US politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 225 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

      by

      There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer.I grew up in Whitehorse, Yukon, a small town in the northernmost part of Canada. I always knew I wanted to do something bigger with my life. I left home early and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I built a career spanning multiple industries – acting in film and television, owning bars and restaurants, flipping condos and managing Airbnbs.In my 30s, I found my true passion working in the health and wellness industry. I was given the opportunity to help launch an American brand of health tonics called Holy! Water – a job that would involve moving to the US.I was granted my trade Nafta work visa, which allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the US in specific professional occupations, on my second attempt. It goes without saying, then, that I have no criminal record. I also love the US and consider myself to be a kind, hard-working person.I started working in California and travelled back and forth between Canada and the US multiple times without any complications – until one day, upon returning to the US, a border officer questioned me about my initial visa denial and subsequent visa approval. He asked why I had gone to the San Diego border the second time to apply. I explained that that was where my lawyer’s offices were, and that he had wanted to accompany me to ensure there were no issues.After a long interrogation, the officer told me it seemed “shady” and that my visa hadn’t been properly processed. He claimed I also couldn’t work for a company in the US that made use of hemp – one of the beverage ingredients. He revoked my visa, and told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the US, I would need to reapply.I was devastated; I had just started building a life in California. I stayed in Canada for the next few months, and was eventually offered a similar position with a different health and wellness brand.I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it. Hours passed, with many confused opinions about my case. The officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I hadn’t been aware I needed to apply that way, but had no problem doing it.Then she said something strange: “You didn’t do anything wrong. You are not in trouble, you are not a criminal.”I remember thinking: Why would she say that? Of course I’m not a criminal!She then told me they had to send me back to Canada. That didn’t concern me; I assumed I would simply book a flight home. But as I sat searching for flights, a man approached me.“Come with me,” he said.There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. A woman immediately began patting me down. The commands came rapid-fire, one after another, too fast to process.They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.“What are you doing? What is happening?” I asked.“You are being detained.”“I don’t understand. What does that mean? For how long?”“I don’t know.”That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: “I don’t know.”They brought me downstairs for a series of interviews and medical questions, searched my bags and told me I had to get rid of half my belongings because I couldn’t take everything with me.“Take everything with me where?” I asked.A woman asked me for the name of someone they could contact on my behalf. In moments like this, you realize you don’t actually know anyone’s phone number anymore. By some miracle, I had recently memorized my best friend Britt’s number because I had been putting my grocery points on her account.I gave them her phone number.They handed me a mat and a folded-up sheet of aluminum foil.“What is this?”“Your blanket.”“I don’t understand.”I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them, looking like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.View image in fullscreenFor two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no one answered our questions. No one in the cell spoke English, so I either tried to sleep or meditate to keep from having a breakdown. I didn’t trust the food, so I fasted, assuming I wouldn’t be there long.On the third day, I was finally allowed to make a phone call. I called Britt and told her that I didn’t understand what was happening, that no one would tell me when I was going home, and that she was my only contact.They gave me a stack of paperwork to sign and told me I was being given a five-year ban unless I applied for re-entry through the consulate. The officer also said it didn’t matter whether I signed the papers or not; it was happening regardless.I was so delirious that I just signed. I told them I would pay for my flight home and asked when I could leave.No answer.Then they moved me to another cell – this time with no mat or blanket. I sat on the freezing cement floor for hours. That’s when I realized they were processing me into real jail: the Otay Mesa Detention Center.View image in fullscreenI was told to shower, given a jail uniform, fingerprinted and interviewed. I begged for information.“How long will I be here?”“I don’t know your case,” the man said. “Could be days. Could be weeks. But I’m telling you right now – you need to mentally prepare yourself for months.”Months.I felt like I was going to throw up.I was taken to the nurse’s office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me. She had never seen a Canadian there before. When I told her my story, she grabbed my hand and said: “Do you believe in God?”I told her I had only recently found God, but that I now believed in God more than anything.“I believe God brought you here for a reason,” she said. “I know it feels like your life is in a million pieces, but you will be OK. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help others.”At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept.I felt like I had been sent an angel.I was then placed in a real jail unit – two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet.The best part: there were blankets. After three days without one, I wrapped myself in mine and finally felt some comfort.For the first day, I didn’t leave my cell. I continued fasting, terrified that the food might make me sick. The only available water came from the tap attached to the toilet in our cells or a sink in the common area, neither of which felt safe to drink.Eventually, I forced myself to step out, meet the guards and learn the rules. One of them told me: “No fighting.”“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” I joked. He laughed.I asked if there had ever been a fight here.“In this unit? No,” he said. “No one in this unit has a criminal record.”That’s when I started meeting the other women.That’s when I started hearing their stories.View image in fullscreenAnd that’s when I made a decision: I would never allow myself to feel sorry for my situation again. No matter how hard this was, I had to be grateful. Because every woman I met was in an even more difficult position than mine.There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.If someone is a criminal, I agree they should be taken off the streets. But not one of these women had a criminal record. These women acknowledged that they shouldn’t have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration wasn’t about being held accountable; it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they had been trapped in.The real issue was how long it took to get out of the system, with no clear answers, no timeline and no way to move forward. Once deported, many have no choice but to abandon everything they own because the cost of shipping their belongings back is too high.I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didn’t have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadn’t had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?One woman had a 10-year visa. When it expired, she moved back to her home country, Venezuela. She admitted she had overstayed by one month before leaving. Later, she returned for a vacation and entered the US without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to Los Angeles, she was picked up by Ice and detained. She couldn’t be deported because Venezuela wasn’t accepting deportees. She didn’t know when she was getting out.There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her master’s degree and was handed over to Ice due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.There were women who had been picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes. All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months. One woman’s daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release.That night, the pastor invited me to a service she was holding. A girl who spoke English translated for me as the women took turns sharing their prayers – prayers for their sick parents, for the children they hadn’t seen in weeks, for the loved ones they had been torn away from.Then, unexpectedly, they asked if they could pray for me. I was new here, and they wanted to welcome me. They formed a circle around me, took my hands and prayed. I had never felt so much love, energy and compassion from a group of strangers in my life. Everyone was crying.At 3am the next day, I was woken up in my cell.