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    Move fast and destroy things: 100 chaotic days of Elon Musk in the White House

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    One hundred days after Elon Musk entered the White House as Donald Trump’s senior adviser and the de facto leader of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the Tesla CEO has left little of the federal government unscathed. Over the course of just a few months, he has gutted agencies and public services that took decades to build while accumulating immense political power.Musk’s role in the Trump administration is without modern precedent. Never before has the world’s richest person been deputized by the US president to cull the very agencies that oversee his businesses. Musk’s attempts to radically dismantle government bureaus have won him sprawling influence. His team has embedded its members in key roles across federal agencies, gained access to personal data on millions of Americans and fired tens of thousands of workers. SpaceX, where he is CEO, is now poised to take over potential government contracts worth billions. He has left a trail of chaos while seeding the government with his allies, who will likely help him profit and preserve his newfound power.The billionaire’s newfound sway has not come without pushback and a cost. Doge’s blitz through the government has sparked furious nationwide backlash, as well as dozens of lawsuits challenging Musk’s mass firings and accusing his task force of violating numerous laws. Musk’s personal popularity has sunk to record lows, and Tesla’s profits have tanked.A look back at the first 100 days of the Trump administration shows the extent to which Musk’s efforts have changed the US government. It also shows that what Musk framed as a cost-cutting task initiative is failing to meet its ostensible goal of finding $1tn in fraud or waste, but it is succeeding in reshaping federal agencies along ideological grounds, paving the way for private companies to fill the resulting vacuum of public services.Musk has recently stopped physically working from the White House and stated he plans to pivot away from his government position soon, but has entrenched himself as one of the world’s most divisive political figures and gives no sign he is willing to fully give up his influence. Instead, the first 100 days of Doge shows that the scope of Musk’s ambition extends to remaking how the government deals with everything from humanitarian aid to the rule of law.Doge sweeps through agenciesOn the same day Trump was sworn into office, the president issued an executive order that created Musk’s “department of government efficiency” by renaming the US Digital Service agency, which previously handled governmental tech issues. Trump’s order included only a vague mandate to modernize government technology and increase efficiency, but within days it would become clear that Musk and his team had far more expansive aims.In the months leading up to the executive order, Musk had been hiring a team of staffers that included a mix of young engineers, tech world executives and longtime lieutenants from his private companies. Running the day-to-day operations was Steve Davis, who had worked with Musk at various companies, including SpaceX and the Boring Company, for more than 20 years. Davis was known as an exacting boss – Musk once compared him to chemotherapy. Others had far less experience, including 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who had worked for several months at Musk’s Neuralink company. The teenager had been fired from a previous internship for leaking information and went by the username “big balls” in online profiles.Doge’s early days made headlines for targeting masses of government workers with layoffs and pushing others to resign, with more than 2 million employees receiving an email on 28 January titled “Fork in the road” that encouraged staffers to take a buyout. The emails, which asked: “What did you accomplish this week?” would become a signature of Musk and his new bureau, sent again and again whenever staff began to prey on a new herd of government employees.Shortly after Trump’s executive order created Doge, Musk’s team quickly began popping up in the offices of numerous agencies. One of the first was the General Services Administration, which oversees digital technology and government buildings. Doge staffers appeared on Zoom calls with no introduction and hidden last names, questioning federal employees about what they did for work and refusing to answer questions. They also began to show up in person, taking over conference rooms and moving Ikea beds on to the sixth floor of the GSA to sleep overnight. Perplexed government workers at numerous agencies described Doge’s actions as a hostile takeover, where a goon squad would appear and demand rapid changes to systems they knew little about.“They’ve only fired people and turned things off,” said a current federal employee, who agreed to speak anonymously for fear of retribution.Simultaneously, Doge staffers were aggressively gaining access to key data systems that controlled the flow of payments to federal workers and funding for government contracts. In one striking incident, Doge team members clashed with the highest ranking career official at the treasury department over access to a payment system that controls $6tn in annual funds. The fight ended with the official, David Lebryk, being put on administrative leave before he ultimately resigned. Doge staff obtained the access they wanted.Pushback against Doge from other officials resulted in similar punishments. As Doge staffers stormed into the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in early February, they found themselves in a heated standoff with security officials who tried to bar them from accessing a secure room which held sensitive and confidential data. The confrontation ended with USAID’s top security official being put on administrative leave, while Doge gained access to its systems. With no one to stop them, Doge staffers then began the process of hollowing out the agency that had once been the world’s largest single supplier of humanitarian aid. More than 5,600 USAID workers around the world would be fired in the ensuing weeks.“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted days later on X, his social media platform.Musk moves to gut the governmentDoge’s targeting of USAID turned out to be a blueprint for how Musk and company would go after other parts of the government. In early February, Musk’s team had established a presence across federal agencies and placed itself at the fulcrum of government employment systems. The next step was mass layoffs.“We do need to delete entire agencies,” Musk told attendees at a World Governments Summit in Dubai on 13 February. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”The same day as Musk’s remarks, the Trump administration ordered agencies to fire thousands of probationary workers – a designation that applies to employees who have been at their jobs for less than a year, including those who may have been recently promoted. Other workers soon received an email from Doge that demanded they list five things that they did last week or face termination, a chaotic request that also turned out to be an empty threat. Cabinet officials privately deemed it nonsensical.Amid the widespread cuts, Musk began reveling in his new powers both on X and in public appearances. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on 23 February he stood on stage in a black Maga hat, sunglasses and gold chain, gleefully wielding a chainsaw that was gifted to him by Javier Milei, the rightwing populist Argentinian president.“This chainsaw is for bureaucracy!” he said. “I am become meme.”While Musk celebrated his first cuts, Doge began going after entire offices and agencies it viewed as politically progressive or opposed to its goals. The GSA’s 18F office, which helped build software projects such as the IRS’s free tax filing service, was one of the first targets. On 3 February, Musk told a rightwing influencer on X that the office was “deleted” in response to an inaccurate post accusing the group of being radical leftists. Employees at the 18F office asked their new Musk-allied leadership what “deleted” meant, former workers said, but received no further clarification. The employees continued working for weeks under a cloud of confusion and tension with their new leaders, until the middle of the night on Saturday 1 March, when they received an email saying they were going to be laid off en masse.