumers.There are fears that CFPB’s potential demise would leave a massive void in consumer protection. Over the years, some strong enforcement actions included a $120m settlement with student loan servicer Navient over illegal practices, a $175m penalty against Block’s Cash App for inadequate fraud protection and a $3.7bn order against Wells Fargo for mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages and deposit accounts.Still, Trump has been explicit about his intentions to gut the agency. When asked whether his goal was to eliminate the CFPB entirely, he told a press pool on Monday: “I would say, yeah, because we’re trying to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse.” He added: “It was a very important thing to get rid of.”Adding to the confusion, Trump moved to install his own pick atop the watchdog, nominating Jonathan McKernan, the former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation board member.McKernan, who quit his FDIC post just a day before his nomination, would potentially be moving from an agency focused on banking stability to one focused on consumer protection. He took a parting swipe at financial regulations as he left the FDIC, posting on X that he hoped it would “succeed in its mission while also reversing the regulatory overreaches of the last few years”.The actions come despite overwhelming public support for financial protection. A September poll from Americans for Financial Reform showed that 91% of voters believe it is important to regulate financial services to ensure they are fair for consumers, including 95% of Democrats, 87% of Republicans and 88% of independents.But the administration is looking to move ahead and dismantle the agency’s infrastructure anyway. As the future of America’s consumer financial watchdog hangs in the balance, its employees remain defiant.“We’re the watchdogs. We do this work to protect all American consumers. It doesn’t matter who they voted for, where they live,” one staffer said. “What matters is that people have rights. There are laws to protect them, and we’re here to do the work to help protect them, and we’re not going to be bullied.” More

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      The Guardian view on supporting vaccines: humans can work miracles – so why wouldn’t we? | Editorial

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      It is easy to become so used to scientific and social advances that we take them for granted. But sometimes we should pause to celebrate – to feel genuine awe – at the wonders that we have seen. Amid all the wars, the disasters and the crimes of the last half century, we have witnessed nothing short of a miracle.Vaccination, in addition to clean water, sanitation and improved nutrition, has been one of the greatest contributors to global health. It is responsible for much of the astounding fall in child mortality, which plummeted by 59% between 1990 and 2022. It has saved more than 150 million lives, mostly of infants, since the Expanded Programme on Immunisation was launched by the World Health Organization in 1974. Initially designed to protect children against diseases including smallpox, tuberculosis, polio and measles, the scheme has since been extended to cover more pathogens. Then, in 2000, came the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), a public-private organisation that provides financial and technical support for vaccination in poorer countries and negotiates with manufacturers to lower costs.The results have been remarkable. Prevention is better – and cheaper and easier – than cure. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980. Almost all the world is now polio-free. Cases of many other diseases have been slashed. Much more can be done: an estimated 5 million children have been protected against malaria since routine vaccinations were launched a year ago. And from a scientific perspective, we are entering a golden age of vaccines.Yet this is a dangerous moment in other ways. The climate crisis is spurring disease outbreaks. Conflict has dramatically increased the number of unprotected children. Vaccine scepticism has grown. Now cuts to funding threaten to turn the clock back. The trashing of USAid will hinder delivery and has halted a groundbreaking programme to create new malaria vaccines. Robert F Kennedy Jr – who once claimed that “no vaccine is safe and effective” and who tried to persuade the US government to rescind authorisation for the coronavirus vaccine at the height of the pandemic – was confirmed this week as health secretary.Now the UK, one of Gavi’s founding donors and the country which has given most to its core programme, is considering a significant cut to its support. This would be a grave error. While some aspects of Gavi’s approach have faced sensible scrutiny in the past, it has vaccinated over 1 billion children and done so cost-effectively: 97 pence in every pound it is given goes on vaccine programmes. Its success is also evident in the number of countries which have graduated from being beneficiaries to paying their own way; some, including Indonesia, are becoming donors in turn. And Gavi’s stockpiles help to keep people safe in wealthier countries too, as well as ensuring that poorer nations are healthier and more stable.For all these reasons, Gavi has long enjoyed bipartisan support in the UK, which has given it more than £2bn over the last four years. Now, more than ever, its funding must be sustained. The world is full of apparently intractable conflicts and complex moral dilemmas. Few decisions are truly simple for governments. But this one is a no-brainer. It should astonish us that we can so easily save lives. It should be self-evident that we must continue to seize that opportunity. More

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      ‘We no longer go out alone’: what happens after Trump revokes temporary protected status?