“Pack your bag. You’re leaving.”I jolted upright. “I get to go home?”The officer shrugged. “I don’t know where you’re going.”Of course. No one ever knew anything.I grabbed my things and went downstairs, where 10 other women stood in silence, tears streaming down their faces. But these weren’t happy tears. That was the moment I learned the term “transferred”.For many of these women, detention centers had become a twisted version of home. They had formed bonds, established routines and found slivers of comfort in the friendships they had built. Now, without warning, they were being torn apart and sent somewhere new. Watching them say goodbye, clinging to each other, was gut-wrenching.I had no idea what was waiting for me next. In hindsight, that was probably for the best.Our next stop was Arizona, the San Luis Regional Detention Center. The transfer process lasted 24 hours, a sleepless, grueling ordeal. This time, men were transported with us. Roughly 50 of us were crammed into a prison bus for the next five hours, packed together – women in the front, men in the back. We were bound in chains that wrapped tightly around our waists, with our cuffed hands secured to our bodies and shackles restraining our feet, forcing every movement into a slow, clinking struggle.When we arrived at our next destination, we were forced to go through the entire intake process all over again, with medical exams, fingerprinting – and pregnancy tests; they lined us up in a filthy cell, squatting over a communal toilet, holding Dixie cups of urine while the nurse dropped pregnancy tests in each of our cups. It was disgusting.We sat in freezing-cold jail cells for hours, waiting for everyone to be processed. Across the room, one of the women suddenly spotted her husband. They had both been detained and were now seeing each other for the first time in weeks.The look on her face – pure love, relief and longing – was something I’ll never forget.We were beyond exhausted. I felt like I was hallucinating.The guard tossed us each a blanket: “Find a bed.”There were no pillows. The room was ice cold, and one blanket wasn’t enough. Around me, women lay curled into themselves, heads covered, looking like a room full of corpses. This place made the last jail feel like the Four Seasons.I kept telling myself: Do not let this break you.Thirty of us shared one room. We were given one Styrofoam cup for water and one plastic spoon that we had to reuse for every meal. I eventually had to start trying to eat and, sure enough, I got sick. None of the uniforms fit, and everyone had men’s shoes on. The towels they gave us to shower were hand towels. They wouldn’t give us more blankets. The fluorescent lights shined on us 24/7.Everything felt like it was meant to break you. Nothing was explained to us. I wasn’t given a phone call. We were locked in a room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out.I tried to stay calm as every fiber of my being raged towards panic mode. I didn’t know how I would tell Britt where I was. Then, as if sent from God, one of the women showed me a tablet attached to the wall where I could send emails. I only remembered my CEO’s email from memory. I typed out a message, praying he would see it.He responded.Through him, I was able to connect with Britt. She told me that they were working around the clock trying to get me out. But no one had any answers; the system made it next to impossible. I told her about the conditions in this new place, and that was when we decided to go to the media.She started working with a reporter and asked whether I would be able to call her so she could loop him in. The international phone account that Britt had previously tried to set up for me wasn’t working, so one of the other women offered to let me use her phone account to make the call.We were all in this together.With nothing to do in my cell but talk, I made new friends – women who had risked everything for the chance at a better life for themselves and their families.Through them, I learned the harsh reality of seeking asylum. Showing me their physical scars, they explained how they had paid smugglers anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to reach the US border, enduring brutal jungles and horrendous conditions.One woman had been offered asylum in Mexico within two weeks but had been encouraged to keep going to the US. Now, she was stuck, living in a nightmare, separated from her young children for months. She sobbed, telling me how she felt like the worst mother in the world.Many of these women were highly educated and spoke multiple languages. Yet, they had been advised to pretend they didn’t speak English because it would supposedly increase their chances of asylum.Some believed they were being used as examples, as warnings to others not to try to come.Women were starting to panic in this new facility, and knowing I was most likely the first person to get out, they wrote letters and messages for me to send to their families.It felt like we had all been kidnapped, thrown into some sort of sick psychological experiment meant to strip us of every ounce of strength and dignity.We were from different countries, spoke different languages and practiced different religions. Yet, in this place, none of that mattered. Everyone took care of each other. Everyone shared food. Everyone held each other when someone broke down. Everyone fought to keep each other’s hope alive.I got a message from Britt. My story had started to blow up in the media.Almost immediately after, I was told I was being released.My Ice agent, who had never spoken to me, told my lawyer I could have left sooner if I had signed a withdrawal form, and that they hadn’t known I would pay for my own flight home.From the moment I arrived, I begged every officer I saw to let me pay for my own ticket home. Not a single one of them ever spoke to me about my case.To put things into perspective: I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks.Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.A small group of us were transferred back to San Diego at 2 am – one last road trip, once again shackled in chains. I was then taken to the airport, where two officers were waiting for me. The media was there, so the officers snuck me in through a side door, trying to avoid anyone seeing me in restraints. I was beyond grateful that, at the very least, I didn’t have to walk through the airport in chains.To my surprise, the officers escorting me were incredibly kind, and even funny. It was the first time I had laughed in weeks.I asked if I could put my shoelaces back on.“Yes,” one of them said with a grin. “But you better not run.”“Yeah,” the other added. “Or we’ll have to tackle you in the airport. That’ll really make the headlines.”I laughed, then told them I had spent a lot of time observing the guards during my detention and I couldn’t believe how often I saw humans treating other humans with such disregard. “But don’t worry,” I joked. “You two get five stars.”When I finally landed in Canada, my mom and two best friends were waiting for me. So was the media. I spoke to them briefly, numb and delusional from exhaustion.It was surreal listening to my friends recount everything they had done to get me out: working with lawyers, reaching out to the media, making endless calls to detention centers, desperately trying to get through to Ice or anyone who could help. They said the entire system felt rigged, designed to make it nearly impossible for anyone to get out.The reality became clear: Ice detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.This is not just my story. It is the story of thousands and thousands of people still trapped in a system that profits from their suffering. I am writing in the hope that someone out there – someone with the power to change any of this – can help do something.The strength I witnessed in those women, the love they gave despite their suffering, is what gives me faith. Faith that no matter how flawed the system, how cruel the circumstances, humanity will always shine through.Even in the darkest places, within the most broken systems, humanity persists. Sometimes, it reveals itself in the smallest, most unexpected acts of kindness: a shared meal, a whispered prayer, a hand reaching out in the dark. We are defined by the love we extend, the courage we summon and the truths we are willing to tell. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The US government has sent Columbia University a ransom note | Sheldon Pollock