“We were living proof that the talking points of this administration were false. Government services can be efficient,” Lindsay Young, the former executive director of 18F, said in a post on LinkedIn. “This made us a target.”Doge’s influence soon extended beyond government tech offices into major agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March that it was cutting 10,000 jobs to align with Trump’s executive order on Doge. In a display of the chaos that Doge had inspired, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr weeks later admitted that around 2,000 of those workers were fired in error and would need to be reinstated.Musk fights the judicial systemAs soon as Trump issued the executive order to create Doge, watchdog and labor groups filed lawsuits challenging its legality. More lawsuits piled on as Doge accessed sensitive data systems, fired workers and refused to respond to public records requests. Altogether, there have now been more than two dozen cases targeting the agency.At first, Doge and Musk seemed to move faster than the judicial system could respond as they slashed and burned government agencies. Around the start of March, however, many of the court cases began to produce rulings that curtailed Doge’s layoffs and temporarily blocked its staff’s access to data. Judges ruled that the Trump administration needed to reinstate probationary workers that they fired, limited some Doge access to databases at agencies such as the Social Security Administration and ordered Musk’s team to turn over internal records it had been seeking to keep private.Musk’s reaction was a constant stream of attacks against the judicial system on X, which included demands that lawmakers “impeach the judges” and claims that there was a “judicial coup” under way against Trump. Musk repeatedly amplified far-right influencers saying that the US should emulate El Salvador’s strongman president, Nayib Bukele, whose party ousted supreme court judges in 2021 in a slide toward authoritarianism.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Musk campaigned against federal judges that were increasing oversight and forcing more transparency on Doge, he also began plowing money into a Wisconsin supreme court race that would have tipped the state’s judicial body conservative. The billionaire and the groups he funded put more than $20m toward electing a conservative judge, which he claimed was crucial to “the future of civilization”.The attempt to influence the Wisconsin vote followed his blueprint from the presidential race. His Super Pac offered $100 to voters willing to sign a petition stating their opposition to “activist judges”, and he held a campaign rally where he gave out $1m dollar checks on stage. Musk’s effort failed to convince voters, with his preferred candidate losing by 10 percentage points.The outcome of the Wisconsin supreme court race proved to be the first in a series of setbacks that tested the limits of Musk’s political influence and the toxicity of his personal brand. As the billionaire embraced his new role as a Republican mega-donor and placed himself often literally at center stage, it became clear that his routine did not always play well outside of the insulated bubbles of Maga rallies and Tesla product launches. While people saw more and more of Musk, polls showed that the public liked him less and less.Protests boom against Musk and TeslaAs Musk’s association with Trump and the international far right became too prominent to ignore over the past year, there has been a rising social stigma against associating with his products. The most tangible symbol of Musk’s empire, Tesla, has become the focus of an international protest movement since the creation of Doge. SpaceX, the second-largest source of Musk’s wealth, has seemed insulated from the vicissitudes of consumer sentiment and increased its role in US space operations.Protests at Tesla dealerships, as well as vandalism against individual cars, started small in the weeks after inauguration, with gatherings of a few dozen people in cities including New York City and San Francisco. Some Tesla owners sold their cars due to the association with Musk or placed “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy” bumper stickers on their vehicles. The demonstrations quickly escalated to more cities, though, organizing under the banner of “Tesla Takedown” protests that targeted showrooms around the country.By mid-March, a fully fledged international protest movement against Tesla and Musk had formed and brought about mass protests. Thousands of people gathered at showrooms from Sydney to San Francisco on 30 March in a day of action, with organizers stating that “hurting Tesla is stopping Musk”. Vandalism against Tesla dealerships, charging stations and cars also intensified around the world, including multiple molotov cocktail attacks and incidents of arson. Trump and Musk called the attacks domestic terrorism, while Pam Bondi, the attorney general, vowed to crack down on anyone targeting Tesla.The pressure on Tesla represented a real threat to the company, which was already dealing with an overall sluggish market for electric vehicles and increased competition from Chinese automakers. As protests spread, Musk leaned on his status in Maga world to attempt to revitalize the brand. Trump appeared on the White House driveway in front of several parked Teslas, telling reporters that he was going to buy one of them and praising Musk as a “patriot”. Others in Trump’s orbit, including Fox News host Sean Hannity, also posted sales pitches for the automaker.Despite praise from Trump and Musk’s assurances to workers and investors that they should not sell Tesla stock, analysts reported that the protests along with other economic issues were nevertheless taking a toll. A stock selloff has resulted in Tesla’s share price falling around 25% since the start of the year, wiping billions of dollars from Musk’s net worth. A first-quarter earnings call on 22 April revealed Tesla’s performance was even worse than expectations, with a 71% drop in profits and 9% drop in revenue year over year.Musk announced on the call that he would spend significantly less time working on Doge starting sometime in May.Musk eyes an exit, but Doge remainsMusk’s declaration that he would pare back his time with Doge to one or two days a week gave a more definitive sense of his exit after weeks of speculation about when and how he would leave the White House. Although Trump has remained adamant that Musk is doing a good job and remains welcome in the administration, a growing chorus of top officials have either openly feuded with him or privately griped about his presence throughout his first 100 days.Musk has had intense clashes with secretary of state Marco Rubio, transportation secretary Sean Duffy and several other top Trump staffers. He reportedly got into a near-physical shouting match with treasury secretary Scott Bessent in recent weeks, and has publicly called chief trade adviser Peter Navarro, the architect of Trump’s tariff policies, “dumber than a sack of bricks”.The power struggles between Musk and administration officials leave it unclear how much say Doge will have without Musk constantly placed at the right hand of the president, but his allies are still spread throughout the government and actively working on carrying out his mission. Doge has continued to target agencies throughout April, gutting smaller groups such as an agency that coordinates government policy on homelessness, and eyeing others including the Peace Corps for mass layoffs.Some of Doge’s cuts have directly targeted agencies that oversee Musk’s companies, including at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that regulates and investigates the risks of self-driving cars. Shifts in priorities and leadership at agencies such as Nasa and the Pentagon also put SpaceX in a position to potentially make billions off of new contracts, while former government employees say it is likely Doge already has access to confidential business data on SpaceX’s competitors.While part of the Doge team is still finding workers to fire, other members have begun accessing even more data systems and are starting to put them to work. One target has been immigration, where Doge staff have accessed personal information that includes therapy records for unaccompanied migrant children, housing information and biometric data. The goal, multiple outlets have reported, is to create a master database that could be used to enforce the Trump administration’s deportations and other anti-immigration maneuvers.Mission accomplished?As Doge’s purpose has become more amorphous over its first three months, its initially advertised goal of cutting $1-2tn from the budget has moved further from view. Musk has instead shifted the goal posts, saying that he expects to find $150bn in savings this year – a fraction of his original goal and a small dent in the overall federal budget. That number may also be an illusion, as Doge’s tally of its savings has been filled with constant errors and miscalculations. Much of Doge’s savings could also be erased by the costs of defending itself in court and losses associated with its mass layoffs.The real effects of Doge’s first 100 days are still playing out. Dismantling USAID is projected to cause around 176,000 excess deaths, more than half of them children, according to a Boston University tracking project. Cuts to agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and Federal Emergency Management Agency could imperil natural disaster forecasting and relief. Agencies such as Veterans Affairs that provide public services may deteriorate, while cuts to research and education programs may be felt for decades to come.“The amazing thing is that they haven’t actually done anything constructive whatsoever. Literally all they’ve done is destroy things,” a current federal employee said of Doge. “People are going to miss the federal government that they had.” More