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      The Trump administration’s decision to end temporary humanitarian protections for Venezuelans who came to the United States seeking refuge in recent years has plunged hundreds of thousands of people into uncertainty. Many worry they could be deported back to the autocratic regime they tried to flee.“We lived in fear and we are still afraid,” said Jesús, who fled Venezuela with his wife and children, crossing through Colombia, the Darién jungle in Panama and then Mexico, before arriving in Texas in 2021. His wife had worked as a civil servant in Venezuela, and had grown increasingly alarmed by the government’s crackdown on free speech and resisted participating in pro-government demonstrations. That’s when the couple began receiving threats. “They even chased us into our home,” Jesús said.In 2023, his family secured temporary protected status (TPS) – allowing them to legally live and work in the US – and assumed they would be safe for a while.But earlier this month, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, abruptly decided to end TPS for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans in the US, including Jesús. Within 60 days, the administration plans to strip away the designation, saying that the situation in Venezuela has “notably improved”.“You can imagine – this came as a shock,” Jesús said. “We suffered a political persecution in our country and now we are doing it here as well.”Send us a tipIf you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of the Trump administration’s temporary protected status decision, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (929) 418-7175.For the past 35 years, TPS has offered immigration status to people who have fled countries experiencing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster or extraordinary conditions that make it unsafe to return there. What is especially harrowing for many people with temporary protections, now that it’s being taken away, is how easy they will be to find, and deport. In order to secure TPS, they had to submit all their information, their home addresses and histories to the government.Immigrant advocacy groups have been encouraging Venezuelans with temporary protections to find a legal service provider as soon as possible. They have also been providing “know your rights” training. “This is the same information that they’re giving to people who have been long-residing undocumented immigrants – because the same rights will apply to people who have TPS, who may lose their status,” said Laura Vazquez, director of immigrant integration at UnidosUS.View image in fullscreenAs the Trump administration tries to ramp up deportations, people with expired protections who have not managed to apply for asylum or other avenues to remain in the US permanently could be easy targets. Jesús and his family are keenly aware of this.Though they have applied for asylum and are awaiting an appointment with the immigration courts in 2027, and would be protected from deportation while their case is pending, Jesús still worries about being caught up in raids. “I hear a lot about how some people don’t have their papers respected,” he said. “We no longer go out alone – only when it’s necessary for work.”His four kids – ranging from preschool to high school-aged – have been feeling the tension too. Amid news that Ice agents are conducting raids in major cities, and will be authorized to enter schools, they have asked him “Papá, they won’t look for us, will they?”Jesús and his wife have started ordering all their food and supplies online, rather than trying to stop by the grocery store after their shifts. They also started looking into selling their home and their car, so that they will have enough funds to pay legal fees and cover expenses in case they are unable to legally work if their temporary status is taken away.In recent days, they have also started thinking about where else they could go if they are not allowed to remain in the US. More than anything, they want to avoid getting deported to Venezuela. “It’s like they’re trying to throw us into the lions’ cage, as we say in my country,” Jesús said. “Because they would be sending us to persecution and certain death.”Trump had previously tried to terminate protections for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan during his first term. Back then, however, officials proposed allowing those who were affected to keep their protected status for 12 to 18 months before it ended. But that was challenged in court, and people with temporary status were ultimately able to keep their status when Joe Biden took office and rescinded Trump’s TPS