      by

      On 15 March, Columbia University received what can only be described as the most dangerous letter in the history of higher education in America. The sender was the United States government. Like a ransom note, the government letter insists that Columbia comply with a list of Trump administration demands in order to even have a chance at recovering the $400m in federal funding for scientific research that the government canceled on 7 March.Oddly, one of the specific targets identified in the letter was Columbia’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (Mesaas), a small humanities department devoted to studying the languages, cultures and history of those regions. The government demanded the Mesaas department be put into “receivership” – basically, be taken over by the University – as a precondition to further negotiations.The battle against the authoritarianism taking hold in Washington now appears to turn in part on the fate of Mesaas.Why Mesaas?The Trump campaign to destroy the independence of American higher education began when an obscure federal agency, the General Services Administration (GSA), in collaboration with the Departments of Health & Human Services and Education, coordinated the extraordinary move to rescind $400m in federal funding for scientific research at Columbia, since Columbia “has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment”.After threatening some 60 other universities with the same fate, on 13 March the government sent their ransom note to Columbia alone. Their conditions were to be met within seven days, and not in return for the release of the funds, but merely as “preconditions”. Further demands would then be presented for “formal negotiation” – which would not be an actual negotiation, because the GSA would continue to hold back the university’s money, like a mobster.The preconditions concern mainly the policing of student protest on campus. Their imposition likely violates both federal law and the US constitution, as Columbia law faculty have made clear. But in a startling and equally unlawful move the Government took another hostage in its letter: Mesaas. For a period of five years, Columbia must place the department in academic receivership. The university was given the same seven-day ultimatum by which to specify “a full plan, with date-certain deliverables” for enforcing the receivership.This is an unparalleled attempt to seize control over people and ideas in an American university. Universities do find it necessary sometimes to place an academic department in receivership, typically when the department’s self-governance breaks down. Normally the administration will appoint as chair a member of another department, for one academic year. Mesaas’s current self-governance is outstanding, and there have been no problems in all the years that that I chaired the department.For the United States government itself to intervene directly in faculty governance – specifying the extraordinary five-year period, and with “deliverables” on whose performance the future funding of the entire university might depend – is without precedent in the history of American higher education.Why has the government chosen to single out this department?The answer is clear: because its faculty have not voiced steadfast support for the state of Israel in their scholarship. The US government stands almost alone in the world in its unwavering ideological and financial support for the violence of the state of Israel against the people of Palestine. Most recently it has provided the consent, the justification and the arms for Israel’s destruction of Gaza. (Just this week, the destruction was relaunched, to condemnation from around the world but not from Washington, which alone gave its support.)In contrast, academic research by prominent scholars in the field of Middle Eastern studies, including those in Mesaas, has reflected deeply on the complexity of the situation and has long since questioned the versions of history and racial ideas fueling Israel’s actions. Mesaas professors ask hard but entirely legitimate questions about Israel – and our government wants to ban that.The Mesaas department played no role in organizing student protests for Gaza. But Washington has decided that in addition to dictating how a university should govern political protest, it should control how the University governs academic research –intensifying a broad attack on research on the Middle East across US universities.With its demands to essentially seize control of Mesaas, the federal government is undermining two fundamental principles of the American university: the right of academic departments to self-government and the freedom of members of the faculty to express their views, without fear, both as authorities in their fields of inquiry and as private individuals.Columbia is required to decide by Thursday 20 March how to respond to this ransom note, with the government threatening to cut off two of the university’s fingers: academic freedom and faculty governance. If the Columbia administration capitulates, it will mark the beginning of its own destruction and that of the American university as such – precisely what the American Enterprise Institute, which supplied the template for the note, has called for.The courts have so far paused more than 40 of the administration’s initiatives, though it remains unclear if the mob boss will obey. So long as we do have a functional judicial system, however, Columbia’s answer to Trump can only be: see you in court.

      Sheldon Pollock FBA is the Arvind Raghunathan professor emeritus of South Asian studies at Columbia University and former chair of the Mesaas department. He currently has no role in department or university administration and writes only in a personal capacity. More

    • 200 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      What does Maga-land look like? Let me show you America’s unbeautiful suburban sprawl | Alexander Hurst

