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      Trump says he believes Ukraine can regain all land lost to Russia since 2022 invasion

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      Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv.The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble in a post on Truth Social after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York.He wrote: “After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not?”Trump added: “Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years, a war that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win.”The US president said this was not making Russia look distinguished, but instead a paper tiger, pointing to the long queues for petrol inside the country. He added: “Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act.” He also promised “to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them”.Earlier, Trump said that he planned to enforce his demand that Nato countries stop importing Russian oil – including Hungary, led by his close ally Viktor Orbán.In his speech to the UN general assembly the US president renewed his demand for Europe to end its “embarrassing” purchase of oil and gas from Russia, saying until it did so he would not impose his long-promised economic punishment on Moscow.Trump also said he believed Nato aircraft should shoot down Russian aircraft if they entered its airspace, but later qualified his remarks by saying it depended on the circumstances.He made his remarks alongside Zelenskyy, whom he described as a “brave man”. Asked if he still trusted the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump said he would know in a month’s time.It came after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had given less wholehearted support for shooting down Russian planes in Nato airspace, saying this should only happen “if they’re attacking”.View image in fullscreenIn his speech to the UN Trump mocked Nato allies’ failure to curb oil imports, saying: “China and India are the primary funders of the ongoing war by continuing to purchase Russian oil. But inexcusably, even Nato countries have not cut off much Russian energy and Russian energy products … I found out about it two weeks ago, and I wasn’t happy.“They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one? In the event that Russia is not ready to make a deal to end the war, then the United States is fully prepared to impose a very strong round of powerful tariffs.“But for those tariffs to be effective, European nations, all of you … gathered here right now, would have to join us in adopting the exact same measures.”Trump did not specify the measures, but he has been stalling on a package that includes tariffs against countries that do business with Russia, such as India and China. He has already imposed 50% tariffs on India, but is also in the middle of negotiations that could see those lifted.Regarding Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, Trump said: “He’s a friend of mine. I have not spoken to him [about importing Russian oil], but I have a feeling if I did, he might stop, and I think I’ll be doing that.”In response to Trump’s demands, the EU is trying to bring forward the date by which it ends the import of liquid natural gas imports from Russia to 2026 – a year earlier than planned. The EU is opposed to imposing vast tariffs on China or India, but is looking at more targeted measures against Indian and Chinese oil refineries.Trump said he would be discussing the issue with EU leaders, adding: “They can’t be doing what they’re doing. They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia … They have to immediately cease all energy purchases from Russia. Otherwise, we are all wasting a lot of time.”The EU’s 19th sanctions package also proposes export controls on another 45 companies that are deemed to be cooperating on sanctions evasion. Those include 12 Chinese, two Thai and three Indian entities that have enabled Russia to circumvent the bloc’s sanctions.View image in fullscreenHungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, told the Guardian that Hungary could not wean itself off Russian energy supplies. He said: “We can’t ensure the safe supply [of energy products] for our country without Russian oil or gas sources,” while adding that he “understood” Trump’s approach.“For us, energy supplies are a purely physical question,” he said. “It can be nice to dream about buying oil and gas from somewhere [besides Russia] … but we can only buy from where we have infrastructure. And if you look at the physical infrastructure, it’s obvious that without the Russian supplies, it is impossible to ensure the safe supply of the country.”Budapest relies on the Druzhba oil pipeline and the TurkStream gas pipeline to receive Russian hydrocarbons.Slovakia, the second EU country still importing Russian oil, said it had already spoken to the US about the issue, and received a sympathetic response. “As long as we have an alternative route, and the transmission capacity is sufficient, Slovakia has no problem diversifying,” said the economy minister, Denisa Saková.Hungary and Slovakia are the two countries that have most frequently called for the EU to reduce its support for Ukraine. More

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      The rise and fall of Disney: how the company found then lost its backbone