terminations.This time around, the administration has moved to end protections earlier, revoking the outgoing Biden administration’s decision to extend the protections for Venezuelans until October 2026. About 350,000 Venezuelans who received TPS in 2023 will lose their temporary status 60 days from when the administration posted notice this month, and another 250,000 who received the status in 2021 will lose the protections in September. The move is likely to face legal challenges.View image in fullscreen“Once again you have the Trump administration actively trying to strip immigration status of several hundred thousands people who are lawfully present and employed,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor who led the lawsuit that blocked Trump from terminating TPS protections during his first term. Doing so will strip away work permits for people who work in industries across the US, and could have a “catastrophic economic impact” in communities across the US.“There’s also the humanitarian impact of telling 300,000 people they should just go back to a country that is, in this case, extremely unsafe. Everybody knows it. I mean, everybody knows Venezuela is a very precarious and dangerous place to live, which is why millions of people have fled,” he added.In Noem’s termination notice, she argued that Venezuelans no longer needed protection, because there had been “notable improvements in several areas such as the economy, public health, and crime”. She also added that it was “contrary to the national interest” to allow TPS holders to stay in the US, claiming that members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had come to the US, and that US cities could not bear the financial burden of helping new arrivals settle.Advocates questioned the logic of rescinding immigrants’ ability to work and contribute to the communities. Experts have also questioned how the administration could cite improvements, given the state department’s warnings that Venezuela remains in crisis. In recent months, the government of the authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, has been rounding up hundreds who protested against fraudulent election results – as well as people who happened to be near protests but seemingly had no involvement in politics. The Biden administration had also issued a $25m bounty for Maduro’s arrest.Immigration advocates are encouraging all Venezuelan TPS holders who might be eligible to apply for asylum in the US as soon as possible – as doing so would allow them their best chance of staying in country. But the process is complex and can be expensive. “It’s not a small thing, especially when the asylum law is so complicated and very difficult to do without an attorney,” said Arulanantham.Mary, a mother of four in Georgia, said she has been having panic attacks and nosebleeds since learning that she and her family could lose their protected status. “I’ve spent six days crying in my bedroom,” she said. “My kids have been crying too. They run into the closet every time they hear a knock on the door.”Her husband was nearly killed in Venezuela, escaping the country with a crack in his skull. Mary, too, was persecuted. As a young law student in Venezuela, she had studied with a prominent opposition leader. “It is impossible to return there,” she said. “If I set foot again in Venezuela I am sure that they will either put my husband in prison or kill him. And they’ll do the same to me.”She had tried to apply for asylum once already, only to discover later that she had been swindled by her immigration lawyer – who had failed to properly file her paperwork, and that she had been issued a deportation order. Her temporary status has been the only thing protecting her. The family now has an appointment with another lawyer at the end of March, but she worries that there won’t be enough time to sort out their affairs before their protected status expires. She worries about where her family could even go, and how she will be able to provide for her youngest son, who is autistic. Even if they do survive returning to Venezuela, she said, how could she possibly find the special education programs her son needs there?“When the secretary of security told us that all of us, all of us who crossed the border were criminals, we were from the Tren de Augua gang, that really affected me,” she said. “After nearly four years here, my husband and I don’t have a single ticket, we don’t have a single fine.”Now, all she can do is wait and hope, she added. “I am clinging to God’s word,” she said. “He’s our only protection.”The names of TPS holders in this piece have been changed to protect their safety and the safety of their families More