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      Trump 100 days: ‘unpredictable’ US alienates allies and disrupts global trade

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      For US foreign policy, Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office were the weeks when decades happened.In just over three months, the US president has frayed alliances that stood since the second world war and alienated the US’s closest friends, cut off aid to Ukrainians on the frontlines against Vladimir Putin, emboldened US rivals around the world, brokered and then lost a crucial ceasefire in Gaza, launched strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and seesawed on key foreign policy and economic questions to the point where the US has been termed the “unpredictable ally”.The tariffs Trump has unleashed will, if effected, disrupt global trade and lead to supply chain shocks in the United States, with China’s Xi Jinping seeking to recruit US trade allies in the region.The pace of the developments in the past 100 days makes them difficult to list. Operating mainly through executive action, the Trump administration has affected nearly all facets of US foreign policy: from military might to soft power, from trade to immigration, reimagining the US’s place in the world according to an isolationist America First program.“The shake-up has been revolutionary, extraordinary. It’s upended 80-some years of American foreign policy,” said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former ambassador to Nato.The Trump presidency has ended the relative peace in the western hemisphere since the end of the second world war underwritten by US economic, military and diplomatic influence, Daalder said.“The foundation of the Pax Americana was trust, and once you break trust, it’s extraordinarily difficult to restore,” he said. “And restoring trust – trust in America, trust in American institutions, trust in American voters – it takes a long time to rebuild.”The US’s key foreign policy and national security making institutions are in crisis. The Pentagon is mid-meltdown under the leadership of Pete Hegseth, whose erratic and unsteady leadership has been reflected in score-settling among his senior staff, while a leaked Signal chat embroiled the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and others in scandal. The state department under Marco Rubio is undergoing a vast shake-up, and the US’s diplomats are being sidelined in favour of envoys such as Steve Witkoff with little background in foreign policy. Critics say the gutting of USAID will cut back on US soft power for generations.“There’s no better way to get us into a war, perhaps a catastrophic war, than essentially poking out your eyes and numbing your brain, and you’re left with Donald Trump and a few people sitting in the White House winging it, and they’re not competent to wing it,” said Steven Cash, a former intelligence officer for the CIA and Department of Homeland Security, and the executive director of the Steady State, an advocacy group of former national security professionals. “And so we’ve seen that with the tariffs. We’ve seen that with Nato. We’ve seen that with Ukraine, and we’re gonna see a lot more of it.”After assuming office in 2021, Joe Biden declared: “America is back.”“The world now knows America is not back,” Daalder said. “America is gone again.”In a recent interview with the Zeit newspaper, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, expressed similar sentiments, saying: “The west as we knew it no longer exists.”View image in fullscreenIn Munich, JD Vance delivered a landmark speech openly pandering to Europe’s far right, accusing European leaders of “running from their own voters” and saying: “America can do nothing to help you.”A backlash has begun. Last month the EU presented an €800bn ($913bn) plan on the future of European defense, a putative step in what would be a herculean task to overcome internal divisions and onshore European defense manufacturing. The UK and other US allies have considered other efforts, such as limiting intelligence-sharing with the US. “We still need America now, but there is a vision [of a time] when we won’t any more,” said one European diplomat.Meanwhile, the Trump effect is beginning to sway elections as well – though not as he might hope.In the western hemisphere, Trump has terrorised US neighbours and tacitly declared what some have compared to a new Monroe doctrine, saying the White House planned to “take back” the Panama canal and annex Greenland, while regularly calling Canada the future 51st state.In an extraordinary bit of election-day meddling, Trump wrote a social media post suggesting that he was on the ballot in Canada’s vote, repeating that Canada should become the 51st state in order to avoid tariffs and reap economic awards.Canadians responded by duly electing the liberal candidate Mark Carney, completing a 30% swing in polling that has largely been explained by opposition to Trump’s tariff war and territorial menaces.In Europe, populist parties seen as Trump’s ideological allies are also on the defensive. While Trump was popular in terms of his ideological and anti-woke agenda, the trade war has made him “quite toxic, just in the last month or two, with a lot of the populist voting bases”, said Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former special adviser to the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.Nowhere has the shift in US foreign policy been felt more acutely than in Ukraine, where the sudden cutoff in US military and intelligence sharing confirmed the Trump administration’s goals of pressuring Ukraine to accept a deal with the Kremlin, rather than the other way around. Those frustrations boiled over into an Oval Office meltdown fueled by Vice-President JD Vance that one former US official close to the talks called “disgraceful”.Trump has swung wildly on the war, on certain days targeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and then quickly pivoting to call out Putin for continuing to rain down missiles on Ukrainian cities. His theatrics have produced symbolic moments, including a sudden recognition that “maybe [Putin] doesn’t want to stop the war” after speaking with Zelenskyy this weekend in the baptistry of St Peter’s Basilica. But in terms of hard results, Trump has not fulfilled a promise to end the war within 24 hours or produced a clear path to peace many months later.View image in fullscreenThe Russians have said they largely tune out what he says in public.“We hear many things coming from President Trump,” said Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, during a television appearance this weekend. “We concentrate, as I said, on the real negotiations which President Trump supports and instructed his people to continue to engage in these negotiations.”Key among those people is Witkoff, a neophyte diplomat who has spent hours in conversation with Putin, often with no other adviser present. One person close to the Kremlin said that Witkoff was viewed as a reliable negotiator in Moscow with “a chance to make an agreement”, but added: “There is a chance it will pass by.”Much of the burden of international diplomacy now rests on Witkoff, who is also running point on other key negotiations. Trump has tasked him with reaching a deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, in effect renegotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that he scuttled in 2018. Both the US and Iran have played up the talks, although “differences still exist both on major issues and on the details”, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told state television this week.And then there is the Middle East, where the Trump administration scored its greatest early success by negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza but then failed to prevent its collapse, with Israel cutting off new aid to Gaza as the fighting continues.“There now seems to be less focus on ending the devastating conflict,” wrote Stefanie Hausheer Ali, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs. “Trump’s threat in February to Hamas to release the hostages or ‘all hell is going to break out’ has, in practice, meant Israel restarting the war and blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. Without an alternative to Hamas rule, the militant group may hang on and continue to fight as an insurgency, replenishing its ranks by recruiting desperate people.”Trump’s most extreme remarks have turned out to be bluster: he stunned the world when he claimed that he would turn the Gaza Strip into beachfront condos and said that the local Palestinian population would be forcibly removed. Months later, the initiative is largely forgotten.While attempting to close three landmark negotiations at once, the Trump administration has also launched a trade war with the entire world, establishing sweeping tariffs on all foreign imports before abruptly reversing course and cutting tariffs to 10% save for those against China.With so many major efforts ongoing, observers say that the government is largely paralysed to deal with smaller but still crucial issues in foreign policy and national security. As part of a blanket ban on refugees, tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted US troops against the Taliban are left waiting for relocation to the United States, a promise that was extended by previous administrations.“The lack of clarity and the chaos are the things that are causing so much pain,” said Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a group that works with the state department to help resettle Afghans.He said he was critical of both the Biden and Trump administrations for failing to relocate the tens of thousands of Afghans who were far enough along in the vetting program to be relocated before Trump came into office.“The truth is, is that when America makes a promise, you should be able to trust our word,” he said. “If our flag waving over an embassy in Tunisia or Baghdad or Kabul, or Kyiv doesn’t mean this is the place where there’s truth, where there’s justice … well, then what are we even doing here?” More

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      US philanthropists warn against capitulating to Trump: ‘We need to step up’

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      John Palfrey will not be obeying in advance.At a moment when leaders of tech companies, law firms, media corporations and academic institutions have bent the knee to Donald Trump, the president of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation insists that charitable organisations choose resistance over capitulation.“We have an opportunity to unite and advance,” Palfrey said last week. “There’s a chance here for us to stand together on a series of very important bedrock principles, and do so with linked arms, and do so in such a way that allows us to serve every community in America in a way that will ensure a strong republic for years to come.”Trump’s return to power has been described as an authoritarian power grab, rewarding compliance and punishing dissent. The Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, ABC News and Columbia University ceded ground or surrendered. Several major law firms offered almost $1bn in pro bono work to curry favour.But this week Harvard, the oldest and wealthiest university in America, pushed back after the Trump administration cut $2bn of its federal grants, earning praise from the former president Barack Obama. Sixty current and former university presidents co-signed an editorial in Fortune offering support.Philanthropic organisations could be next in the firing line. The MacArthur Foundation, founded in 1978, funds work in fields including social justice, climate change, criminal justice reform, journalism and media, community development and international peace and security. It has assets of about $7bn and is known for bestowing annual “genius” grants on artists, actors and other creative people.Palfrey recently authored a joint article with Tonya Allen of the McKnight Foundation and Deepak Bhargava of the Freedom Together Foundation warning that charitable organisations could be the next institutions under attack, and announcing a public solidarity campaign to support philanthropy’s freedom to give. More than 300 organisations have already signed on.The trio wrote: “We’ve seen this before in American history and across the globe. Weaponized oversight. Intimidation dressed up as transparency. It is not new. But our response must be: we in the philanthropic community must not wait like sitting ducks.”Speaking via Zoom from the MacArthur Foundation’s headquarters in Chicago, Palfrey, 52, explained that he felt it important to clearly state the need to preserve freedom of speech, freedom to give and freedom to invest – core to the work of a philanthropic foundation.“It’s important to draw some bright lines at this point and say these are lines that need not to be crossed,” he said. “For me, the first amendment is a very good guide to that. I like to think about American history and 1776. That’s a point in our history when we decided as a country that we didn’t want kings and we decided to fight a revolution on that.“We decided we wanted the rule of law, not the rule of one man, and we decided, as we set up our constitution, that the first thing we would enshrine is the right of free expression. All of those are bedrock principles of what it means to be in the American republic, and I think it’s important for us to state those things clearly and plainly at this moment.”After three months back in office, Trump has invited comparisons with the “electoral autocracy” that is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. With bewildering speed, he has cowed Congress, attacked judges and defied their orders, deported immigrants without due process, sought to intimidate the free press and attempted to impose his will on universities and cultural institutions such as the Kennedy Center.Palfrey, a student of history, warned: “If where we are headed is on the model of Hungary, we are going to see a repression of civil society that will not be good for communities across America. I don’t think we should go in that direction as a country.“We have the opportunity to adjust our course. I hope very much that our leaders will decide not to repress civil society in a way that constrains freedom of speech, and this is a good time to say that’s not the direction that makes sense for America.”Does he worry that the US is sliding into authoritarianism? “I’d rather not find out.”The country still has a powerful story to tell, he insists. “I very much hope that those of us who have the right to speak freely, as we do in America, will do so. It’s one of those things: you have to use it or lose it. Communicating who we are as a people and continue to be as a people is very important as a message to ourselves and to the rest of the world.”The MacArthur Foundation has supported organisations that work in 117 countries and has offices in India and Nigeria. Meanwhile, Trump’s ally Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has denied food and medicine to the world’s poorest people by gutting the development agency USAID.Palfrey said: “We’re a funder that is predominantly giving money in the United States, but we do have work outside the US. There are, of course, questions about [if] the rest of the world [can] count on the United States as a charitable partner – and that question is up in the air at the moment.”In the meantime, Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” have slashed and burned through federal departments, firing thousands of workers with little rhyme or reason. The pain is being felt in international development, scientific research and struggling communities. It has made charitable foundations’ work all the more urgent.Palfrey describes such work as fundamentally non-partisan, helping people in every district in the country. He said: “There is so much need in communities right now. Some of it does of course have to do with cuts to federal funding.“Let’s imagine for a second that you’re a cancer researcher and you’re saving the lives of small children who are getting cancer and your funding has just been cut. If you are an organisation that funds cancer research, your money is needed more than ever, so we need to step up.”The MacArthur Foundation will increase its giving by more than 20% for 2025 and 2026. “I don’t believe that private philanthropy can make up for all of the cuts that are under way in the United States and around the world, for that matter, but I do feel like we can and should do more, and this is what we’re called upon to do in this moment.”Palfrey’s joint article warns that philanthropy is often slow by design, but time is a luxury it cannot afford. He urges organisations to speak in plain language, not the “philanthropy speak” for which they are notorious, and hold the line. He hopes that other sectors will join in demonstrating that courage is contagious.“I’d love to see the business community say: this is what’s super-important to us, and this is how we’re going to come together around it. I’d love to see universities and colleges do the same and say: this is the essential bedrock that we need to be able to maintain. That is available to every group in America and very much in the spirit of our country. [It] is how we come together around shared ideals.” More

