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    May Day: protesters rally across US over workers’ and immigrants’ rights

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    Protesters rallied nationwide on Thursday in support of workers’ and immigrants’ rights in the latest round of demonstrations against Donald Trump and his administration.May Day, commemorated as international workers’ day, comes after two massive days of protests in April – 5 April’s hands off rallies and 19 April’s day of action – drew millions to the streets across the country.The 1 May protests were supported by hundreds of organizations and set to take place in nearly 1,000 cities, organizers said, with a focus on rallying against the Trump administration and “billionaire profiteers”. Turnout was predicted to be lower than the previous two April protests because 1 May is a weekday, but tens of thousands were expected to turn out. Cities across the US from New York to Seattle to Anchorage, Alaska, saw major demonstrations.“This is a war on working people – and we will not stand down,” a website for the national day of action says. “They’re defunding our schools, privatizing public services, attacking unions, and targeting immigrant families with fear and violence. Working people built this nation and we know how to take care of each other. We won’t back down – we will never stop fighting for our families and the rights and freedoms that propel opportunity and a better life for all Americans. Their time is up.”View image in fullscreenA map of May Day protests showed several major metro areas had more than one rally planned. A coalition of groups in Los Angeles started the day with an early morning rally, then a program and march to show solidarity with the city’s workers and immigrants. In New York, protests were planned throughout the day.In New York, protesters turned out to support workers, immigrants and others under attack by the Trump administration. Some of those attending the New York rally spoke against Columbia University’s capitulation to Trump’s demands.“Today, we saw lots of new people who are getting energized and activated. The Trump administration is clearly coming for all of these rights that we’ve won, and all of us are taking up the task to fight back,” said Saidi Moseley, 25, an education coordinator and one of the organizers of the May Day march in Union Square.Betsy Waters held a sign saying “due process for all”. The 67-year-old retiree who volunteers full-time said she had come to several marches. “I feel that we have to be out here. We have to be out here making a stand as much as we can,” Waters said. “So I am out here making a stand, saying that what is happening in our country is just not right.”Lydia Howrilka, a 25-year-old librarian from Queens, was holding a “only you can stop fascism” sign. “I am standing in solidarity with my immigrant brothers and sisters in New York. I am standing in defense of democracy,” Howrilka said.Grant Miner, one of a handful of speakers at the New York rally, was abruptly expelled by Columbia University in March for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.View image in fullscreen“I’m trying to speak out about the things that are affecting my workers, which include the ongoing cuts to higher education, as well as the targeting of students for student protests, which are two very big issues facing our workplace reality,” said Miner, who also serves as president of UAW 2710, the Student Workers of Columbia union.As Trump surpassed 100 days in office, a period filled with slashing and burning of the federal government and democratic norms, a resistance has taken shape, growing in size since February. People have started to organize in larger numbers to pressure Democrats to stand up more strongly to Trump.Trump’s approval ratings have fallen from positive to negative, with more people disapproving of him than approving. The focus on workers and immigrants comes as Trump has fired a host of federal workers and his administration has ramped up deportations, including of people who the courts have said were not supposed to be deported.“Everyone deserves respect and dignity, no matter who they are, where they were born, or what language they speak,” the May Day protest website says. “Immigrants are workers, and workers are immigrants. Our fight for fair wages, safe workplaces, and dignity on the job is the same fight for immigrant justice.”Organizers behind the May Day protest in Washington DC said they expected to see up to 3,000 people join the rally in the nation’s capital to demand safety on the job, legal protections and an end to unjust deportations.“We’re seeing people abducted off the streets every day in some of the most violent and cruel ways. We’re seeing people like Kilmar Ábrego García – and he’s only one story. His story is not unusual,” said Cathryn Jackson, the public policy director at Casa, a group that provides critical services to immigrant and working-class families.View image in fullscreenÁbrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, was expected to speak at Thursday’s rally as she continues to fight for her husband to be released from prison in El Salvador and to be returned to the US.