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      The Walt Disney Company is probably hoping that upon viewing the new trailer for the upcoming Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu, audiences feel a swell of nostalgia. No, not for 1977, when Star Wars was fresh and wondrous; after all, Disney didn’t even own it then. Not even for a decade ago, when the company brought the film series roaring back with 2015’s The Force Awakens, still the highest-grossing movie in US box office history. Rather, the trailer, consciously or not, hopes to transport viewers, and presumably profits, back to the halcyon days of … 2019.They would probably settle for any time before their brief but tumultuous suspension of Jimmy Kimmel from ABC became national news. But 2019 would be preferable. That year, Disney’s exercised almost unprecedented box office domination, boasting an astonishing seven of the year’s 10 biggest hits – and an eighth featuring Spider-Man, a Disney-owned character in a movie produced by Disney’s Marvel Studios (but released by Sony). Remakes of Aladdin and The Lion King, sequels to Toy Story and Frozen, two to three Marvel installments (depending on how to count Spider-Man), and a new Star Wars movie added up to around $10bn in global grosses. If the Star Wars movie The Rise of Skywalker landed a little soft compared to its better-reviewed predecessors, even that cloud had a silver lining: the late 2019 debut of The Mandalorian on the then new Disney+ streaming service was an instant sensation. Even genuinely rapacious corporate moves, like Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox, were greeted in some fan corners with unthinking delight, because it meant some errant licensed Marvel characters could be in the MCU.As the Covid-19 pandemic (as well as relatively bare franchise cupboards) made replicating those 2019 profits impossible over the next few years, the company at least attempted to burnish some goodwill from contemporary audiences in other ways. In particular, Disney’s various entertainment brands/fiefdoms – Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, etc – seemed to keep the company’s most evil (or equivocating) corporate instincts at bay. In 2022, Pixar and Marvel employees helped push back against the company’s initial silence on Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill prohibiting discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary school classrooms, which the company eventually condemned. Those companies were also beginning, after a long delay, to diversify their slate of movies, shows and characters, with projects such as Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Turning Red and The Acolyte.But the mixed reception to some of these projects, as well as a general mortal terror that they couldn’t somehow make a Frozen, Toy Story, Star Wars and Avengers movie happen every year in perpetuity, seemed to spook Disney somewhere in the transition period from supposedly brilliant CEO Bob Iger to stumblebum replacement Bob Chapek back to Iger again. Despite his savior status, Iger himself exposed that fear when he spoke with corporate-coded cowardice about future projects not putting forward “any kind of agenda”, a pledge in deference to meaninglessness that made even the more craven “exclusively gay moments” or long-delayed female-led Marvel movie seem fiery by comparison. Corporate skittishness over including gay or minority characters that might offend vague “international audiences” was now policy.View image in fullscreenIn some ways, the company was probably just catching some blowback from the much-delayed revelation that CEOs are largely useless figureheads. Yet a series of clumsy, cowardly decisions seemed to transcend boardroom drama. Disney has been carrying out Iger’s edict in a sloppy panic. Seemingly rattled by the ire of random YouTubers, the vagaries of a post-pandemic world and the re-ascension of Donald Trumpo, this year alone the company’s removed all references to a transgender character’s identity on a Pixar streaming show; completed the bowdlerization of the Latino-driven Pixar movie Elio, which originally featured a queer-coded character; reoriented (and renamed) their corporate DEI initiatives to emphasize the generation of that old fan favorite, profit; dumped Black-led Marvel show Ironheart out in a single binge despite using a weekly release model for its marquee shows; and yanked Jimmy Kimmel off the air for expressing skepticism over the Maga-world reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk, before eventually backtracking. (ABC affiliates under Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar ownership will continue to pre-empt the show until further notice.) In an elegant cherry of bad PR, Disney apparently decided the time was also right for a streaming-service price increase, its third in three years.Of course, as with any massive corporation, Disney’s earlier diversity focus was probably more for the sake of public image and accompanying business interest than genuine empathy. It’s worth asking, then, whether any of these decisions did, in fact, make money for the company especially compared to the profits generated by the Black Panther movies, or a more diverse Star Wars trilogy. The revised Elio could scarcely have made much less at the box office; it’s the lowest-grossing Pixar movie other than those directly affected by the pandemic. Are any Disney+ subscriptions attributable to de-transing a supporting character on an eight-episode miniseries? On the other hand, plenty of people did seem to cancel their subscriptions over the Kimmel battle, and the company’s stock price dipped over the past week. If the idea for any of this was winning back Maga folks in the long run, well, good luck with that. They’re still fuming over the same-sex kiss in Lightyear or girls being in Star Wars or Black people being in anything. The plain truth is, there’s a certain Maga demographic that accepts nothing less than full capitulation to their preferences and values – and you can’t dabble in full capitulation.That’s why Disney’s real wish must be for a 2019 revival. Back then, there might have been little teapot-level tempests here and there from audience segments who complain that a remake is too woke or, on the less rabid side, who regard the inclusion of, say, queer supporting characters as mild (and cynical) concessions, but $10bn buys executives a lot of confidence (even if it’s apparently not enough for actual courage). After all, that’s an environment where no one’s favorite Star Wars film can still eke out a billion dollars worldwide.Disney isn’t alone in facing a tough entertainment landscape where movies don’t gross quite as much and streaming services can easily tip into overspending. But it’s the company that now seems most terrified of this new world, maybe because its late-2010s surge somehow created the impression that endless and unbeatable growth on the backs of perma-beloved nostalgia brands would be possible. It’s not, and if there’s an upside to Disney’s morally checkered year, it’s the revelation that brands are not bulletproof spine protection. No one mad about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension (or mad about his words to begin with) seems to be taking solace in the upcoming release of another Zootopia movie. The Mandalorian movie looks fun, fan-friendly, perfectly watchable … and that’s not enough to save anyone. More