      by

      In 1941 Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist who reported from Germany in the lead-up to the second world war, wrote an essay for Harper’s about the personality types most likely to be attracted to Nazism, headlined “Who Goes Nazi?” “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t – whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi,” Thompson wrote.Talia Lavin, a US writer, recently gave Thompson’s idea an update on Substack with an essay of her own: “Who Goes Maga?”The essay has since been taken down (I’m not sure why), but in it Lavin reimagined Thompson’s original dinner party setting, with various archetypes in attendance, offering in one or two paragraphs a brief but empathetic explanation for why each person has or has not “gone Maga”.Eventually arriving at Mr I, an academic and a frequent traveller to France with family money, Lavin wrote: “Nonetheless, he will never go Maga and would spend his days in exile even if he got cut off from the family purse … because … he is a true devotee of beauty.” He finds in Maga “a hatred of things that are beautiful and strange, as all the things he loves are. Power holds no attraction for him, only beauty.”Of course, power often tries to use aesthetics, and its own definition of beauty, to further its own purposes. Fascists and authoritarians are deeply aware of the ability of art to propagate ideas or oppose them. From architecture to rallies, Hitler and Mussolini favoured a type of massiveness, an imposing nature and uniformity to evoke a sense of the imperial eternal. Soviet aesthetics – though meant to be futurist rather than focused on a glorified past – also fell back on the idea of massiveness and uniformity to subjugate the individual and elevate the state. And, of course, all three authoritarian regimes repressed art, artists and aesthetics that were dissident.Trumpism, too, has an aesthetic. Allow me to pretentiously, subjectively, declare it not beautiful. The aesthetic of Trumpism is sprawl – which had already infected the United States long before the Maga movement metastasised.Last September I drove nearly 2,000 miles in the US with a French friend, Guillaume, zigzagging our way from DC to New Orleans and tracing, in part, the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville. (“It might be our last opportunity to observe democracy in America,” I had said to him.) Through his non-American eyes, I saw even more poignantly the ways the physical manifestation of Hannah Arendt’s “atomisation” are scarred into the suburban and rural US landscape itself.Like fish in water, I wonder if Americans are even aware of how they swim in it. The hours-long stretches of chain stores in single-storey, flat-topped buildings. The cluster of gas stations, with functionally and aesthetically similar convenience stores selling rows and rows of sugary food and drinks. The big box chain stores, some of them matryoshka dolls that house other chains within – rectangular islands of stuff surrounded by parking lots leading to other little islands of fast food, also surrounded by parking lots, filled with rows and rows of the most enormous pickup trucks imaginable.And then, just as it starts to dwindle, another on-ramp/off-ramp, and the whole shebang starts all over again, until you’ve cycled through all of the possible chain permutations and you begin to repeat. Wherever there is grass, it will be impeccably mowed.No matter where you are in America’s 3.8m sq miles, with its 340 million inhabitants, the sprawl will have followed the same driving logic as the chains it hosts – an utterly nondescript, completely indistinguishable look, feel and experience. Somehow, there is always still traffic on these six-lane roads, a trailing line of enormous vehicles that require parking lots that spill out like muffin tops, and with double-wide parking spaces. Everything about sprawl slumps outwards, like warmed jelly that can no longer hold its shape. There is no height except for the height of the signs advertising the chains; those rise several storeys into the sky, enough to be visible from the highway.View image in fullscreenSomewhere along the line, the American Dream became to live alone, surrounded by all of this, rather than living in connection with other people.In somewhat cryptic lines, the poet Keats put forward a nexus that goes beyond the subjective nature of what we, individually, find aesthetically pleasing. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” he wrote. He was hardly the only one to interrogate the two at the same time. Plato and Plotinus sought to link beauty to an equally ineffable truth that lingered somewhere beyond our material reality; Kant, too, placed beauty beyond taste, as a disinterested thing that radiated outward. In theology, Saint Augustine and Hans Urs Von Balthasar draw the two back to the same divine origin, as critical components to any human attempt to understand the transcendent.And if that’s all too mystical for you, the British theoretical physicist Tom McLeish argues: “As indications of the road forward rather than destinations achieved, beautiful experiments and theoretical ideas can, and even must, be celebrated, their aesthetic appeal unashamedly enjoyed.”I would add a third vector to the one between beauty and truth: art, which in his 1934 book, Art As Experience, John Dewey sees as something that is inherent in the everyday experience of life rather than something necessarily pushed into museums. As long as that living is authentic. “Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality,” writes Dewey.Perhaps there is something authentic to suburban sprawl when experienced as spectator and anthropologist. But as everyday life, sprawl is deadening, ugly, fake. Devoid of art, beauty and truth alike. The United States has long bought into the idea that freedom is endless expansion. But slouching across land simply because it is there uplifts neither the land nor the people on it. In this instance in particular, abundance did a disservice to the US by drawing it into an absence of experience. What surprise that a moribund ideology would take root in physical spaces that radiate the peculiar desolation of too much?Given the number of artists, photographers, cinematographers and architects who have been willing to serve nefarious political movements, it would be simplistic for me to claim that artists are somehow immune to them. But art is an attempt to capture – and convey – something true about the world, and the human emotional experience of it. When the rational world has committed itself to a path that leads to destruction, perhaps those dedicated to beauty can, with what Keats called a “negative capability” to perceive truth, bring us back to both.

      Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe correspondent More

    • 175 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump signs order to shift disaster preparations from Fema to state and local governments

      by

      Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order that seeks to shift responsibility for disaster preparations to state and local governments, deepening the president’s drive to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).The order, first previewed by the White House on 10 March, calls for a review of all infrastructure, continuity and preparedness and response policies to update and simplify federal approaches.It said “common sense” investments by state and local governments to address risks ranging from wildfires to hurricanes and cyber attacks would enhance national security, but did not detail what they were or how they would be funded.“Preparedness is most effectively owned and managed at the state, local, and even individual levels, supported by a competent, accessible, and efficient federal government,” the order said. “When states are empowered to make smart infrastructure choices, taxpayers benefit.”The order calls for revising critical infrastructure policy to better reflect assessed risks instead of an “all-hazards approach”, the White House said in a fact sheet on the order.It creates a “National Risk Register” to identify, describe and measure risk to US national infrastructure and streamlines federal functions to help states work with Washington more easily.Trump in January ordered a review of Fema that stopped short of shuttering the country’s lead disaster response agency and a White House official said the latest order was not aimed at closing Fema.Rob Moore, the director of the flooding solutions team at the Natural Resources Defense Council, accused the Trump administration of systematically weakening US disaster readiness.“From day one, the Trump administration has been eroding the nation’s capacity to plan for, respond to, and recover from disasters,” Moore told Reuters.“They’ve overseen the dismissal of 1,000 Fema staff – who won’t be there to respond to a flood or wildfire – and are withholding funding from local and state governments who are doing risk reduction projects and more.“Shana Udvardy, a senior researcher at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said she was concerned the order marked “another dangerous step” that would leave communities with fewer resources to prepare for future disasters.“The executive order shifts most of the responsibility for disaster preparedness to state and local governments, asking them to make more expensive infrastructure investments without outlining the federal role in that,” she said. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump releases thousands of pages on John F Kennedy assassination