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      Trump is creating a selfish, miserable world. Here’s what we can do | Michael Plant

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      In case you hadn’t noticed, things have not been going well for the west.In just three months, Donald Trump has started trade wars, crippled Nato, dismantled USAID and humiliated an invaded democracy while praising its aggressor, among other things. We still have 45 months to go. Through his antics, the US president is normalizing, even encouraging, intense selfishness and disregard for others. The clearest example is USAID: if the richest, most powerful country in the world thinks it’s a waste to give a tiny fraction of its income to the poorest, worst off people in the world, you must be a real sucker if you care for others.This comes on top of a longer trend of declining western happiness and disconnection. In 2012, the United States ranked 11th in the World Happiness Report. This year, it was 24th. In 2023, one in four Americans reported eating all their meals alone. That figure has risen 53% in just two decades.These short- and long-term trends are no coincidence. New research shows that unhappy people vote for populists, those who promise to rip the system apart. Importantly, it also finds that trust explains which type of populists unhappy people support: low-trust people vote for far-right parties, whereas high-trust people go far left. Therefore, we should see Trumpism as both a symptom of a lower-trust, lower-happiness society and a cause of further misery and mistrust.But what should you do if you don’t like the way the world is going? Is there anything you can do?The obvious answer is to rage, doomscroll and hope for the next election. But the obvious answer is no longer an option once we realize the antidote to Trump is to build a happier, higher trust society. Drawing on my dual experience as a moral philosopher and happiness researcher, I’d like to suggest some alternative ways you can fight back.Trumpism is built on pettiness and self-interest, so resisting means embodying the opposite virtues. To paraphrase a much better president: do not ask what the world can do for your happiness – ask what you can do for the happiness of the world. You commit yourself to making the biggest difference you can – even when others do not.It starts internally. Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher born a Roman slave, wrote: “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.” That idea, now a pillar of modern psychotherapy, is especially relevant in moments like this. Trump and co want to make you feel helpless and furious. Keeping your composure and finding joy are acts of resistance.It continues locally. Make an effort to build social connections where you live. Research shows when we share meals with others, volunteer or strike up friendly conversations with strangers, we’re not just making ourselves and others happier. We’re rebuilding the social fabric that authoritarian politics tears apart and reducing the distrust that fuels politicians like Trump. Higher trust and happiness make us less susceptible to the politics of fear and resentment; the data backs this up.Some good news is that our perceptions of mistrust are misplaced. There have been global studies in which researchers drop wallets to see what percentage is returned. A 40-country study found actual wallet return rates are about twice as high as people expected. In the US, two-thirds were returned – against the view that one-third would be. Simply recognizing we can trust others more than we thought is a helpful step forward. You could join a local Action for Happiness group. Recent research even shows prosocial activity is reliably linked to fewer “deaths of despair”. Your kindness could save lives.At the national level, we need to see politicians taking social connection – not just the economy – more seriously. If it seems fluffy or unimportant, look at where ignoring them has got us: he’s in the Oval Office. Academics are starting to assess policies by their “bang for buck” at improving wellbeing: economists at the London School of Economics published a first, milestone review in 2024. Policy nerds should take notice.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt ends globally. My colleagues and I at the Happier Lives Institute recently published the first global analysis of how much happiness different charities produce per dollar. We found a striking result. The most effective charities – often tackling issues such as depression or malnutrition in low-income countries – have about 150 times the impact of the average rich-country charity. If someone gave $150,000 to charity, you would consider them a hero. It turns out you can do as much good by giving $1,000 – if you follow the evidence and pick wisely. Giving 1% of your income to these organizations is a quiet act of moral clarity in a noisy, self-interested world.Fighting back doesn’t have to mean shouting louder. Another option is gracious, determined decency. Choose kindness over cruelty, generosity over selfishness, and evidence over bluster. Today, these quiet choices are acts of radical courage – ones that help build a better tomorrow. They might even make you happier, too.What’s giving me hopeTrumpism is the symptom of a less happy, less trusting society. But we are far from powerless to change this. There are several ways we can each make a difference – starting with our own minds and local communities and finishing with helping others around the world. What gives me hope is realizing we have the potential to understand what’s going wrong in our society and do our part to improve it.

      Michael Plant is the founder and research director of the Happier Lives Institute. He is a global happiness researcher and post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, which publishes the annual World Happiness Report More

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      ‘Shock to the system’: farmers hit by Trump’s tariffs and cuts say they need another bailout