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      in US Politics

      Ryan Routh found guilty of 2024 attempted assassination of Trump in Florida

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      The man accused of trying to assassinate Donald Trump on his West Palm Beach golf course two months before Trump clinched his second presidency in the 2024 White House election has been found guilty by a jury in Fort Pierce, Florida.Ryan Routh – who now faces up to life in prison at a later sentencing hearing – reportedly tried to use a pen to stab himself in the neck as the guilty verdict was read in court. Officers quickly swarmed him and dragged him out of the courthouse.Jurors in Routh’s trial returned a verdict of guilty on all charges after deliberating for less than three hours.The government charged Routh, 59, with five criminal counts, including attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and assaulting a Secret Service agent, after an incident on 15 September last year when he was spotted with a rifle hiding in bushes as Trump’s golfing party approached.Prosecutors said Routh, 59, had purchased a military-grade weapon, researched Trump’s movements and utilized a dozen burner phones as part of a plot to kill Trump that was motivated by political grievances.“Today’s guilty verdict against would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh illustrates the Department of Justice’s commitment to punishing those who engage in political violence,” US attorney general Pam Bondi said in a statement on X.“This attempted assassination was not only an attack on our [now] president, but an affront to our very nation itself,” Bondi added before thanking prosecutors and law enforcement for “protecting” Trump and “securing this important verdict”.In a post on Truth Social, Trump thanked the attorney general, deputy Todd Blanche, and the justice department team for Routh’s conviction, calling it “meticulously handled”. He also thanked “the Judge and Jury for their time, professionalism, and patience”, adding:“This was an evil man with an evil intention, and they caught him. I would also like to thank the Secret Service, Department of Florida Law Enforcement, and the wonderful person who spotted him running from the site of the crime, and acted by following him, and getting all information on car type and license plate to the Sheriff’s Office, IMMEDIATELY, which led to his arrest and conviction.“What incredible instinct and foresight this person had – A very big moment for JUSTICE IN AMERICA!”Routh’s attempt on Trump’s life on 15 September 2024 came just nine weeks after the then presidential candidate narrowly survived a previous attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In the earlier case, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired eight shots at Trump, with one bullet grazing his ear, before being killed by Secret Service counter-snipers, officials have said.At the trial, Routh represented himself despite having no legal expertise. In court filings, he suggested his case should be settled by a golf match.If Trump won, the president could execute Routh, the filing suggested. If Routh won, he said, he would become president.Routh also requested a putting green for match practice and asked for “female strippers” to be present.His self-representation intermittently threatened to derail proceedings. The presiding judge, Aileen Cannon – who dismissed an unrelated case against Trump involving federal classified documents – advised Routh to keep his comments relevant after he remarked that “modern trials seem to eliminate all that is human”. But Routh continued his musings on the “history” of human existence.Routh was once a North Carolina construction worker who had moved to Hawaii and styled himself as a mercenary leader. He tried to recruit soldiers from Afghanistan, Moldova and Taiwan to fight the Russians in Ukraine.Prosecutors said Routh made 17 trips to scope out Trump’s golf course. Over the course of his two-week trial, prosecutors called 38 witnesses, including two bothers who testified about receiving a box from Routh five months earlier that contained wires, pipes and bullets.After investigators arrested Routh, the brothers said they opened the box to find a 12-page letter in which he wrote: “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job.”Routh ultimately was spotted by a Secret Service agent as he hid in nearby shrubbery while aiming a rifle at a member of Trump’s security detail. An agent fired on Routh, who initially fled the scene but was later captured driving north.Police later said the perimeter of the golf course was not fully secured as Trump was not an incumbent president and his visit was not scheduled. Routh was captured after a tipoff from a witness who had made a record of a license plate number of a car into which a man had jumped into after running out of the bushes.Routh chose not to testify in his own defense but instead called three witness, two of whom testified about his character. He told the court that he hoped they would show jurors he was incapable of killing Trump, who retook the Oval Office in January.“Give it your worst,” Routh told Cannon after she warned him about using character witnesses. “We can analyze every moment of my life. We are here to ascertain the truth – we are going to give the jury everything.”He called Marshall Hinshaw, a longtime friend, asking him if his “personal opinion” of Routh was that he was “peaceful and gentle, and nonviolent?”“I would say so,” Hinshaw said. “I would not expect you to harm anyone, Ryan.”Routh asked Hinshaw about his parenting style. “You are not aware of me hitting or spanking my children?” Routh asked.“No, maybe the other way around,” Hinshaw said. As the questioning continued, Cannon said: “This must cease. I am going to ask you to wrap up.” She later warned that she would bar Routh from addressing the jury if his closing argument was “disconnected”.Routh also called Michael McClay, a US Marine Corps veteran and expert in sniper tactics. McClay noted that Routh’s rifle – a Chinese-made variant of the AK-47 – would routinely misfire and that its scope appeared to be attached with putty, tape and glue.“Is there any way you could put a chance of success rate?” Routh asked McClay. McClay replied: “With the severity and seriousness of this, I am not going to guess that.”“I respect that,” Routh said.Routh’s line of questioning went further astray when he asked McClay, “If someone is not dedicated to their mission 100%, is an exit plan vital to those who are cowards?”McClay answered: “I don’t understand.” More