      by

      The Trump administration on Tuesday released thousands of pages of files concerning the assassination of John F Kennedy, the 35th president who was shot dead in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963.“So people have been waiting decades for this,” Donald Trump told reporters on Monday while visiting the Kennedy Center, “and I’ve instructed my people that are responsible, lots of different people, put together by [director of national intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard, and that’s going to be released tomorrow.”Experts doubted the new trove of information will change the underlying facts of the case, that Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire at Kennedy from a window at a school book deposit warehouse as the presidential motorcade passed by Dealey Plaza in Dallas.The digital documents included PDFs of memos, including one with the heading “secret” that was a typed account with handwritten notes of a 1964 interview by a Warren Commission researcher who questioned Lee Wigren, a CIA employee, about inconsistencies in material provided to the commission by the state department and the CIA about marriages between Soviet women and American men.The documents also included references to various conspiracy theories suggesting that Oswald left the Soviet Union in 1962 intent on assassinating the popular young president.Department of Defense documents from 1963 covered the cold war of the early 1960s and the US involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s support of communist forces in other countries.The documents suggest that Castro would not go so far as to provoke a war with the United States or escalate to the point “that would seriously and immediately endanger the Castro regime”.“It appears more likely that Castro might intensify his support of subversive forces in Latin America,” the document reads.Trump signed an order shortly after taking office in January related to the release, prompting the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to find thousands of new documents related to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.“President Trump is ushering in a new era of maximum transparency,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a post on X.ABC News reported that Trump’s announcement prompted an all-night scramble at the justice department.John F Kennedy was killed during a motorcade through Dallas on 22 November 1963. Oswald was killed two days later by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.Ever since, Kennedy’s death has been the subject of immense scholarship, cultural commentary and spiraling conspiracy theories.Files have been released before, including three releases in 2017, when Trump was first in power. One document released then was a 1975 CIA memo that said a thorough search of records showed Oswald was not in any way connected to the intelligence agency, as posited by numerous authors and hobbyists.Trump’s latest JFK files release comes weeks after the death at 93 of Clint Hill, a Secret Service agent who leapt onto Kennedy’s car, a moment of history famously captured on film by Abraham Zapruder, a home movie enthusiast.Trump survived an assassination attempt of his own in Pennsylvania last year, during a campaign event. In office, he has also promised to release files on the assassinations of Kennedy’s brother, the US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, and the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, both in 1968.Robert F Kennedy’s son, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is now US health secretary. He has voiced conspiracy theories, including saying he thinks his father was probably killed by the CIA and his uncle, the president, certainly was.King’s family has expressed the fear that genuine FBI attempts to smear him will again be brought to the light.Last month, directed by Trump, the US justice department released files about Jeffrey Epstein, the financier, convicted sex offender and Trump associate who killed himself in prison in New York in 2019. Aggressively touted and targeted to rightwing social media influencers, the release proved a damp squib.On Monday, Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the author of a book on Kennedy, told Reuters: “People expecting big things are almost certain to be disappointed” by the new files release.Reuters contributed reporting More

    • 188 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump administration briefing: nearly 25,000 fired workers to be rehired; USAid shutdown likely violated constitution

      by

      Donald Trump’s presidential administration in court filings has for the first time acknowledged that it fired nearly 25,000 recently hired workers – and said agencies were working to bring all of them back after a judge ruled that their terminations were likely illegal.The filings made in Baltimore’s federal courthouse late Monday include statements from officials at 18 agencies, all of whom said the reinstated probationary workers were being placed on administrative leave at least temporarily.The mass firings, part of Trump’s broader purge of the federal workforce carried out by the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) led by billionaire businessman Elon Musk, were widely reported. But the court filings are the first full accounting of the terminations by the administration.Here are the key US politics story from Monday:Trump administration rehiring nearly 25,000 fired workers after court orderIn the filings late Monday, agency officials said they had either reinstated all of the fired employees or were working to do so – but warned that bringing back large numbers of workers had imposed significant burdens and caused confusion and turmoil.The officials also noted that an appeals court ruling reversing Bredar’s order would allow agencies to again fire the workers, subjecting them to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks.Read the full storyChief justice rebukes Trump for call to impeach judge hearing deportation caseJohn Roberts, the chief justice of the US supreme court, delivered a rare rebuke on Tuesday of Donald Trump after the US president demanded the impeachment of a federal judge who had issued an adverse ruling against the administration blocking the deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members.Read the full storyMusk and Doge’s USAid shutdown likely violated US constitution, judge rulesA federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) likely violated the US constitution by shutting down USAid, ordering the Trump administration to reverse some of the actions it took to dismantle the agency.Read the full storyVladimir Putin agrees to 30-day halt to attacks on Ukraine’s energy gridVladimir Putin has agreed to a limited ceasefire that would stop Russia targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure after a high-stakes phone call with Donald Trump.But the Russian leader declined to commit to a 30-day full ceasefire, a plan pitched by Trump that Ukraine agreed to last week, denting the US president’s hope of bringing a quick end to hostilities.Read the full story‘I am a political prisoner’: Mahmoud Khalil says he’s being targeted for political beliefsIn his first public remarks since being detained by federal immigration authorities, Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate, Mahmoud Khalil, spoke out against the conditions facing immigrants in US detention and said he was being targeted by the Trump administration for his political beliefs.“I am a political prisoner,” he said in a statement provided exclusively to the Guardian.Read the full storyTrump waging ‘sickening’ psychological war, deported Venezuelan’s lawyer saysA lawyer for one of the Venezuelan immigrants sent from the US to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador has accused the Trump administration of waging a “sickening” campaign of psychological warfare against asylum seekers and migrants.Read the full storyTrump fires FTC’s only two Democrats Donald Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners on the US Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, further blurring the lines of bipartisanship at regulatory agencies. The fired commissioners are confirmed to be Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. Bedoya confirmed his firing in a post on social media.“I’m a Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The President just illegally fired me,” he wrote. “The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists, our staff is unafraid of the Martin Shkrelis and Jeff Bezos of the world. They take them to court and they win.“Now, the President wants the FTC to be a lap dog for his golfing buddies.”Read the full storyDemocrat vows to ‘stop Doge’s illegal power grab’ at non-profit peace instituteA senior Democratic congressman vowed to “stop Doge’s illegal power grab” after operatives from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” gained entry to the US Institute of Peace in Washington – an independent organization established by Congress – and forced out its leaders.Read the full storyWhite House sparks uncertainty over fate of two major California national monumentsThe White House is fueling speculation over plans to eliminate two large national monuments in California established by former president Joe Biden. Questions about the monuments’ status arose on 15 March when a White House fact sheet dated 14 March removed references to them.Read the full storyTesla stake is no longer Elon Musk’s most valuable asset amid stock market sell-offElon Musk’s vast stake in Tesla is no longer his most valuable asset as the electric car company continues to endure a sharp stock market sell-off. His SpaceX stake is worth an estimated $147bn, about $20bn more than his shares in Tesla after the carmaker’s shares halved since December.Tesla has come under stark pressure on the market since Donald Trump’s inauguration, as it became clear that much of Musk’s attention is on his work at the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), and the new administration’s tariff policies injected uncertainty into the economy.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Trump escalated his rhetoric against the judicial branch, saying that a federal judge who attempted to block his deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members should be impeached.