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      Farmers across the United States say they could face financial ruin – unless there is a huge taxpayer-funded bailout to compensate for losses generated by Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts and chaotic tariffs.Small- and medium-sized farms were already struggling amid worsening climate shocks and volatile commodities markets, on top of being squeezed by large corporations that dominate the supply chain.In recent weeks, farmers in Texas and across the midwest have suffered millions of dollars of crop losses due to unprecedented heavy rainfall and flooding.The climate crisis-fueled extreme weather is compounded by the US president’s looming trade war and the administration targeting popular federal programs and staff, leaving farmers reeling and resigned to needing another bailout.“There’s a lot of uncertainty around and I hate to be used as a bargaining chip. I am definitely worried,” said Travis Johnson, who lost more than 1,000 acres of cotton, sorghum and corn after a year’s rain fell within 48 hours in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in southern Texas last month, turning parched fields into lakes.RGV farmers sell sorghum, wheat, corn and vegetables to Mexico among other crops, while buying fertilizer and equipment – and relying on Mexican farmhands for cheap labor. Mexico is the US’s largest trading partner, while China is the main buyer of American sorghum and cotton. All US products destined for China face a 125% tax thanks to Trump’s tariff war, and could cut farmers off from core markets.View image in fullscreen“I can see how some tariffs might help us compete with Mexico but are we really getting targeted by every other country or are we on the wrong side of this? We’ve already had two years of absolute disaster with falling prices and weather patterns … no farmer wants this but without a bailout this could be devastating and a lot more people could go under,” Johnson said.Rural counties rallied behind Trump in 2024, giving him a majority in all but 11 of the 444 farming-dependent counties last year, averaging 78% support, according to analysis by Investigate Midwest.Trump’s vote share rose among farming communities, despite his last trade war which required a $23bn taxpayer bailout for farmers in 2018-19.Yet anxiety is mounting among the agricultural base.First came widespread cuts to oversubscribed and chronically underfunded federal climate and conservation schemes designed to reduce costs and greenhouse gases, and improve yields and environmental health.Trump is also shuttering local food programs which provide farmers with stable domestic markets like public school districts and food banks, helping make farms more resilient to global economic shocks. The USAID, which purchased about $2bn every year in agricultural products particularly wheat, sorghum and lentils for humanitarian aid programs, has been dismantled.The loss in federal programs alone would have been tough to cope with, but then came the trade chaos. Trump’s tariff announcements began when most farmers already had spring crops in the ground – or at the very least had prepared the land and purchased inputs such as seeds and pesticides, making it impossible to switch to crops that could potentially find a market domestically.View image in fullscreenConsensus is growing among experts that the turmoil represents an opportunity for rival agriculture economies – and disaster for US farmers.“It’s all happening so fast and in the middle of the growing season, it’s a shock to the system that’s going to be tough for farmers, especially those growing commodities for export,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). “Tariffs are not magical, they need to be used strategically as part of wider reforms to the domestic economic agenda.”“The volatility of the tariff policy decisions, with new tariffs frequently being announced, paused and placed will take a toll on the American agricultural industry,” writes economist Betty Resnick in an article for Farm Bureau, a right-leaning lobby group. “Without direct support from USDA or a farm bill with an updated safety net, farmers will almost certainly bear the brunt of these tariffs.”Ben Murray, senior researcher with the consumer advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said: “Without a bailout, we can only imagine how bad this will be for farmers and what an opportunity for Brazil – and this is all being done for a tax cut for the wealthy.”For decades now, US farmers have been heavily incentivized through the Farm Bill to grow commodity crops destined for export such as wheat, corn, soy, sorghum, rice and cotton, rather than produce for domestic consumption. The price of commodities is tied to the global market, even if sold domestically. Meanwhile US imports of fruits and vegetables mostly from Latin America have risen, now accounting for more than 50% of consumption, according to USDA data.This globalized agricultural system favors large and corporate-owned operations, as smaller farms struggle more with boom and bust prices, and access to government subsidies and other credit. The number of farms continues to decline, while the average size continues to rise. Market consolidation and corporate profits tend to surge in the agriculture industry after every economic shock including the Covid pandemic, Trump’s last trade war and the banking crisis.Biden implemented a range of modest, imperfect policies to try to ease the pain for smaller-scale farmers including a greater focus on anti-trust, local and regional food systems, and climate resilience – all of which are under attack by the Trump administration.The vast majority of a $19.5bn funding package by the Biden administration for evidence-based conservation practices that improve soil health, air quality and reduce the use of costly fertilizers, pesticides and water will not be honored. The 10-year fund allocated through the Inflation Reduction Act was an addendum to money ring-fenced in the Farm Bill for four oversubscribed programs, after years of pressure from farmers to expand access to the initiatives.Two Biden-era healthy eating schemes worth a combined $1bn to local farmers have been canceled: the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program matching producers to food banks, and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program which helped public schools add healthy, locally grown produce on to lunch menus. (The USDA recently agreed to unfreeze funding for existing contracts.)View image in fullscreen“My farm will survive because we’ve been working with school districts for 20 years, but for others in our coalition the funding cliff is very real,” said Anna Knight, who owns an 80-acre citrus farm in southern California.Piling on further misery are mass layoffs within the USDA that were seemingly orchestrated by the billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk.More than 10% of USDA staff have already reportedly agreed to voluntary buyouts, with more expected in coming weeks. This is in addition to several thousand probationary employees who were laid off last month – a move which disproportionately hit local offices beefed up under the Biden administration, and is being challenged in the courts.USDA field offices play a crucial role in rural communities, the place where farmers go for tailor-made technical help from agencies including the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Farm Service Agency (FSA) on the latest pest control and planting practices, conservation programs, loans and disaster assistance programs.“It makes no sense taking billions of dollars off the table for programs that improve long-term farm viability and resilience – and which farmers have been lining up for years for – and then spend billions bringing back farmers from financial collapse,” said Jesse Womack, policy expert at the National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition. “It’s looking really bleak with a lot of pain ahead for farmers.”A coalition of environmental and agricultural groups is suing the USDA after it purged an array of climate-related online resources including information on the NRCS website helping farmers access federal grants for conservation practices, and technical guidance on cutting emissions and strengthening resilience to extreme weather like floods and drought.Even if there is a bailout, getting the money to farmers in time to avoid bankruptcy will be much more complicated this time, according to Lilliston from IATP.“Another bailout seems inevitable but there are serious questions about how quickly it could be implemented with such a dysfunctional Congress, local USDA offices shuttered and fewer staff. It’s a very messy situation and farmers are already experiencing harm.”And in the medium and long term: “The US reputation has taken a huge hit. We can no longer be considered a reliable trading partner which is terrible for farmers,” added Lilliston.Even before the current mayhem, almost two-thirds of US rural bankers surveyed in March expected farmer income to decline in 2025, with farm equipment sales dropping for the 19th straight month, according to the latest Rural Mainstreet Economy survey by Creighton University. Grain and cotton prices have plummeted since 2022.View image in fullscreen“We were already in a precarious situation but now, unless there’s a bailout or this trade war is resolved by harvest time, it will be disastrous and a critical mass of farmers could go out of business,” said Adam Chappell, 46, a commodities farmer growing corn, cotton, soybean and rice in Arkansas, where dozens of local USDA staff have reportedly been furloughed or fired in recent weeks.Chappell’s town Cotton Plant was hit with 13in of rain in early April, causing crop losses for many farmers. Chappell’s fields survived the rain but he spent a nervous few weeks after the USDA froze all conservation funds, unsure whether the government would reimburse him, as agreed, for an upfront investment in cover crops and a compost operation. Eventually, after a backlash, the administration backtracked and agreed to honor existing contracts.“The weather is getting stranger and more challenging to deal with every year, while big monopoly corporations are allowed to manipulate the system and squeeze us at every part of the supply chain. Farmers like me lean heavily on the NRCS conservation programs to improve soil health and reduce input costs,” said Chappell. “The tariffs are like adding salt on the wound.”Despite last week’s partial U-turn, Trump’s ongoing and increasingly chaotic trade war risks causing irreparable harm to international markets for farmers, especially but not exclusively China, as well as pushing up the cost of agricultural imports such as pesticides, fertilizer and machinery.China is the US’s third biggest agricultural export market, worth $24.7bn in 2024, down 15% from 2023, as soybean, corn and sorghum sales fell amid rising competition from South America, according to USDA data. China’s top imports from the US are oilseeds and grains. US exports to China supported almost a million US jobs in 2022, according to the US-China Business Council, mostly around agriculture and livestock production.As of Friday, at least 15 agricultural department programs worth billions of dollars to American farmers and rural communities remain frozen, according to Politico, more than two months after they were halted for review to ensure compliance with Trump’s priorities opposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts as well as his crackdown on climate change initiatives.This includes the Biden-era partnerships for climate-smart commodities (PCSC) program – a five-year $3.2bn real-life study into the effectiveness of conservation practices such as cover cropping and reduced tillage for commodity farms.“PSCS was about increasing our evidence base on climate benefits that also help commodity farmers improve soil health, air and water quality – and their bottom line,” said Omanjana Goswami, a scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Abandoning this will come at a cost to American farms and the taxpayer.”On Monday, the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, defended dismantling PSCS, claiming it amounted to a Biden-era “climate slush fund” of which less than half the money went to farmers.A spokesperson added: “The USDA has a variety of programs available to producers who have been impacted by recent disasters … [and] is currently building a framework to deliver over $20bn in congressionally appropriated funds to producers who suffered losses during the 2023/2024 crop year. With 16 robust nutrition programs in place, USDA remains focused on its core mission: strengthening food security, supporting agricultural markets, and ensuring access to nutritious food.”And some Trump supporters are keeping the faith.“There are some concerns out there but our farmers are willing to make sacrifices for long-term gains,” said Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner. “Tariffs are a temporary tool, they won’t be permanent, China needs our grains, they are prideful but will come around like last time.” More