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      Jerome Powell dismisses Trump’s criticism of ‘political’ Fed as ‘cheap shot’

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      The US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, pushed back hard against claims the central bank allows politics to drive decisions, in the midst of an extraordinary battle over its independence.Donald Trump, who is seeking to increase his administration’s control over the Fed, has branded Powell “a very political guy” after he declined to bow to the president’s public demands for drastically lower interest rates.The White House has launched an unprecedented campaign to overhaul the Fed’s rate-setting board of governors, installing an administration official and trying to fire a Biden appointee over unconfirmed claims of mortgage fraud.But on Tuesday, Powell, who is typically diplomatic when speaking publicly, roundly dismissed one of the common allegations made by Trump and his allies: that the Fed is somehow political when making key decisions about the world’s largest economy.“Many people don’t believe” the Fed is simply allowing economic data to drive its decisions, Powell acknowledged at an event in Rhode Island. “But the truth is, mostly people who are calling us political, it’s just a cheap shot.”He did not mention Trump by name. But the president has become the most prominent critic of the Fed and Powell since returning to office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt comes a week after the central bank ordered its first rate cut since December, a move to stabilize a wobbling labor market, even as Trump’s tariffs continue to push up prices.“Near-term risks to inflation are tilted to the upside and risks to employment to the downside – a challenging situation,” Powell reiterated on Tuesday.Stephen Miran, the Trump official now serving as a Fed governor, takes a different view. He dissented from every other policymaker on the central bank’s board of governors last week to advocate for a deeper rate cut.“Relatively small changes in some good prices have led to what I view as unreasonable levels of concern,” Miran argued in a speech earlier this week, claiming that tariffs would ultimately lead to “substantial swings in net national savings” for the country.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Someone has to drag the US out of the hellscape of Trumpism. Who better than AOC? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Quiz time, and the category is American gerontocracy. Here goes: how many sitting Democratic members of Congress have died in office since November 2022? The answer is a mind-boggling eight. While Republicans aren’t dropping dead at the same rate, they’re arguably clinging to power for longer than is dignified. Last year, a Texas journalist discovered Kay Granger, a high-ranking octogenarian Republican congresswoman, had stopped coming to work because she was in a senior living facility, suffering from “dementia issues”. And while he is not in a facility yet, Donald Trump’s nonsensical ramblings, including a recent weird and completely fictitious story about his uncle knowing the Unabomber, suggest he may be suffering some sort of issue with his mental acuity.I’m not trying to be ageist here (the older I get, the more worried I become about ageism). I’m simply setting the scene. Behold: the US is ruled by out-of-touch elites who would rather die at their desks than cede power to fresh blood. Meanwhile, many Americans are frustrated with the status quo and desperate for change. You can see this in the excitement around Zohran Mamdani, the incoming Democratic mayor of New York City – unless the billionaire class can pull off an upset. You can also see it in a recent poll that found more than half of likely Democratic voters prefer socialism-aligned politicians such as Bernie Sanders (who, to be fair, is 84), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Mamdani to establishment figures like Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.Ocasio-Cortez and her team can certainly see it, and they appear to be poised to seize this political moment. Rumours are swirling that the 35-year-old congresswoman is considering a run for president or the Senate in 2028. The latter move would probably mean facing off against Schumer, who is about as old-guard as you can get and has not yet endorsed Mamdani. If AOC beat him (which polls show is very plausible), it would be a massive shift for the future of the Democratic party. A presidential nomination, however, is obviously the real prize.The US doesn’t have a great record when it comes to rallying behind female presidential candidates. Is there really a chance that the first Madam President could come in the form of a millennial progressive?Ocasio-Cortez, whose charisma took her from obscurity to a household name in record speed, certainly should not be underestimated. Even Trump has expressed grudging admiration for the congresswoman. “She’s got a little spunk … a little something that’s good,” he told Fox News on Sunday, in reference to an Axios report about AOC’s ambitions. But he added: “I don’t think her philosophy can come close to winning.”It’s not entirely clear, however, what AOC’s “philosophy” is these days. When a 28-year-old Ocasio-Cortez unseated longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in a New York primary election in 2018, she was unapologetically leftwing. “Working-class Americans want a clear champion and there is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018,” she stated.Since then, the political machine has wrung some of that clarity out of the congresswoman. “AOC is just a regular Democrat now,” New York magazine lamented in a 2023 piece that charted what some of her base see as a shift to the centre. Last year she lost the endorsement of the national leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America because of her equivocation over Palestine.While AOC is one of the few US politicians to have termed the situation in Gaza a genocide, she has also disappointed many pro-Palestine progressives (including me) with her laundering of the Biden-Harris administration’s blank cheque to Israel. During her primetime slot at the Democratic National Convention, for example (where no Palestinian Americans were invited to speak on the main stage), AOC repeated Kamala Harris’s refrain that she was “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza”. Which wasn’t entirely a lie: you’re not going to get tired when you’re doing absolutely nothing to stop a bloodbath, are you?But beggars can’t be choosers. There is no perfect saviour coming to rescue us from the hellscape that is US politics. Indeed, the way things are going, it’s not even a given that there will be free and fair elections in 2028. We must coalesce around whoever is best placed to chart a way out of Trumpism. And AOC, for all her flaws, has the sort of fight that is needed. I hope that she is not written off as too left or too right or too female before she has a chance to get started. More