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      Seth Meyers on Trump and Musk: ‘They’re trying to rip you off’

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      Late-night hosts took aim at Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s too-close relationship and how one is clearly in control of the other.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about how voters have been most concerned about grocery prices yet Trump has been “easily distracted by silly stuff” and placed his attention elsewhere.This week saw him elected chair of the Kennedy Center, which led to Meyers joking that the next round of honors would include “Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood and Big Mouth Billy Bass”.It’s meant that he’s had less time to help Musk in his project of “dismantling the government”. Meyers joked that it’s “fun sometimes to pretend bad things might be good things”.In audio from a call about the Kennedy Center, Trump said he was going to make it “hot” again like he had also made the presidency. “You didn’t make the presidency hot unless you mean hot like a low-grade fever,” he said.Another “frivolous distraction Trump is obsessed with” concerns him renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has led to Associated Press journalists being banned from official press events as they refuse to obey. “At least give people like a week to process it!” Meyers said.He also said that “we should stop waiting for tech companies to be part of the pushback” with both Google and Apple following the change on official maps.Meyers played a clip of Trump trying to explain Musk’s dismantling, which was a ramble about magnets, tractors and planes. “Every time Trump speaks I feel like a guy who started season two of Severance without watching season one,” he said.He said they want to avoid talking about what’s really happening as “the reality of what they’re doing is unpopular and illegal” and Musk essentially wants “direct control of the government” by taking over the regulatory group that would otherwise be able to stop his business practices.He said that there is “a lot of bad stuff happening right now” and “they’re trying to rip you off and they hope you’ll be distracted by all the nonsense going through Trump’s head”.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host spoke about the nationwide shortage of eggs with grocery stores hiking prices and limiting the number of eggs customers can purchase.He said that regular eggs are now “more valuable than Faberge”.For Valentine’s Day, he joked that Trump has “got a little something for his sugar vladdy” after a call with Vladimir Putin in which the Russian dictator was given essentially everything he wanted out of the negotiation.Kimmel said it is “honestly amazing the guy only bankrupted three casinos” while saying that “if you attack and murder our allies, it will make no difference at all”.Trump’s rambling explanation led Kimmel to say that we are “one weird press conference away from Trump saying he wants to move Ukraine to Gaza”.Then, “as if we don’t have enough to worry about”, Kimmel said that “measles and wide-leg jeans are back”, joking about Kendrick Lamar’s outfit choice at the Super Bowl.He reassured us that “Bobby Brainworm is on the job” to fix measles with the outspoken anti-vax crusader confirmed as the new head of health and human services.In a press conference, Robert F Kennedy Jr said that God sent him Trump. “Next God is gonna send us diphtheria,” Kimmel joked.The clip saw Kennedy engage in “triple-A ass kissing”, which Kimmel said would have aroused Trump. “Melania couldn’t turn him on like that the first night they met,” he joked. More