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      Musk and Doge’s USAid shutdown likely violated US constitution, judge rules

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      A 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.The decision by US district judge Theodore Chuang was sweeping in its scope and marked a major setback for the administration’s signature takedown in its effort to bulldoze through the federal government.As part of an injunction that directed the Trump administration to reverse course, the judge halted efforts to terminate USAid officials and contractors, and reinstate former employees’ access to their government email, security and payment systems.The judge also compelled the administration to allow USAid to return to its currently shuttered headquarters at the Ronald Regan building in the event that the underlying case challenging the closure of the agency was successful. The administration is expected to appeal the ruling.At issue in the lawsuit, brought by more than two dozen unnamed former USAid employees in federal district court in Maryland, was Musk’s role in overseeing the deletion of the USAid website and the shut down of its headquarters.Chuang wrote in his 68-page opinion that Musk had likely violated the appointments clause of the constitution by effectively acting with the far-reaching powers of an “officer of the United States”, a designation that requires Senate confirmation.“If a president could escape appointments clause scrutiny by having advisers go beyond the traditional role of White House advisors who communicate the president’s priority to agency heads,” Chuang wrote, “the appointments clause would be reduced to nothing more than a technical formality.”The Trump administration has said for weeks that the moves to dismantle USAid were carried out by the agency’s leaders – currently secretary of state Marco Rubio and acting administrator Pete Marocco – who were implementing recommendations from Musk.But Chuang rejected that contention with respect to the closure of USAid headquarters and the erasure of its website, saying that the administration provided no evidence that they were formally authorized by a USAid official.“Under these circumstances, the evidence presently favors the conclusion that contrary to defendants’ sweeping claim that Musk acted only as an advisor, Musk made the decisions to shutdown USAID’s headquarters and website even though he ‘lacked the authority to make that decision,’” Chuang wrote.The injunction follows six weeks of unprecedented turmoil at USAid, where 5,200 of 6,200 global programs were abruptly terminated, staff were locked out of facilities and systems, and employees reportedly received directives to destroy classified documents using shredders and “burn bags”.The agency’s workforce has been decimated from over 10,000 to just 611 employees, with Rubio characterizing the remaining programs as “set for absorption” by the state department – what he recently praised as “overdue and historic reform”.USAid’s headquarters became central to the controversy when multiple staffers told the Guardian in February that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials had been conducting extensive “walkthrough” tours to potentially take over the facility while agency employees remained barred entry.Politico later reported that CBP had officially taken over the office space and signed a lease agreement, according to a CBP spokesperson. The court order’s 14-day deadline for the administration to confirm USAid could return to its building suggested the space may have already been reallocated.The injunction also prohibits Doge from publishing unredacted personal information of USAid contractors and halts further dismantling actions, including terminations, contract cancellations, and permanent deletion of electronic records.That may already be a serious exposure problem for Musk and the rest of Doge, as an internal email obtained by the Guardian revealed how staff had been instructed to spend the day destroying classified “SECRET” documents – potentially breaking compliance with the Federal Records Act, which prohibits destroying government records before their designated retention period, which is typically two years. More

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      ‘It’s back to drug rationing’: the end of HIV was in sight. Then came the cuts

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      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.View image in fullscreenThere is a risk, says Lewin, director of Melbourne University’s Institute for Infection and Immunity and past president of the International Aids Society, of “dramatic increases in infections, dramatic increases in death and a real loss of decades of advances”.There is no official public list of which contracts have been cancelled, and which remain. It appears that virtually no HIV-prevention programmes funded by the US are still in operation, save a handful principally providing drugs to stop pregnant women passing on the infection to their babies. Countries report disruption to the most basic measures, such as condom distribution.Some treatment programmes have been spared, but not those whose focus conflicted with the Trump administration’s war on “gender ideology” or diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), such as those working with transgender communities. Doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers have been laid off, while worried patients are hoarding drugs or stretching supplies, according to UNAids surveillance. UNAids itself has lost more than half of its funding.Even programmes that have survived the cull have faced turmoil since February, with instructions to stop work rescinded but with no certainty that funding will continue.View image in fullscreenIn only one example, the Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric Aids Foundation says it has had to halt HIV treatment for 85,000 people in Eswatini, including more than 2,000 children, and tests for thousands of pregnant women and babies to prevent transmission and begin life-saving medication.Access to drugs represents an “immediate crisis”, Lewin says. “If people with HIV stop the medications, then not only do they get sick themselves, which is tragic, but they also then become infectious to others.”As clinics on the frontline of treating the disease scrabble to secure access to basic drugs, scientists at this month’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco were hearing that HIV might soon be preventable with a once-a-year injection.The drug lenacapavir was already generating huge excitement in the field, after trial results showed that a six-monthly jab could prevent HIV. New results from the manufacturer Gilead suggest that a tweak to the formula and how it is given could see its protective effects last even longer.Nevertheless, Lewin says, the mood at the meeting, packed with many of the world’s leading HIV specialists, was “dire”.As well as programme cancellations, there are “huge concerns around science and what’s going to happen to the [US] National Institutes of Health, [whose] funding of science has been so significant on every level”, she says.Some scientists in receipt of US funding have been told to remove their names from DEI-linked research, she says, even though DEI is fundamental to the HIV response.View image in fullscreen“I don’t mean that in a sort of touchy-feely way, I mean that’s what we need to do: you need to actually get those treatments to these diverse communities.”In 2022, 55% of all new HIV infections were within “key populations”, such as gay men, other men who have sex with men, sex workers, transgender people, prisoners and people who inject drugs.Prof Linda-Gail Bekker, of South Africa’s Desmond Tutu Health Foundation, has seen US funding for three trials of potential HIV vaccines involving eight countries cancelled and only reinstated after an appeal to the US supreme court.“We’re running around like chickens without heads to at least get one going, because the vaccines are sitting in the fridge and will expire,” she says.She led the lenacapavir trial that showed it offered 100% protection to young women in sub-Saharan Africa, but now worries about HIV/Aids prevention “falling off the radar completely”.The global community had been making headway towards the United Nations’ goal of ending Aids by 2030, she says, with a five-year plan to use “amazing new innovative tools and scale them up”, which would have led to “less dependence on foreign aid and more self-reliance” as new infections fell and attention shifted to maintaining treatment for people with HIV.“All of that is hugely at risk now because, without these funds, our governments will have to step up but they will concentrate on treatment,” she says. “We know they will do that, because that is what we did for the first 30 years.”Efforts to control Aids were entering “the last mile”, which was always likely to be more expensive, she says. “The people who were happy to come into health facilities, they would have come into health facilities.”It would be difficult to rely on government funding to reach the remaining groups, she says, not only because of fewer resources but also because in some countries it means targeting groups whose existence is illegal and unrecognised, such as sex workers or sexual minorities, and young girls may be reluctant to use government clinics if they are not supposed to be sexually active.“I feel like the odds are very stacked against us,” says Bekker, adding: “We’re obviously going to have to re-programme ourselves [and] formulate a different plan.”Pepfar had pledged funding to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, to deploy 10m doses of lenacapavir in low-income countries. While the Global Fund has promised to maintain its commitment, it might receive fewer than the planned number of doses, Bekker fears.“Six months ago, I was saying the best thing we can do with lenacapavir is offer it to everybody in a choice environment. [Now] I think we’re gonna have to say who needs [injectable] prep,” she says, “and the rest have to do the best they can.“How do we make that decision? And what does that look like? It is back to sort of rationing.“When we started ARVs [antiretroviral drugs] way back in 2000,” Bekker recalls, “you would go, ‘you get treatment; you don’t, you don’t, you don’t’.“It feels terrible … but you have to get over that. You have to say it will be infection-saving for some people. And we’ve got to make it count.”View image in fullscreenFor Beatriz Grinsztejn, president of the International Aids Society, the disruption is critical and threatens many vulnerable people. But, she adds, it could present “an important opportunity for ownership – otherwise we are always left in the hands of others”.She worries about the impact of cuts to funding on younger scientists, with their potential loss from the research field “a major threat for the next generation”. But, she adds, the HIV community is “powerful and very resilient”.There have already been calls for new ways of doing things. It is “time for African leadership”, members of the African-led HIV Control Working Group write in the Lancet Global Health. There are now plans for Nigeria to produce HIV drugs and tests domestically.Christine Stegling, deputy director of UNAids, says it began “a concerted effort” last year to develop plans with countries about how their HIV programmes could become more sustainable domestically “but with a longer timeframe … now we are trying to do some kind of fast-tracking”.Governments are determined, she says, but it will require fiscal changes either in taxation or by restructuring debt.The goal of ending Aids by 2030 is still achievable, Stegling believes. “I think we have a very short window of opportunity now, in the next two, three months, to continue telling people that we can do it.“I keep on reminding people, ‘look, we need to get back to that same energy that we had when people were telling us treatment can’t be available in the global south, right?’ And we didn’t accept it. We made it happen.“We have national governments now who are also very adamant, because they can see what can happen, and they want to make it happen for their own populations.” More