“Hundreds and hundreds of people are being deported to some of the worst prisons across the country with no due process,” Jackson said. “This rally today is about solidarity. It’s about saying no matter what the Trump administration tries to do, we are determined to fight back.”Also among the speakers scheduled to address the Washington rally was María del Carmen Castellón, whose husband, Miguel Luna, died in the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore last year.The story of Luna and the five other construction workers who died during the tragedy is “symbolic”, Jackson said. The six men were all construction workers originally from Latin American countries.“This is the story of men working in the middle of the night while all of us were sleeping, getting the roads together, doing the work that many people don’t want to do,” Jackson continued. “We are literally physically building this country, and then being treated the way we are in return.”Delia Ramirez, a Democratic representative of Illinois, addressed the crowd in Franklin Park as the “proud daughter of Guatemalan immigrants”.View image in fullscreen“Today on International Workers’ Day, we are united,” Ramirez said. “We’re united because we understand that this president wants to silence us. He wants to divide us, pit us against each other. But we are not going to be silenced.”The Trump administration knows that “the only thing that will stop fascism is mobilization”, she continued, acknowledging that there will be “really hard days” ahead. “But as long as you keep organizing, I can amplify that voice and continue to stand up to fascism.”Jorge Mújica, the strategic organizer for Arise Chicago and an organizer of the city’s May Day protest, said on Democracy Now that “the Trump administration miscalculated completely” by targeting so many constituencies in its first 100 days.“They are attacking everybody at the same time, and that [has] enabled us to gather a really broad coalition with labor unions, with federal workers, with students, with teachers at universities, and every other community and put together this event on May Day,” Mújica said. More

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      Democrats rally at US Capitol to decry ‘failure’ of Trump’s first 100 days

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      Dozens of Democratic lawmakers gathered on the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday to accuse Donald Trump of spending his first 100 days damaging the US economy and democracy with the help of “complicit” congressional Republicans.The speeches by party leaders served as a counterpoint to Trump’s insistence at a rally in Michigan the night before that he has “delivered the most profound change in Washington in nearly 100 years” with an administration focused on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, the dismantling of parts of the federal government and the levying of tariffs on major US trading partners.Democrats, meanwhile, are still reeling from a disappointing performance in last November’s elections but believe that as the economy’s health shows signs of flagging and GOP lawmakers get to work on what is expected to be a significant piece of legislation to extend tax cuts while slashing the social safety net, they have an opportunity to regain voters’ trust.“Donald Trump’s first 100 days can be defined by one big F-word: failure. Failure on the economy, failure on lowering costs, failure on tariffs, failure on foreign policy, failure on preserving democracy, failure on helping middle-class families,” the top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said from the Capitol steps.He went on to characterize Republican lawmakers, few of whom have broken publicly with the president since his 20 January inauguration, as “co-conspirators. They are complicit. They are aiding and abetting all of Donald Trump’s failures. They’re not standing up to him once they’re involved and they will shoulder the blame.”The party gathered hours after the release of economic data that showed the US economy shrank in the first three months of this year, which lawmakers said was evidence Trump had broken the promise of prosperity he made to American voters.“A hundred days into this presidency, we’ve gone from three years of solid growth in our economy to the steepest decline that we’ve seen since the pandemic. That’s the truth,” said the Delaware senator Lisa Blunt Rochester. “Groceries are up, retirement savings are down, that’s the truth. Outbreaks of measles and the avian flu, that’s the truth.”More than 1,300 days remain in Trump’s presidency, but Democrats are eyeing a resurgence in next November’s midterm elections. A return to a majority in the House is within reach, as the current GOP majority is just three votes, a historically low margin.Earlier in the day, the House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that the party can only do so much without controlling at least one chamber of Congress, but promised change as soon as they returned to the majority.“As Democrats, we will fight as hard as we can the next two years to stop bad things from happening. We will protect our system of free and fair elections, and then work hard to convince the American people to entrust us the majority next November,” Jeffries said at a speech at a Washington DC theater.