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      in Elections

      Georgia governor’s race heats up with entrance of two skeptics of Trump’s 2020 election claims

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      The entrance into the Georgia governor’s race of two prominent figures on the right who stood up to Donald Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election shows how the election interference crisis continues to reverberate in the state’s politics.On Wednesday, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, announced his candidacy. Raffensperger was the recipient of the “perfect phone call” by Trump in 2020 in the wake of his electoral loss in Georgia, pressuring Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn the results.The recording of that phone call led to investigations in Georgia and Washington. Raffensperger’s rejection of stolen election claims and his unwillingness to subvert Georgia election law for partisan purposes landed him near the top of Trump’s enemies list.At a rally in Atlanta during the campaign, Trump called Raffensperger and the outgoing Republican governor, Brian Kemp, “disloyal” and said “they’re doing everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win”. Kemp is term-limited and cannot run again in 2026.In his announcement address, Raffensperger said: “I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what.”Raffensperger pledged to work toward capping seniors’ property taxes, banning puberty-blocking drugs from minors and eliminating the state income tax.And last Tuesday, former lieutenant governor and erstwhile Republican Geoff Duncan announced his candidacy for governor. Duncan was elected lieutenant governor in 2018 as a Republican, forgoing re-election in 2022 after drawing heated reaction from Trump supporters after repudiating stolen election claims. Duncan testified before the special purpose grand jury in Fulton county examining election-interference claims.Duncan published a book about reforming the Republican party in 2021, and briefly considered running for president under the No Labels brand as an independent in 2024. Presenting himself as a political iconoclast, Duncan announced last month that he had formally switched parties.In the absence of the election-interference case that followed Trump’s efforts in 2020, both Duncan and Raffensperger would have been considered orthodox conservative Republicans by Georgia political standards.But Georgia’s Republican party can no longer be described as orthodox, except in its loyalty to Trump. Delegates to the Georgia GOP convention in January overwhelmingly voted to bar Raffensperger from qualifying as a Republican candidate while they expelled Duncan entirely, citing his appearance at the Democratic National Convention endorsing Kamala Harris in the presidential election.The move was largely symbolic; state law provides for no mechanism for a political party to bar a candidate. Nonetheless, the animus from the 2020 election persists.In dueling open letters last year, the Georgia GOP chair, Josh McKoon, described Duncan as “prostituting” himself to CNN as a Trump critic.“[Y]our desperate and ridiculous endorsements of Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris for president, coupled with your inexplicable opposition in 2022 to [Republican Senate candidates] Burt Jones and Herschel Walker, not to mention your comical attempt to run for president as an independent candidate, are violations of the oaths of loyalty you repeatedly swore when you qualified as a Republican candidate for office,” McKoon wrote.Duncan legislated as a “100% pro-life” lawmaker, and supported a 2019 state law banning most abortions – a position he is now repudiating as a Democratic candidate, along with prior positions on gun control and Medicaid expansion. His argument to voters is that cross-party appeal is necessary to beat a Republican in the general election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve never wavered on taking on Trump,” Duncan said in his announcement video. “I’m running for governor to put Georgians in the best position to once again love their neighbors and to make Georgia the frontline of democracy and a backstop against extremism.”Duncan enters a Democratic race that grows increasingly crowded. He faces the state senator Jason Esteves, an Atlanta-area legislator and former Atlanta school board chairperson, as well as former labor commissioner and DeKalb county CEO Michael Thurmond and former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Other candidates are expected to announce their bids in coming weeks.Among Republicans, Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, and lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, have already declared their candidacies for governor. Carr stepped down from chairing the Republican Attorneys General Association after learning it had paid for a robocall urging supporters to come to Washington DC and “stop the steal” on 6 January 2021. Carr and Kemp are political allies.Jones is favored by Trump and was a mainstay on the 2024 campaign trail.“Chris Carr and Brad Raffensperger have one thing in common: They are both Never Trumpers,” Jones wrote on Instagram following Raffensperger’s announcement. “There is only one candidate in this race that’s always supported and has the full and complete endorsement of [Trump].”Jones, a Republican state senator in 2020, served as one of the 16 fake electors for Trump – all of whom signed a document, submitted to the National Archives, claiming Trump won Georgia.Fulton county’s district attorney, Fani Willis, had considered charging Jones in the election-interference case, but a Fulton county judge barred her in 2022 from investigating the lieutenant governor after she appeared at a fundraiser for Jones’s opponent. An outside prosecutor determined Jones’s actions as a state senator did not merit “further investigation or further actions” and considered the case closed. More