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      Musk-linked group offered $5m for proof of voter fraud – and came up with nothing

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      In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the [election] system that have eroded our trust”. The ad pledged that “whistleblowers” who shared evidence of election fraud “will be rewarded with payment from our $5m fund”.This reward was courtesy of a just-announced group, the Fair Election Fund, which has deep connections to Elon Musk’s political network, according to materials obtained by Documented.The Fair Election Fund pledged that “the bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers” for sharing their stories, and that it would launch “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns” that would “highlight these cases”.It was followed by another ad that ran in swing states during the Olympics and told viewers “you could be eligible for compensation” for sharing evidence of election fraud.Despite the group’s high-profile, deep-pocketed backers and lucrative bounty offers, it never revealed any evidence of voter or election fraud. Instead, the group took a series of unrelated detours into tangential areas like third-party ballot access, and its effort to uncover fraud reaffirmed what numerous studies, court rulings and bipartisan investigations have concluded: voter fraud is extremely rare.The lack of evidence has not stopped Republicans in Congress and state legislatures from continuing to push restrictive voting laws aimed at addressing this phantom threat. Meanwhile, Musk is claiming that “fraud” justifies his efforts to slash government operations, but similarly has not revealed much evidence.The Fair Election Fund has now gone radio silent. Sitemap data shows that the website has not been updated since October, and the X/Twitter account for the group has not posted since November. The group’s spokesperson, former representative Doug Collins, became Trump’s veterans affairs secretary, and is now also leading the office of government ethics.Close ties to world’s richest manThe Fair Election Fund is a fictitious name for another 501(c)(4) non-profit, Documented can reveal, and operates within a network run by Musk’s top political advisers. The group received funding from the same dark-money vehicle Musk has used to channel his political spending, and also routed funds to another Musk-backed non-profit.The group is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as the For Which It Stands Fund. Formed on 3 January 2023, the non-profit raised $8,226,000 from a single donation in 2023.The group is led by Victoria “Tori” Sachs, a Republican operative who was also executive director of And to the Republic, a group also formed in January 2023 that supported Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, including by funding DeSantis’s private jets and hosting quasi-campaign events.The naming of the two Sachs-led groups – And to the Republic and the For Which It Stands Fund – and the timing of their creation in January 2023 suggests that the group that now houses the Fair Election Fund was originally intended to support DeSantis’s run, which Musk initially supported.Sachs’s involvement continued through 2024, with her name appearing on records that accompanied the Fair Election Fund’s broadcast purchases.Since 2022, Musk has been secretly channeling his political spending through a dark-money non-profit called Building America’s Future. That group is run by Generra Peck and Phil Cox, two Republican operatives who were involved in DeSantis’s failed presidential bid and now advise Musk. Building America’s Future reportedly backed the Fair Election Fund in 2024. It also provided half of And to the Republic’s overall fundraising in 2023.View image in fullscreenThe Fair Election Fund has other ties to the Musk advisers who lead Building America’s Future. Cox’s digital marketing firm IMGE LLC, which provides services to several groups in the Musk-backed, Building America Future-tied universe, manages the Fair Election Fund’s Facebook page, and an IMGE employee appears to be responsible for articles on the Fair Election Fund’s website.The Fair Election Fund/Interstate Priorities also acted as a conduit to support other Musk-backed groups. The group’s 2023 tax return shows that it made a $1,550,000 grant to Citizens for Sanity, which Musk funded in 2022 through Building America’s Future, and which aired racist and transphobic ads that election cycle. That grant made up almost the entirety of Citizens for Sanity’s funding in 2023.In the 2024 election cycle, Musk publicly disclosed at least $277m in political contributions to Super Pacs that worked to elect President Trump and other Republicans. It is not known how much he may have given to other politically active groups that disguise their donors.A detour into third-party ballot accessThe Fair Election Fund’s goal of exposing election fraud seemingly turned up nothing of significance.Out of its $5m fund, the group announced $75,000 in “bounty” payments, releasing $50,000 in July 2024 and $25,000 in September 2024. The Fair Election Fund promised that it would “highlight” the election fraud stories it gathered through these payments via “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns”, but it never did so, which suggests that none of the evidence generated was consequential or credible.Instead, the group took a detour in July 2024: it launched a $175,000 ad “blitz” targeting North Carolina state board of election (NCSBE) members who delayed placing third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F Kennedy Jr on the ballot. At the time, Republicans and their allies believed that West and Kennedy would act as spoilers to help Trump, by siphoning left-leaning votes away from the Democratic presidential nominee.Ironically, the NCSBE had delayed a decision on West’s and Kennedy’s ballot eligibility based on evidence that petitions were obtained through fraudulent means – concerns that would seem to align with the Fair Election Fund’s stated mission of exposing election fraud.The Fair Election Fund ads declared that the Democratic members of the NCSBE were “blocking your voting rights”, and offered a reward for evidence of the members’ “shady backroom deal”. The group also projected images on the side of the NCSBE’s building, and drove mobile billboards around the agency’s headquarters.The Fair Election Fund also ran digital ads in North Carolina featuring Black voters, some of which asserted that “African American voices are not being heard”, while others declared “Support Equality, Support Inclusion, Support [Cornel West’s] Justice for All Party”. The group pushed similar efforts in states such as Michigan.Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who sought to keep West off of ballots in North Carolina and elsewhere, was a frequent target of the group. In October 2024, the group announced that it would be running a six-figure ad buy to “troll” Elias. The ads included mobile billboards around the Elias Law Group office as well as a full-page ad in the Washington Post, which declared: “We beat Marc Elias and his racist voter suppression lawsuits … He tried to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who support Cornel West, but the Fair Election Fund stopped him.”The Fair Election Fund then veered into a series of efforts to chase other trending rightwing conspiracy theories.For example, over the summer, the Fair Election Fund seized on to a far-fetched conspiracy theory about the online fundraising platform ActBlue, claiming to have found “60,000 potential discrepancies” in ActBlue-facilitated contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign, based on an investigation conducted “from late July to early August”. The group claimed to have “spent $250,000 on these initial findings” – a jaw-dropping sum to spend on a brief review of campaign finance records.The group then announced a $50,000 ad buy in several swing states soliciting evidence from people who claim to have been “defrauded by ActBlue”. No evidence from this “investigation” has been made public.In fall 2024, as conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting gained momentum, the Fair Election Fund announced that it would be launching a “six-figure investigation into noncitizen voting in seven key swing states”. The results of this “six-figure investigation” were never made public.