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      ACLU warns pro-Palestinian activist’s arrest meant ‘to intimidate and chill speech’ – live

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      The Trump administration’s decision to have immigration authorities arrest pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil for alleged support of Hamas is an attack on free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union warned.“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.“The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes. To be clear: the first amendment protects everyone in the US. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate. The government must immediately return Mr Khalil to New York, release him back to his family and reverse course on this discriminatory policy.”House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries rejected Republicans’ go-it-alone strategy to avert a government shutdown, saying Democrats would not back their plan to fund federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year.“It is not something we could ever support,” Jeffries told reporters on Capitol Hill. “House Democrats will not be complicit in the Republican effort to hurt the American people.”“The House Republican so-called spending bill does nothing to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Quite the opposite,” he said, adding that the bill would “quite dramatically” cut health benefits and nutritional assistance programs for children and American families.Jeffries did not take questions and it remains unclear whether any House Democrats will support the GOP spending bill, which could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday. House Republicans hold a wafer-thin majority and can only afford to lose a handful of votes in order to pass the measure.Congress must act by midnight on Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown.Los Angeles district attorney Nathan Hochman says that he opposes the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted for the 1989 killing of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. In a press release on Monday, Hochman’s office said that after reviewing thousands of pages of records and transcripts and hundreds of hours of video, he found that the brothers lied during their testimony and tried to get others to lie on their behalf.
      As a full examination of the record reveals, the Menendez brothers have never come clean and admitted that they lied about their self-defense…“The Court must consider such lack of full insight and lack of acceptance of responsibility for their murderous actions in deciding whether the Menendez brothers pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the community,” Hochman said in a statement.
      The brothers were sentenced for the killings in 1996 and sentenced to life sentences without the possibility of parole.Read the rest of Hochman’s rationale here.Protests are underway in New York following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last year. Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card who is a recent Columbia graduate, was arrested over the weekend by immigration authorities.Today’s final numbers from Wall Street are out and the three main indices have continued to drop. The S&P 500 fell 2.7%, the Dow Jones dropped 2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 4% as investors sold shares in the so-called “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla. Tesla’s shares had their worst day since September 2020, falling 15%.The fall came a day after Trump skirted around questions about a potential recession on Sunday. Asked if he expected a recession, Trump said: “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big … It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.”Kevin Hassett, the head of the national economic council, told CNBC on Monday that any uncertainty around Trump’s trade policies would be resolved by early April and that the policies were “creating jobs in the US”.We’re about 10 minutes away from the market’s close and things are not looking good on Wall Street.Traders have been rattled for days by fears that Donald Trump’s tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico, and vow to impose “reciprocal” levies against countries worldwide next month, will send the US economy into recession.The terror has been particularly bad today, leading to steep sell offs in the three main indices. The broad-based S&P 500 is currently down 2.5%, while the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 1.9%. Over at the tech-heavy Nasdaq, the bleeding has resulted in a 4% loss.Needless to say, this is not what a president who touts the stock market as a barometer of their economic success would like to see.National intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard has announced that she has revoked the security clearances of several former members of Joe Biden’s administration, as well as critics of Donald Trump.“Per @POTUS directive, I have revoked security clearances and barred access to classified information for Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Mark Zaid, Norman Eisen, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, and Andrew Weissman, along with the 51 signers of the Hunter Biden ‘disinformation’ letter. The President’s Daily Brief is no longer being provided to former President Biden,” Gabbard wrote on X.The decision to revoke the security clearance of Blinken, the former secretary of state, appears to have been announced last month. Trump earlier withdrew the clearances of Biden and former joint chiefs of staff chairman Mark Milley.Beyond the Biden administration, Gabbard targeted James, who has pursued a civil fraud suit against the Trump Organization, and Manhattan district attorney Bragg, who successfully prosecuted the president on felony business fraud charges.A former top social security administration official accused Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” of lying about alleged fraud discovered in the agency, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:A former chief of staff at the US Social Security Administration (SSA) described how agents of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting operation – were imposed on the agency, assailing senior staff with questions “based on the general myth of supposed widespread fraud” and acting with dangerous disregard for data confidentiality.In a declaration filed with a lawsuit on Friday and referring to the Doge agents Mike Russo and Akash Bobba, Tiffany Flick said: “We proposed briefings to help Mr Russo and Mr Bobba understand the many measures the agency takes to help ensure the accuracy of benefit payments, including those measures that help ensure we are not paying benefits to deceased individuals.“However, Mr Russo seemed completely focused on questions … based on the general myth of supposed widespread social security fraud, rather than facts.”Flick also said she was “not confident” Doge agents had “the requisite knowledge and training to prevent sensitive information from being inadvertently transferred to bad actors”, given its agents have “never been vetted by SSA or trained on SSA data, systems or programs”.“In such a chaotic environment, the risk of data leaking into the wrong hands is significant,” Flick said.The Trump administration’s decision to have immigration authorities arrest pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil for alleged support of Hamas is an attack on free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union warned.“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.“The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes. To be clear: the first amendment protects everyone in the US. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate. The government must immediately return Mr Khalil to New York, release him back to his family and reverse course on this discriminatory policy.”Activists were arrested while disrupting the CERAWeek fossil fuel conference on Monday, chanting “people over profit”.The protesters blocked the street outside the conference hotel in Houston, where energy secretary Chris Wright and top brass from energy companies including Shell and Exxon spoke on Monday.Among those arrested was local organizer Yvette Arellano of Texas environmental justice group Fenceline Watch.“Human rights, not sacrifice,” she chanted as the police escorted her away.As the CERAWeek oil and gas conference convened fossil fuel bigwigs in Houston on Monday, hundreds of activists staged a protest down the street.“We need clean air, not another billionaire,” they chanted.Among the featured speakers at the rally was Yvette Arellano, founder and director of Fenceline Watch, a Houston-based environmental justice organization. Last year, she was barred from attending CERAWeek despite raising $8,500 for a ticket.“Unfettered” fossil fuel expansion, she said, is taking a toll on the climate while polluting vulnerable communities in Texas and beyond.“It’s our communities that are being harmed,” she said.Other activists hail from communities as far flung as Appalachia and the Standing Rock Indigenous reservation in North Dakota.A story to watch this week is Congress’s scramble to pass spending legislation and avert a shutdown that will begin Friday at midnight. These things often come down to the wire, but the Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon reports that Donald Trump is on board with the House GOP’s proposal to keep the government open. Whether enough of their lawmakers are remains to be seen:Republican lawmakers are scrambling to avert a government shutdown set to begin on Saturday, with Donald Trump’s backing for a temporary funding measure having suddenly silenced the usual conservative opposition.The stopgap funding bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), would maintain government operations at current funding levels through 30 September, the end of the fiscal year. Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson said he plans to hold a procedural vote on Monday, aiming for a passage vote on Tuesday before sending lawmakers home for recess.Trump instructed reluctant fellow Republicans to fall in line behind the stopgap bill that would fund the government through September. “All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week,” the president wrote on Saturday on his Truth Social platform.Maryam Alwan, a Palestinian American senior at Columbia who has protested alongside Mahmoud Khalil, told Reuters she was “horrified for my dear friend Mahmoud, who is a legal resident, and I am horrified that this is only the beginning”.Columbia issued a revised protocol for how students and school staff should deal with federal immigration agents seeking to enter private school property, Reuters reports, saying they could enter without a judicial arrest warrant in “exigent circumstances”, which it did not specify.“By allowing ICE on campus, Columbia is surrendering to the Trump administration’s assault on universities across the country and sacrificing international students to protect its finances,” the Student Workers of Columbia said in a statement.The move to arrest and detain Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil comes after the Trump administration announced last week that it would revoke about $400m in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University.The Trump administration alleges that the university has not done enough to stop antisemitism on campus.“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” education secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement on Friday.Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined protests against the war in Gaza that swept college campuses last spring, the Associated Press reported Sunday.The Trump administration has claimed participants forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting Hamas.Before Trump addressed Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest, free speech organizations and advocates are expressing outrage over his detention over the weekend.Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card, was taken into custody by federal immigration authorities on Saturday night, who reportedly said that they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card.Read the full story:In a post on Truth Social, president Donald Trump confirmed the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist and permanent US resident with a green card.“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump said.The president said Ice took Khalil, who led protests at Columbia University during his time as a student there, into custody after his executive order and claimed, without evidence, that similar activists on college campuses are paid agitators, not students.Here’s the text of Trump’s full post:
      Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply. Thank you!
      Ontario premier Doug Ford announced a 25% tax on exports of electricity to New York, Minnesota and Michigan in retaliation for the tariffs Donald Trump imposed on Canada last week, the Associated Press reports.Trump has since exempted many Canadian products from the 25% levies, but Ford refused to back down and warned he may increase the surcharge or even cut off electricity exports entirely if the United States escalates its tariffs.Here’s more, from the AP:
      “I will not hesitate to increase this charge. If the United State escalates, I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference in Toronto.
      “Believe me when I say I do not want to do this. I feel terrible for the American people who didn’t start this trade war. It’s one person who is responsible, it’s President Trump.”
      Ford said Ontario’s tariff would remain in place despite the one-month reprieve from Trump, noting a one-month pause means nothing but more uncertainty. Quebec is also considering taking similar measures with electricity exports to the U.S.
      Ford’s office said the new market rules require any generator selling electricity to the U.S. to add a 25% surcharge. Ontario’s government expects it to generate revenue of $300,000 Canadian dollars ($208,000) to CA$400,000 ($277,000) per day, “which will be used to support Ontario workers, families and businesses.”
      The new surcharge is in addition to the federal government’s initial CA$30 billion ($21 billion) worth of retaliatory tariffs have been applied on items like American orange juice, peanut butter, coffee, appliances, footwear, cosmetics, motorcycles and certain pulp and paper products.
      Secretary of state Marco Rubio announced that USAid had cancelled the majority of its programs, while the rest will be folded into the state department. The decision was reportedly made early, and after many of the shuttered aid agency’s partners believed they had more time to request to preserve their programs. It was also met with approval from Elon Musk, after reports emerged last week that he squabbled with Rubio at a cabinet meeting attended by Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the arrest of pro-Palestinian activist and US green card holder Mahmoud Khalil by immigration agents has sparked concerns that the Trump administration is looking to retaliate against speech it does not approve of. The homeland security department said Khalil’s detention was in line with an executive order targeting “activities aligned to Hamas”.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Wall Street fell significantly as traders grew concerned over the possibility that Trump’s trade war will send the US economy into a recession.