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      A US haven for refugees was divided over Trump – now immigration crackdown has left a ‘community breaking’

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      It was 2022, and the Nepali flea market in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, buzzed with life –handmade hats and colorful flags hung outside the homes of families just yards from the market, who had built new lives after being expelled from Bhutan. Elderly men sat in circles, smoking cigars and playing folk songs, unwilling to let the past slip away.In the early 1990s, Bhutan expelled more than 100,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese people during a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Most fled to refugee camps in eastern Nepal, where many remained for nearly two decades. Beginning in 2007, about 85,000 were resettled across the US through a program coordinated by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the US government. Today, central Pennsylvania is home to several thousand Bhutanese refugees, with Harrisburg and nearby towns hosting one of the largest clusters in the country. That concentration carries political weight: Pennsylvania is a swing state, and Trump won it in 2024 by a slight margin.When I returned in July 2025, it felt like another world. The flags were gone. The elders no longer gathered outside. Flea markets and restaurants sat quietly. The change wasn’t about ageing or assimilation – it reflected a community unsettled by politics, as families struggled to make sense of immigration policies that had suddenly put Bhutanese refugees back in the crosshairs. Across central Pennsylvania, old cases have been reopened, removal orders issued, over two dozen Bhutanese refugees have been deported back to Bhutan, and families that once felt secure are now bracing for knocks at the door.View image in fullscreenThe Harrisburg office of Asian Refugees United (ARU) looked more like a campsite than a non-profit hub – backpacks in the corners, water bottles scattered on the floor. Robin Gurung, the soft-spoken executive director, had just returned from a youth camp. I asked what had changed after the 2024 election.“Everything,” he said. “Before the Trump administration, ARU focused on rebuilding lives, teaching leadership, suicide prevention, and youth civic action. Now we’re in rapid-response mode, helping families make sense of deportations.”With larger institutions caving in to the administration’s demands, ARU has struggled to find allies. “A lot of our partners don’t want to engage any more, fearing retaliation,” Gurung told me. “We don’t even have attorneys to guide families. We rely on a few groups, but immigrant communities are being left on their own.”He paused before adding that the political climate had reopened old wounds. “We survived as refugees because of community. We always showed up for each other. But that sense of community is breaking. We’ve never seen this level of division and suspicion.”The turmoil Gurung described stood in sharp contrast to the early years of resettlement, when Bhutanese families in Pennsylvania were carving out new lives. Among them was Binay Luitel, who arrived as a teenager in July 2008 as an early cohort of Bhutanese refugees in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and quickly came to see service as his way of giving back.After years in a refugee camp in Nepal, he entered the US through the refugee resettlement program during the Obama era, a time that seemed to embrace the promise of a multiracial America.View image in fullscreenAt just 23, Luitel enlisted in the US army and deployed to Afghanistan. “Growing up as a refugee, I always had a strong desire to serve in the military, but back home that opportunity didn’t exist for someone like me,” he said. “When the United States gave me not just a home but an identity, joining the military was an act of gratitude, a way to honor the gift of belonging.”After four years in uniform, he returned to Harrisburg, now a hub for Bhutanese refugees. Families were buying homes, opening businesses and preserving their culture. With friends and mentors, Luitel helped establish the Bhutanese Community in Harrisburg, a non-profit, community-based organization that aimed to help the Bhutanese refugee community integrate in Harrisburg and address mental health issues, eventually serving as its president.For Ashika Dhaurali, 20, those years of growth shaped her sense of home. A mental-health advocate who arrived at age six, she once canvassed for senator John Fetterman, a Democrat, convinced his progressive ideals matched her community’s hopes. Today, she feels betrayed.