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“At that point, we will be able to do much, much more for you,” Jeffries said, promising to “block any budget that goes after your social security, Medicare or Medicaid” and “hold the Trump administration accountable for its corrupt abuse of power”.Trump’s 100th day in office came not long after major polls showed his approval rating had dropped well belong 50%, fueled by concerns over his economic policies but also some wariness over his aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, which has seen high-profiles cases of foreigners being removed from the country on questionable grounds.Yet the Democrats have their own rebuilding to do. Recent surveys have indicated that voters are sour on the party, with a CNN poll released last month finding its approval rating has never been lower.The House Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar signaled that the party plans to put economic concerns at the heart of its pitch to voters as it eyes rebuilding legislative majorities in 2026.“We’re going to focus on making life more affordable, making life easier for everyday Americans in these next 100 days and at every turn, until we flip the House and we flip the Senate and we put a check on the Trump administration’s reckless economic policies,” Aguilar said. More

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      How Trump’s war on DEI is roiling US police: ‘it doesn’t mean work will stop’

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      After the murder of George Floyd, protests pushed some police agencies to bring in a new class of professionals like Colleen Jackson to help make departments more representative of and responsive to the communities they serve.Hired as the first chief diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) officer in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 2021, Jackson has assisted in a hiring process that swore in a class of women, Black and Asian American recruits and has surveyed residents on their experiences with the police. She is now organizing an event to bring together young residents and Black officers that she hopes will lead to safer interactions on the street.“I hope what I do touches people’s hearts and that changes their behavior,” she said.Yet, the threat of the Cleveland suburb losing a federal grant because of her work only becomes more palpable as her friends and colleagues in the field of DEI lose their jobs – and the work they’ve dedicated their lives to hemorrhages esteem. “I’m just not the person who’s gonna operate in fear,” she said. “But I am a person who operates in reality.”View image in fullscreenThere is a growing realization among DEI professionals such as Jackson and police officers across the country that a backlash is gaining momentum. Donald Trump, who has called DEI “illegal”, has halted federal programs and encouraged executive branch agencies to investigate and withhold funds from institutions that engage in DEI practices.The new administration has threatened to pull federal funding to compel policy changes in other areas of American life, such as universities, but policing experts are skeptical that a similar tactic would work on the nation’s roughly 17,000 local and state law enforcement agencies, particularly because they draw most of their funds from local taxes.Still, Trump’s actions are already having an impact, contributing negatively to the culture in police departments by “encouraging tension within the ranks”, said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy project director of policing. Opposition to diverse perspectives, she said, can breed an insular culture prone to abuse of underrepresented groups.“This is not merely about the threat to diversity in policing,” Borchetta said. “That threat can spill out into the street.”Increasing diversity among the ranks isn’t a panacea for police abuse – think of the case of Tyre Nichols, a Black man in Memphis, Tennessee, who died after being beaten by several Black officers. Still, policing experts say, hiring a more diverse force combined with efforts to change the culture within departments can help.Trump’s anti-DEI push is not the first time efforts to diversify policing have faced a backlash. Black officers hired in the south during Reconstruction lost their jobs in the late 1800s when the federal government relinquished its control over former Confederate states. Later in the 1970s, after the civil rights movement era, federal efforts to force several big-city police departments to diversify faced opposition from white-dominated police unions. By the 1990s, most of these federal efforts were terminated.