      Despite the rhetoric, impeaching and removing federal judges is exceedingly rare, and Republicans don’t appear to have the votes in the Senate.

      Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, asked the Trump administration not to deport their citizens to a third country, or detain them in Guantánamo Bay.

      More documents related to the assassination of John F Kennedy Jr should be released today, Trump told reporters on Monday. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      US judge blocks Trump’s ban on trans people serving in the military

      by

      A federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from military service on Tuesday.US district judge Ana Reyes in Washington DC ruled that the president’s order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights.She delayed her order by three days to give the administration time to appeal.“The court knows that this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals. In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes,” Reyes wrote. “We should all agree, however, that every person who has answered the call to serve deserves our gratitude and respect.”The White House didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.Army reserves 2nd Lt Nicolas Talbott, one of 14 transgender active-duty service members named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he was holding his breath as he waited to find out if he would be separated from the military next week.“This is such a sigh of relief,” he said. “This is all I’ve ever wanted to do. This is my dream job, and I finally have it. And I was so terrified that I was about to lose it.”The judge issued a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys for six transgender people who are active-duty service members and two others seeking to join the military.On 27 January, Trump signed an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.In response to the order, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies people with gender dysphoria from military service. Gender dysphoria is the distress that a person feels because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match. The medical condition has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.Plaintiffs’ attorneys contend Trump’s order violates transgender people’s rights to equal protection under the fifth amendment.Government lawyers argue that military officials have broad discretion to decide how to assign and deploy service members without judicial interference.Reyes said she did not take lightly her decision to issue an injunction blocking Trump’s order, noting: “Judicial overreach is no less pernicious than executive overreach.” But, she said, it was also the responsibility of each branch of government to provide checks and balances for the others, and the court “therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day”.Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.In 2016, a defense department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military. During Trump’s first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members. The supreme court allowed the ban to take effect. Former president Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.Hegseth’s 26 February policy says service members or applicants for military service who have “a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service”.The plaintiffs who sued to block Trump’s order include an army reserves platoon leader from Pennsylvania, an army major who was awarded a Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan, and a Sailor of the Year award winner serving in the navy.“The cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed – some risking their lives – to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the military ban seeks to deny them,” Reyes wrote.Their attorneys, from the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law, said transgender troops “seek nothing more than the opportunity to continue dedicating their lives to defending the Nation”.“Yet these accomplished servicemembers are now subject to an order that says they must be separated from the military based on a characteristic that has no bearing on their proven ability to do the job,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “This is a stark and reckless reversal of policy that denigrates honorable transgender servicemembers, disrupts unit cohesion, and weakens our military.” More

    • 200 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge rules against Musk and Doge, finding USAid shutdown ‘likely violated’ constitution – US politics live