      This article was produced in partnership with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project. Brendan Fischer is deputy executive director and Emma Steiner is a researcher with Documented More

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      ‘Another woke disaster from Hollywood!’ How Captain America joined the culture wars

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      Of all the times to recast the most iconically American comic-book character with a Black actor and then pit him against a violently angry supervillain with an unnaturally reddish skin tone, who also happens to be the new US president … Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but it is in the trailer for the new Captain America: Brave New World, just released into a tumultuous Trump-run America that’s itching for another culture war.If Marvel was looking for some attention to reignite its beleaguered movie franchise, it seems to have found it – but not necessarily the good kind. If nothing else, the image of a raging red superbeing rising up from behind the presidential podium and then trashing the White House is sure to provoke a reaction. As Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson takes up the star-spangled shield passed on to him by Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, his casting has already incensed a certain bracket of social media: “The new Captain America! DEI hire!”; “Sounds like another woke disaster from Hollywood”; “Boy, did you not get the memo? America just voted for Trump – your film is dead on arrival.” It’s a wonder Trump hasn’t signed an executive order banning the film yet.Mackie gave his adversaries even more ammunition a couple of weeks ago when he told the Italian press: “To me Captain America represents a lot of different things and I don’t think the term ‘America’ should be one of those representations.” Again, you can imagine the reactions – even if, as fans pointed out, Mackie’s predecessor in the role, Chris Evans, made very similar comments when he was promoting Captain America: “I’m not trying to get too lost in the American side of it. This isn’t a flag-waving movie,” Evans said in 2011. Mackie had to walk back his comments the next day on Instagram: “Let me be clear about this: I’m a proud American and taking on the shield of a hero like Cap is the honour of a lifetime.”These are not the only battles the new Captain America finds itself caught up in. Attention has also focused on Ruth Bat-Seraph, aka Sabra, a minor character in the movie played by Israeli actor Shira Haas. In the original comics, Sabra was “the first Israeli superhero”; a mutant with superpowers who was formerly a Mossad agent. She’s had a bit of a makeover for the movie: no longer a mutant or a Mossad agent but very much a combat-ready operative. In a joint letter, some Palestinian cultural groups complained: “By reviving this racist character in any form, Marvel is promoting Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinians.” They have called for a boycott of the movie, and pro-Palestinian protesters picketed the Hollywood premiere this Tuesday, holding up signs saying things such as “Disney supports genocide” – again, necessarily not the good kind of attention.View image in fullscreenAs if that weren’t enough, Brave New World has been plagued by reports of rewrites and reshoots, as well as recastings. William Hurt, who was set to play the US president, Thaddeus Ross, died in 2022 and had to be replaced by Harrison Ford. It was originally slated for release in May 2024. According to one insider, late last year it had gone through three rounds of test screenings and was still getting negative feedback. The film-makers have denied this, although director Julius Onah acknowledged: “Every movie of this scale has additional photography baked into the creative process. There are things you’re going to refine and the story is going to evolve.”Without those delays, the movie might well have come out in the late Biden era, rather than the febrile first few weeks of Trump 2.0. At least they changed the title – the original, Captain America: New World Order might have been too much for the conspiracy theorists to handle.It was somehow inevitable that all this would befall Captain America, rather than any other superhero. He’s always been the moral conscience of the Marvel universe, and by extension, the nation. The character was created by Jewish writers Jack Kirby and Joe Simon in 1940, primarily as a wartime propaganda tool – the US actually entered the war a year later, so perhaps it worked. The cover of issue #1, showing Captain America socking Adolf Hitler on the jaw, told you exactly where his loyalties lay. Now, 85 years later, we find him socking the fictional US president in the jaw instead. And this at a time when the real-life president is happily dining with white supremacists and Nazi sympathisers such as Nick Fuentes and Kanye West (whose recent X post declaring “I’m a Nazi” ought to clear up any ambiguity). Not to mention Trump’s ubiquitous righthand troll Elon Musk, who has done nothing at all to correct impressions that he gave a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration a few weeks ago. It leaves you wondering who the real good guys are.View image in fullscreenTime and again, it’s been down to Captain America to figure that out. While other Marvel movies have gadded about in weightless fantasy realms (Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool), the Captain America movies have often reflected off-screen political reality – and despite his ludicrously patriotic get-up (often worn by Trump supporters, or Photoshopped on to Trump himself), Cap has never been afraid to turn against his own government.It’s worth recapping the saga so far. Origin