“I canvassed for Fetterman,” she said. “I believed in his ideals, but now he’s nothing but a disappointment.” She points to his silence on deportations, his endorsement of Ice enforcement on X, and his willingness to echo Trump’s rhetoric. Watching her neighbors targeted by Trump’s administration, and Democrats failing to defend them, has left her searching elsewhere. “I won’t be voting for Fetterman again. And if there’s a viable progressive candidate against him, a lot of us will be ready to canvass.”The fragile stability that Bhutanese refugees thought they had created has crumbled during Trump’s second administration, as Trump, in his first week of inauguration, banned all refugee entry and halted asylum cases. Ice raids have rattled households, deportations of many of their community members in Harrisburg, as well as across the US, have reopened old traumas, and what had felt like a safe enclave grew clouded with fear and suspicion.“There has been a degree of political division,” Binay admitted. “It has torn people apart.”For Ghanshyam, a small business owner, the split is moral as well. “Trump defies everything immigrants and refugees stand for,” he told me. “When you elect a president, it’s not just about economics, it’s about values. Do you really want to tell your kids you voted for a man who called immigrants rapists and murderers, who’s been found liable for sexual assault, and who’s declared bankruptcy seven times? That’s not a role model. Voting for him isn’t just bad policy, it’s a moral failure.”Others, like Aiman, 24, who asked not to use his last name for privacy, see it differently. He arrived during the Obama years and once voted Democrat, but by 2024, he had switched to supporting Trump. Inflation, border security, the wars abroad and what he viewed as relentless media persecution of then former president Trump shifted his loyalties.View image in fullscreen“When I saw our president constantly attacked and silenced, I started to see him as human – someone who persevered when everything was against him,” he said.For Aiman, America is less about belonging than duty. “We were given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Citizenship means loyalty. Too many in our community never took that seriously.” Deportations, he admitted, were painful, but to him they were the consequence of broken laws. “Facts outweigh emotions,” he said, echoing rightwing commentators like Ben Shapiro.He even pointed to his own family. “Of course, I wish my brother could come here. But what good is that if, in the process, the whole country burns from the bottom up? I’d be happy to see him here, but not at the cost of destroying America.”Unlike older Bhutanese who hesitate to speak openly, Aiman doesn’t feel isolated. “A lot of my friends are Republicans now,” he said. “The only pushback I get is from college kids, who are too easily offended.” He’s part of a broader group of young men who, in recent years, have drifted toward conservative ideals.Dhaurali, the mental-health advocate, sees that shift as dangerous. “For our community, it has a lot to do with a false sense of patriotism. Because we’ve been deprived of it for so long, we want to embody it. To finally say: ‘I’m proud to be of this nation.’ But that’s why some have sided with Trump. Honestly, a lot of it comes from internalized hatred.”Hearing Aiman, I thought of my own uncle, who also voted for Trump but never admitted it publicly. In our community, politics isn’t just about policies; it’s about belonging. What appears to be a small division within the Bhutanese diaspora reflects a broader erosion of the sense of home that many immigrants and communities of color once felt.Dhaurali, though, doesn’t believe the story ends there. “What Trump’s administration is doing is testing our solidarity, our sense of belonging,” she said. “No, I don’t think I can ever stop believing. Especially with this community I’ve grown up in. I believe my generation is going to be the bridge between these old fears and the future we genuinely deserve.”Lok Darjee is a former Bhutanese refugee and freelance journalist covering politics, immigration, democracy and identity. More