      by

      A federal judge has ordered Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to stop their dismantling of USAid, saying their move to rapidly shut down the agency tasked with managing foreign assistance was likely illegal.“The court finds that defendants actions taken to shut down USAid on an accelerated basis, including its apparent decision to permanently close USAid headquarters without the approval of a duly appointed USAid Officer, likely violated the United States constitution in multiple ways, and that these actions harmed not only Plaintiffs, but also the public interest, because they deprived the public’s elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency created by Congress,” wrote Maryland-based judge Theodore D. Chuang.He ordered Musk and Doge officials to halt any work meant to shut down USAid, reinstate email access for all USAid employees and contractors and not disclose any employees’ personal information publicly.He also said Musk and Doge have two weeks to either certify that USAid’s Washington DC headquarters has been reopened or have a top USAid official agree to close it down.The two Democratic commissioners at the US Federal Trade Commission, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, both said on Tuesday that they were “illegally fired” by Donald Trump on Tuesday.Trump is already being sued for firing members of other independent regulatory agencies including the National Labor Relations Board.Bedoya posted a statement on X in which he said: “This is corruption plain and simple”.“The FTC is an independent agency founded 111 years ago to fight fraudsters and monopolists”, Bedoya wrote. “Now the president wants the FTC to be a lapdog for his golfing buddies”.Slaughter said in a statement to the American Prospect that Trump’s illegal action violated “the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent”.As Deepak Gupta, former senior counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, explained recently on Slate’s Amicus podcast, in the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v United States, the US supreme court upheld a law that permitted FTC commissioners to be fired only for good cause, such as neglecting their duties. That ruling shields a number of independent, bipartisan multi-member agencies from direct control by the White House.As Gupta noted, the idea that government needed independent agencies and people with experts to solve complex problems was introduced during the New Deal era, to replace what was known as “the spoils system”, in which the incoming president rewarded friends, campaign staffers and other supporters with appointments to federal government positions for which they had no qualifications or expertise.Ed Martin, the combative interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, and a 2020 election denier who helped lead the Stop the Steal movement, plans to use his office to investigate possible election law violations, according to an email seen by Bloomberg Law.Martin, who publicly called the 2020 “rigged” in 2021, said in the office-wide email that he had established a “Special Unit: Election Accountability,” or SUEA.The unit “has already begun one investigation and will continue to make sure that all the election laws of our nation are obeyed”, Martin wrote. “We have a special role at this important time.”David Becker, the director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, told Talking Points Memo that Martin “seems to be misunderstanding his jurisdiction and the federal laws around elections and voting, and without more information, it’s unclear what is being done here other than furthering conspiracy theories that he’s embraced in the past”.Martin is a veteran anti-abortion activist who has argued for a national ban without exceptions for rape or incest, falsely claimed that “no abortion is ever performed to save the life of the mother” and discussed the possibility of jailing doctors who perform abortions and women who get abortions.Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, has criticized the chief justice of the supreme court, John Roberts, for defending the federal judge who tried to block the government’s showy deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.After Donald Trump reacted to Judge James Boasberg’s ruling by calling for his impeachment, Roberts said in a statement: “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”Responding on X, the social network owned by Elon Musk, Lee wrote:
      Impeachment is a non-justiciable political question assigned by the Constitution to Congress—one of the two political branches of the U.S. government—and not to the courts
      Frankly, I’m surprised that Chief Justice Roberts is publicly opining on such matters
      Musk himself had posted a similar comment hours earlier. Lee, a former critic of Trump who had called on him to drop out of the 2016 campaign before becoming a public convert, also shared Musk’s comment and added, of the arch-conservative Roberts, “This isn’t the first time he’s treaded on legislative power”.Here is more from our colleagues Hugo Lowell and Joseph Gedeon on the Roberts intervention:Trump’s trade war has had an incredible impact on the popularity of Canada’s Liberal Party, as new polling suggests a stunning reversal of public opinion.For the first time, projection shows the Liberals with a 55% chance of a majority government, according to the closely watched website 338Canada, which tracks and aggregates national polls, converting those figures into projected election results. In January, these odds stood at less than 1%.The shifting polls reflect the outsized role played by a teetering and unpredictable US president, and it underscores the incentives for newly minted prime minister Mark Carney to call a snap election in the coming days.Read more about it here:Of all that Donald Trump has done since being sworn in on 20 January, there’s a good argument to be made that dismantling USAid was the most impactful, though not necessarily within the United States. The Guardian’s Katy Lay has a look at how the global fight against HIV has suffered from USAid’s stripping:This year the world should have been “talking about the virtual elimination of HIV” in the near future. “Within five years,” says Prof Sharon Lewin, a leading researcher in the field. “Now that’s all very uncertain.”Scientific advances had allowed doctors and campaigners to feel optimistic that the end of HIV as a public health threat was just around the corner.Then came the Trump administration’s abrupt cuts to US aid funding. Now the picture is one of a return to the drugs rationing of decades ago, and of rising infections and deaths.But experts are also talking about building a new approach that would make health services, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, less vulnerable to the whims of a foreign power.The US has cancelled 83% of its foreign aid contracts and dismantled USAid, the agency responsible for coordinating most of them.Many fell under the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) programme, which has been the backbone of global efforts to tackle HIV and Aids, investing more than $110bn (£85bn) since it was founded in 2003 and credited with saving 26 million lives and preventing millions more new infections. In some African countries it covered almost all HIV spending.Judge Theodore D Chuang’s ruling that the dismantling of USAid was likely unconstitutional landed just as top officials at the agency were planning for it to be completely shut down by the end of September, the Bulwark reports.Employees at USAid were informed that their jobs will likely be wrapped into other federal departments, while workers overseas will be sent back to the United States. Chuang’s ruling could disrupt these plans, though the Trump administration could also appeal it.Here’s more from the Bulwark of what was planned for USAid’s final months:
      Tim Meisburger, the head of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, recently briefed staff about plans and pegged a final day for the agency’s existence at September 30, 2025 (notably, when the just-struck government funding deal runs out). According to notes of the briefing, which were obtained by The Bulwark, Meisburger expected that the agency would have a new structure, new names for subsections, and that there would be a “minimal overseas footprint,” with the possibility to expand in the future. They’d be incorporated into the State Department and officials had to “mentally prepare” to go from being agency leaders to senior staffers.
      “Most of the madness is behind us,” Meisburger said, according to the notes. It was time to “make lemonade out of lemons.”