movie Captain America: The First Avenger, released in 2011, explained how weedy army recruit Steve Rogers (Evans) was given an experimental superhero-creating serum in the 1940s, and riffed on his deployment as a wartime propaganda mascot. Things got interesting with 2014’s The Winter Soldier, in which Rogers is thawed out in the present day and finds the US about to instate a global surveillance regime that would predict and preemptively eliminate threats. This was the era of the Edward Snowden leaks, so the paranoid conspiracy element was not too difficult to swallow. But good old Cap wasn’t having it: “This isn’t freedom – it’s fear,” he said, stepping away from his quasi-military role. He was right: it later transpired that the US government had been infiltrated by the neo-Nazi organisation Hydra – again, a concept that’s no longer too difficult to swallow.And by his side in his fight to de-Nazify the government was Mackie’s character, Sam Wilson, aka Falcon, a modern-day Iraq war veteran who befriended Rogers. In 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, Rogers and Wilson again fell out with the authorities, refusing to agree to UN oversight of “enhanced individuals” – those with superpowers. They trusted their own judgment above that of the politicians.View image in fullscreen2019’s all-conquering Avengers: Endgame culminated with Evans’ Captain America retiring, and passing on his shield to Mackie’s Falcon. After that the saga headed into race politics and Black history – possibly blown in that direction by the cultural winds post-Black Lives Matter. In his small-screen spin-off Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Falcon hands the shield back to the government – “It feels like it belongs to someone else,” he says. Not only does he deem himself unworthy, his patriotism to a country that enslaved and discriminated against his forebears is understandably conflicted. Another Black character tells him: “They will never let a Black man be Captain America, and even if they did, no self-respecting Black man would ever want to be.” Sure enough, a new, white Captain America is anointed: John Walker, played by Wyatt Russell. But to cut a long story short, it turns out he’s unworthy, and Wilson ultimately winds up with the shield again.Politics were very much in the minds of the Russo brothers, who jointly directed Winter Soldier, Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. “Those movies are very much about what went on in this country over the past four years,” Joe Russo told me in 2021. “Some of the worst people were being attracted to politics and were representing us collectively … We believed strongly that the reach in those movies was so significant that they could be influential in helping people potentially make better decisions. We thought that they were a really powerful tool, at exactly the right time.”Brave New World should at least satisfy fans who wanted a political action thriller along the lines of Winter Soldier, with no space people turning up from parallel universes. Mackie’s fledgling Cap initially agrees to work with Ford’s new president, but before long, he’s disobeying orders and going rogue once again to investigate a conspiracy. Despite the raging Hulk “reveal”, and the president surviving an assassination attempt, Ford’s character is not all that Trump-like: he cares about international cooperation, he has a Black female head of security, and he even gets on an exercise bike on Air Force One. Depending on how you see it, this is either a bullet dodged or a punch pulled. This president does, however, outsource tech and military innovation to a shifty, unbiddable genius scientist who’s described as “his own personal thinktank” – remind you of anyone?There’s no telling how any of this will play in today’s movie landscape. Marvel movies have been at the vanguard of Hollywood representation in recent years but this has not translated into box-office success lately. Recent movie outings such as The Eternals and The Marvels – neither of which were directed by or centred on white men – were met with opposition by some fans (especially the vehement “Everything is woke” brigade), but also by some critics (for not being very good). Meanwhile, Marvel’s franchise-milking small-screen offshoots (Loki, Wandavision, Ms Marvel, She-Hulk, etc) and confusing “multiverse” storylines have turned off even more viewers. It’s telling that Marvel’s only recent box-office success was the more flip and irreverent Deadpool & Wolverine (led by two white guys).View image in fullscreenSo perhaps the message is: nobody’s in the mood for superheroes getting too real and political any more, and the era of applauding movies for representation has been killed by Trump’s anti-DEI edicts. Marvel seems to be hedging its bets: next up, in April, is Thunderbolts – the first outing for a new bunch of (overwhelmingly white) superhero misfits, including Florence Pugh and Wyatt Russell’s John Walker.But ultimately, Mackie was right when he said Captain America was not really about “America”. Unlike the cosplaying Trump supporters, he’s more loyal to American values than to the flag, and over his long history, he’s often had to remind the nation what those values are. In one comic-book story (What If … #44), 1940s Captain America wakes up in 1984, where he finds a fascist “America first” president who is persecuting minorities and promising to make America great again. Cap lays it down in no uncertain terms: “Without its ideals – its commitment to the freedom of all men, America is a piece of trash! I fought Adolf Hitler not because America was great, but because it was fragile! I knew that liberty could as easily be snuffed out here as in Nazi Germany!” Maybe they can use that storyline for the next movie, if there is one. More