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      Trump’s absurd Tylenol claims heighten the suffering of pregnant women in the US | Moira Donegan

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr continued his futile search for a single pharmaceutical cause of autism on Monday, when the Trump administration claimed that distorted recent studies and misstated scientific evidence to allege a link between women’s Tylenol use during pregnancy and the development of autism in children. Kennedy has long spoken with disturbing disgust about autistic people, claiming at one press conference that autistic children “destroy families” and “will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date.” He had previously pledged to find the cause of autism by this month.As part of his apparent quest to eliminate this vast and varied group of people – who do, in fact, pay taxes, hold jobs, play baseball, write poems, go on dates, and function as beloved and caring members of functional families – Kennedy has already sought to restrict access to common vaccines. In June, he fired every member of the advisory committee on immunization practices, an influential group of vaccine experts whose recommendations had long shaped policy for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In place of the experts, he reconstituted the panel with a number of vaccine critics and cranks, whose incompetence has led to chaotic meetings and bizarrely changing vaccine recommendations. Donald Trump has recently joined his health secretary in casting aspersions on childhood vaccines – safe and effective treatments that have saved countless lives and are among the more wonderful miracles of human innovation. “It’s too much liquid,” the president said of the early childhood immunizations on Monday. “Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing, when you look at it.”Trump’s remarks came at what was supposed to be the debut for Kennedy’s new tactic: discouraging pregnant women from taking a common over-the-counter medication to ease pain or reduce fevers. At a rambling and shambolic press conference issued from the White House, Trump was unambivalent in his unproven assertions of the drug’s dangers. “Taking Tylenol is, uh, not good,” Trump said, flanked by Kennedy and Dr Mehmet Oz. “I’ll say it. It’s not good.” The president also offered his opinion that the weight-loss drug Ozempic doesn’t work, offering that his friends who take the drug are still fat. Kennedy, his face an uncanny color, stood awkwardly behind Trump, wearing a suit jacket that was visibly too small and with his head hanging slightly to the side; he looked a bit like a bored child at a prep school assembly. “Don’t. Take. Tylenol,” Trump continued, addressing pregnant women. “And don’t give it to the baby after the baby is born.”There is no evidence suggesting that Tylenol causes autism. A small number of studies have shown a correlation – not a cause – between acetaminophen use and incidents of neurological development disorders in early childhood. But these studies, aside from being inconclusive in their results, are also flawed in their methodologies: because pregnant women cannot be easily or ethically sorted into control groups, it is impossible for researchers to isolate Tylenol as a causal factor in the ensuing health of their children. There is as much evidence to suggest that those women whose children later developed autism got it from the Tylenol they took as there is to suggest that they got it because of a gust of wind, or because their mothers wore the color green. Fevers, however – which Tylenol is used to treat – pose proven risks to a fetus, and have been linked to cleft lip and palate, spina bifida, and congenital heart defects. “The conditions that people use acetaminophen to treat during pregnancy are far more dangerous than any theoretical risks and can create severe morbidity and mortality for the pregnant person and the fetus,” Dr Steven Fleischman, the president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement.Pregnant women do not lack for judgmental, frightening and dubiously factual instructions about their health. Everywhere, they are told that they risk the health of their fetus by partaking in a series of banal everyday activities – be it jogging or having coffee or eating a certain cheese – that they are told will lead, by obscure mechanisms that are never quite explained, to impossible and devastating health outcomes for their children-to-be. The admonishments are multiple and often contradictory, but they all tend to agree on one thing: that it is always good for women to deprive themselves of joy and relief – and to suffer more – for the sake of their fetuses.Health misinformation has thrived on the ignorance in which most women are kept about their bodies, particularly during pregnancy, and it feeds on the cruel combination of neglect and lack of interest with which many women have been treated by the medical system and the maximally judgmental and punitive treatment that they receive from others while pregnant. Frightened women, scared both for the health of their pregnancies and for the ways they will be blamed if something goes awry, seek out a way to secure a good outcome, and are met by charlatans, grifters and quacks who are happy to tell them lies in exchange for their attention and money. It is this very dynamic, fed like a sourdough starter in the damp and fecund social media environment of the pandemic, that Kennedy used to revive his own career after decades of scandal and disgrace.Now, this cynical exploitation of pregnant women’s fears, deployed to them at a time when they are most vulnerable, is coming from no less a place of authority than the White House itself.At the press conference, Trump advised pregnant women to simply endure their suffering. “A mother will have to tough it out,” he told them. Readers will forgive me if I posit that perhaps pregnant women in the US are already suffering enough. Six justices of the supreme court, three of them appointed by Trump himself, ruled in 2022 that they no longer have the federally protected right to terminate their pregnancies. The laws that have gone into effect since have cost several pregnant women their lives, as laws prohibit the medical interventions that could easily save them and allow them to die painful, premature and needless deaths. Other women have had their corpses desecrated for the sake of Trump’s anti-choice agenda, as hospitals and lawmakers use them as incubators against their will. Others are being forced to wait for care while they bleed and develop sepsis, risking their organs and their lives. The Trump administration has cut off Medicaid funding to some of the largest providers of sexual and reproductive healthcare, meaning many of the clinics that pregnant women rely on will now have to close. With doctors who provide gynecological and obstetric care fleeing states with strict abortion bans, many pregnant women in the US do not have access to competent medical care at all. As a result, more babies are being born sick, and more of them are dying. Women from states such as Florida report being forced to carry fetuses that have no chance of surviving, and then being forced to watch those infants suffer and die in the moments after birth. As Kennedy continues with his search for the causes of autism, his eugenic project will inevitably extract more and more coercion and violence on the bodies of pregnant women. Today’s fearmongering about Tylenol is only the beginning.It can seem darkly comedic at times how laughably incompetent Trump and his administration are. Kennedy’s ill-fitting suit; the president’s ramblings about his fat friends; the brazen indifference to truth in the absurd claim that Tylenol, perhaps the paradigmatic over-the-counter drug, is somehow this lurking danger. Trump’s idiocy and vulgarity give the lie to the pomp and dignity of his office; his now near-total capture of American political life mocks the promise of democracy. But pregnant women are not a punchline. Their hopes for their families, their fears for their bodies, their health, their comfort and their dignity – all of these are things Trump is willing to sacrifice at the altar of his own ego. Tylenol isn’t dangerous, but he is.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More