      A top state department official has a history of insulting his boss in social media posts, among many other questionable statements.

      Trump will sign more executive orders at 3pm, though the White House did not say what they will concern. More

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      in US Politics

      Rubio says 83% of USAid programs terminated after six-week purge

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      The Trump administration has taken an axe to US foreign aid, eliminating 83% of programs run by the US Agency for International Development (USAid) in a sweeping six-week purge that has done away with entire categories of development work that took decades to build up.Secretary of state Marco Rubio announced the massive cuts on Monday, posting that roughly 5,200 of USAid’s 6,200 global programs have been terminated. The surviving initiatives – less than a fifth of America’s previous aid portfolio – will be absorbed by the state department.“Our hard-working staff who worked very long hours” alongside Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) teams deserve credit for this “overdue and historic reform”, Rubio wrote on X, using his personal account.The mass terminations follow Donald Trump’s 20 January executive order freezing foreign assistance for review that he claimed pushed forward a liberal global agenda.This abrupt dismantling also overturns decades of bipartisan consensus that humanitarian and development assistance serves American security interests by stabilizing fragile regions, fostering economic growth, and building diplomatic goodwill – and were backed by Musk’s unofficial government efficiency unit.“Tough, but necessary. Good working with you. The important parts of USAID should always have been with Dept of State,” Musk responded on X following Rubio’s announcement.The New York Times reported last week that there had been serious cut-ups between Musk and Rubio at a recent cabinet meeting over proposed cuts to the state department.During that meeting, Trump reportedly defended Rubio for doing a “great job” and said that Musk’s team would be merely advising cabinet secretaries about future cuts. But Rubio’s apparent embrace of Musk’s objectives reveal the extent to which the billionaire Trump supporter wields power in the administration.Rubio’s social media post on Monday said that review was now “officially ending”, with about 5,200 of USAid’s 6,200 programs eliminated.Those programs “spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States”, Rubio wrote.“In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping … to be administered more effectively under the state department,” he said. Democratic lawmakers and others call the shutdown of congressionally funded programs illegal, saying such a move requires Congress’s approval.The state department did not respond to a request for comment on the criteria being used to keep alive the remaining programs and to respond to claims that cutting programs without congressional approval is illegal.The Trump administration has given almost no details on which aid and development efforts abroad it spared as it mass-emailed contract terminations to aid groups and other USAid partners by the thousands within days earlier this month. The rapid pace, and the steps skipped in ending contracts, left USAid supporters challenging whether any actual program-by-program reviews had taken place.According to internal documents reviewed by ProPublica, top health officials at USAid had for weeks warned Rubio and other leaders about the potential death toll that would result from the cuts, along with one million children untreated for severe malnutrition, up to 166,000 malaria deaths, and 200,000 more children paralyzed by polio over the next decade if they carried out their plan.Aid groups say even some life-saving programs that Rubio and others had promised to spare got the termination notices, such as emergency nutritional support for starving children and drinking water serving sprawling camps for families uprooted by war in Sudan.Republicans broadly have made clear they want foreign assistance that would promote a far narrower interpretation of US national interests.The state department in one of multiple lawsuits it is battling over its rapid shutdown of USAid had said earlier this month it was killing more than 90% of USAid programs. Rubio gave no explanation for why his number was lower.Contractors and staffers running efforts ranging from epidemic control to famine prevention to job and democracy training stopped work. Aid groups and other USAid partners laid off tens of thousands of their workers in the US and abroad.Lawsuits say the sudden shutdown of USAid has stiffed aid groups and businesses that had contracts with it of billions of dollars.The shutdown has left many USAid staffers and contractors and their families still overseas, many of them awaiting US-paid back payments and travel expenses back home. More