      But what if you can’t get the lemons home? That’s one of the problems USAID is currently confronting.
      Last week, Jason Gray, who was serving as acting administrator for USAID, sent an email to staffers outlining the process for overseas officials to use the agency portal to come back to the United States. According to one person familiar with those concerns, the American Foreign Service Association is seeking information about the use of the portal. As of now, some USAID employees stationed abroad face a Catch-22. Some fear that if they relocate voluntarily, they may not be eligible for all the reimbursements associated with relocation costs (such as the shipment of personal effects). Other overseas employees worry that if they don’t voluntarily return to the United States, they could be fired. But at least that would potentially make the government liable to cover more of the end-of-contract relocation costs (assuming the current administration doesn’t just choose to leave fired employees abroad).
      A federal judge has ordered Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to stop their dismantling of USAid, saying their move to rapidly shut down the agency tasked with managing foreign assistance was likely illegal.“The court finds that defendants actions taken to shut down USAid on an accelerated basis, including its apparent decision to permanently close USAid headquarters without the approval of a duly appointed USAid Officer, likely violated the United States constitution in multiple ways, and that these actions harmed not only Plaintiffs, but also the public interest, because they deprived the public’s elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency created by Congress,” wrote Maryland-based judge Theodore D. Chuang.He ordered Musk and Doge officials to halt any work meant to shut down USAid, reinstate email access for all USAid employees and contractors and not disclose any employees’ personal information publicly.He also said Musk and Doge have two weeks to either certify that USAid’s Washington DC headquarters has been reopened or have a top USAid official agree to close it down.Federal judge James Boasberg has given the Trump administration until noon tomorrow to provide answers to specific questions about three flights carrying suspected Venezuelan gang members that left the United States despite his order preventing their departure.Boasberg informed the justice department they have until 12pm ET tomorrow to answer the following questions:
      1) What time did the plane take off from U.S. soil and from where? 2) What time did it leave U.S. airspace? 3) What time did it land in which foreign country (including if it made more than one stop)? 4) What time were individuals subject solely to the Proclamation transferred out of U.S. custody? and 5) How many people were aboard solely on the basis of the Proclamation?
      The government, which has cited national security concerns in refusing to answer Boasberg’s questions, is allowed to reply under seal.The Pentagon said that fewer than 21,000 employees have accepted voluntary resignations after they announced plans to cut up to 60,000 civilian jobs, the Associated Press reports.The defense department announced last month that it would fire 5-8% of its civilian workforce, with layoffs of 5,400 probationary workers. The defense department is the largest government agency, with the Government Accountability Office finding in 2023 that it had more than 700,000 full-time civilian workers.A man accused of battling police with a baseball bat and shield during the January 6 riot at the US Capitol has announced a run for the US Senate in Florida.Jake Lang, a prominent January 6 defendant, has announced on social media that he is seeking the seat recently vacated by the current secretary of state Marco Rubio in 2026.“WE ARE TAKING OVER THE CAPITOL AGAIN,” Lang wrote in a post on X.Lang continued to be politically active during his time in the DC jail, reportedly attempting to organize a militia and creating fundraisers for the January 6 defendants.Lang did not stand trial for charges related to his role in the insurrection due to continuous delays. He was pardoned alongside about 1,600 others who participated in the Capitol attack when Donald Trump took office.Read more about it here:The Trump administration has moved to reinstate at least 24,500 recently fired probationary workers following a pair of orders from federal judges last week.The reinstatements were outlined in a filing by the Justice Department in federal court in Maryland on Monday.US District Judge James Bredar, an appointee of former President Obama, previously ordered the mass reinstatement of fired probationary workers at 18 federal agencies. He determined that the government’s claims that the terminations were because of performance issues “isn’t true”.The majority of the reinstated employees were placed on paid administrative leave, according to the Washington Post. According to the filings, some workers were fully reinstated with pay, and some were reinstated without pay if they had been on unpaid leave before their termination.Voters in Wisconsin are casting the first ballots in a pivotal state supreme court race that will decide whether liberal or conservative justices control the highest court in the state.The first day of early voting comes two weeks before the April 1 election between the Republican-supported Brad Schimel and Democratic-supported Susan Crawford.The race, which is in an important presidential battleground state, can be seen as a barometer of public opinion early in Trump’s presidency. The outcome will have far-reaching implications for a court that faces cases over abortion and reproductive rights, the strength of public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries.The White House said in a statement that Trump and Putin “spoke about the need for peace and a ceasefire in the Ukraine war” in a phone call that lasted over an hour.
      “Both leaders agreed this conflict needs to end with a lasting peace,” reads the statement. “The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace.”
      Putin and Trump also discussed the Middle East, the “need to stop” the proliferation of strategic weapons, and Iran, according to the statement.The justice department told the judge considering the legality of deporting suspected Venezuelan gang members that they did not violate his order to stop the planes from departing, but refused to immediately offer more details of their itinerary.The filings came after judge James Boasberg yesterday gave the administration a deadline of today at noon to share details of how the three planes were allowed to fly to El Salvador even though he ordered that they not depart, and turn back if they were in the air.In response, Robert L. Cerna, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official based in Texas, said that two of the planes had already left US airspace by the time that Boasberg issued his order, while the third carried migrants who had been ordered deported through the typical legal process – not the Alien Enemies Act, which is at issue in the case Boasberg is considering.From Cerna’s filing:
      On March 15, 2025, after the Proclamation was publicly posted and took effect, three planes carrying aliens departed the United States for El Salvador International Airport (SAL). Two of those planes departed U.S. territory and airspace before 7:25 PM EDT. The third plane departed after that time, but all individuals on that third plane had Title 8 final removal orders and thus were not removed solely on the basis of the Proclamation at issue. To avoid any doubt, no one on any flight departing the United States after 7:25 PM EDT on March 15, 2025, was removed solely on the basis of the Proclamation at issue.
      Separately, attorney general Pam Bondi and other top justice department officials signed a notice to Boasberg in response to his demand for details about the planes and their departure time, essentially refusing to provide him with what he wanted:
      The Court also ordered the Government to address the form in which it can provide further details about flights that left the United States before 7:25 PM. The Government maintains that there is no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate, because even accepting Plaintiffs’ account of the facts, there was no violation of the Court’s written order (since the relevant flights left U.S. airspace, and so their occupants were “removed,” before the order issued), and the Court’s earlier oral statements were not independently enforceable as injunctions. The Government stands on those arguments.
      Here’s more on the legal wrangling over the deportations, and Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act: More