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      in US Politics

      Want to defeat Trump? Support unions | Eric Blanc

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      Can anybody stop Trumpism? Progressives are understandably worried. Though federal judges may temporarily pause some of the new administration’s most brazenly illegal executive orders, a hyper-conservative supreme court lies waiting in the wings. And looking ahead to 2028, it’s hard to feel hopeful about defeating Maga given that the Democratic party continues to hemorrhage working-class voters.But there’s no need to despair. A powerful force in our society has the legitimacy, resources and leverage to turn things around: organized labor. Unions can beat back Donald Trump’s attacks, expose his sham populism, and – by uniting workers around their shared economic interests – help isolate his xenophobic scapegoating.Rather than hibernate for the next four years, or limit ourselves to posting online about the president’s latest outrages, each of us can lend support to workers organizing at federal agencies, schools, Starbucks, Amazon, auto plants and beyond. Just as importantly, we can expand the labor movement’s reach by unionizing our own workplaces. It won’t be easy to counter Trump’s shock-and-awe offensive, or to fill the void left by the Democrats’ disarray. But it’s both necessary and possible.Consider Trump’s latest moves. While he can appoint his cronies to head crucial civil service agencies, it is still unionized federal employees who make these institutions run. And their resistance to his power grab – through defying the new administration and enlisting public support – constitutes our best hope for protecting these services upon which millions of Americans depend.Remember the government shutdown during the first Trump administration? By late January 2019, the crisis had already lasted a month, with no end in sight. But then the flight attendant leader Sara Nelson began making national waves by agitating for a general strike, stressing the public safety dangers of not paying the people whose labor makes air travel possible. On 25 January, various air traffic controllers refused to come into work, resulting in a temporary grounding of New York flights. Only a few hours later, Trump announced a deal to end the shutdown.Resisting Maga’s barrage is crucial. But it would be a mistake to fight only on the right’s chosen political terrain. Trump’s achilles heel is that he won by speaking to the economic grievances of working people, but heads an administration of and for billionaires obsessed with maximizing their own profits and control. Centrist Democrats have generally been unable to expose this contradiction, as they too are often tied to big business. But combating corporate greed is the labor movement’s bread and butter, which is why unions in our era of rampant inequality are experiencing record-high levels of popularity, even among conservatives and independents.The administration’s connection to the world’s richest men – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg – makes it easier for anti-Trump sentiment to channel into workplace battles. When Tesla factory workers unionize, or coders at X push back against their boss, this is now de facto a confrontation with the White House. By scaling up high-publicity union drives and strikes for economic dignity across the country, labor and its supporters can force politicians to show which side they’re really on.Even labor struggles focused on economic issues can have dramatic political repercussions. Faced with Trump’s efforts to deprive workers of the right to unionize by kneecapping the National Labor Relations Board, every union drive is now on a collision course with the new regime. Moreover, since workplaces bring together people from a wide range of backgrounds and ideologies, union organizing requires listening to and persuading people who disagree with us, a skill sorely lacking among most progressives today. Effective persuasion happens not by haranguing or shaming others, but rather by finding points of commonality – often economic – around which working people can come together.Through this patient process of building solidarity across differences, labor organizing is uniquely positioned to convince large numbers of Americans to direct their anger at the bosses above (and their political proxies), instead of immigrants or trans people. Unsurprisingly, union members voted for Kamala Harris by a 16-point margin in the last election; indeed, Trump would probably have lost had the US labor movement represented a significantly higher percent of the American workforce.Despite Trump’s constriction of labor rights, conditions overall remain favorable for union growth. Organized labor, for example, is sitting on an unprecedented war chest of roughly $38bn in assets, over a third of which are highly liquid. This is more than enough to defend against Project 2025 while simultaneously going on the offensive against corporate America. Big, assertive unionization battles could lay bare Trump’s oligarchic allegiances, while pressuring Democratic politicians to champion economic populism.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnfortunately, it’s unclear whether union officials will finally find the chutzpah to break from business as usual. Most remain exceedingly risk averse, narrowly focused, and deferential to establishment politicians. For that reason, labor’s post-pandemic upsurge has been driven from below, with young, left-leaning workers taking the lead – most recently at the Whole Foods in Philadelphia that voted for a union last Monday. But to scale up widely enough to transform the US, this grassroots uptick will need deep-pocketed labor leaders to fully jump into the fight.It remains to be seen whether unions can rise to the challenge of Trumpism. For the sake of our democracy, our livelihoods, and our planet, let’s hope they do.What’s giving me hope nowWhat’s giving me hope is that Philadelphia Whole Foods workers last Monday voted to unionize, 130 to 100. It’s a really big deal: this was only the second time American workers have defeated Amazon in a union election. Many in the labor movement were expecting a loss, since Maga is now in office and since management – headed by Trump’s new billionaire buddy Bezos – went scorched earth against the nascent union effort. But a multiracial crew of young, self-organized, left-leaning workers proved the skeptics wrong, as so often has been the case since 2021. Labor passed its first big test under Trump, and hopefully we’ll see many similar wins in the months to come.

      Eric Blanc is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, which is out with UC Press in February 2025 More