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after Floyd’s murder in 2020 and the rise of DEI in policing, the number of Black officers hit its high-water mark in 2022, constituting 17% of the nation’s rank-and-file cops before falling to 14% last year, which is about the number of Black Americans in the country. In 2024, white people made up more than 79% of police officers and women made up more than 14%.Although law enforcement diversity and inclusion experts such as Nicola Smith-Kea maintain that DEI is about more than race – it’s about including people with different abilities, genders, faiths and ages – Smith-Kea thinks Trump has transformed the acronym into a “code word” for Black, creating a framing that DEI is discriminatory against white officers.Smith-Kea said a backlash could mean “removing programs” that serve “the broader population, not just any one race”, such as accessibility ramps for disabled people or equal pay programs for women.In February, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, dismissed Biden-era lawsuits that accused police departments of hiring discrimination. Bondi dropped a case against the Maryland state police (MSP) before an agreement could be signed that would have required MSP to revise a test that Biden’s justice department found disproportionately disqualified Black and female applicants.In her dismissal, Bondi said police officers would now be “chosen for their skill and dedication to public safety – not to meet DEI quotas”.Phillip Atiba Solomon, the chief executive of the Center for Policing Equity, an organization that collects and analyzes public safety data to improve policing outcomes, said he wondered whether the Trump administration might try to use the Department of Justice to investigate police departments with DEI programs for “reverse racism”. Although Trump might have the power to quickly transform the executive branch, lawyer James Fett believes that it will take more time for the federal courts to turn against DEI. Fett, who frequently represents white officers who say they have faced employment discrimination, is eagerly awaiting the disposition of a case now with the US supreme court filed by a woman who claims she was denied a promotion with the Ohio department of youth services because she is not gay.If the conservative court rules in her favor, experts believe it could lower the standard that straight, white people will have to meet to prove they have faced employment discrimination. “It’s going to be much easier when people want to attack promotions or hiring or even terminations based on a DEI policy,” Fett said.Charles Billups of the Grand Council of Guardians, the umbrella organization for New York state’s African American policing organizations, said he and many of his members fear that Trump’s anti-DEI orders could roll back the progress they’ve seen in hiring and promotions. “A lot of us are preparing for the fair competition fostered by DEI to be eliminated,” he said.Even before Trump, some DEI professionals said they were facing pushback.Delaware county, Pennsylvania, hired Lauren Footman as its first DEI director in spring 2022. Included in her purview were the park police and law enforcement officials within the local prosecutor’s office. She said she felt tokenized right away in a department that was not interested in cultural change and only supportive of hosting parties for identity celebrations such as Black History Month.“Someone in HR actually thought that I was an event coordinator,” she said. During her time, she never worked with the park police or criminal investigation division because she says that Delaware county did not compel them to participate.Footman was fired in the spring of 2024. She says the termination was retaliation for her attempts to address the county’s culture of discrimination and she is currently pursuing legal action. When asked about Footman’s claims, Delaware county said that after her termination, the county worked with a consultant to evaluate its programs and make recommendations. However, county officials vigorously denied her accusations.Even in departments where DEI appears to have support, it can fall short. Veteran Sgt Charlotte Djossou believes that is the case in the DC Metropolitan police department (MPD).View image in fullscreenDjossou is a whistleblower who has been speaking out since the 2010s against the racial targeting in the MPD’s jump-out tactics, which involve plain clothes units accosting and searching people on the street. The courts have repeatedly found jump-outs to be discriminatory and unconstitutional. When Djossou first talked about them in the news media, she attributed their pervasiveness to the lack of Black officers in positions of power.But while she has seen more Black people hired and promoted due to DEI, she doesn’t believe it has altered the way the Black community is policed. “It’s not a Black or white thing. It’s a blue thing. And no matter what your race is, in policing, you have to conform in order to move up,” Djossou said.Djossou has filed a lawsuit against the MPD claiming it retaliated against her for whistleblowing by denying her promotions during a time when the department has been engaged in a high-profile DEI campaign to recruit and hire women. That DEI effort was shepherded by Chief Pamela A Smith, who initially joined the MPD in 2022 as its chief equity officer in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder.“I’m Black. I’m a woman. And all they’ve done is hold my career back,” Djossou said. The MPD did not respond to a request for comment.Smith-Kea understands the frustration some reform-oriented officers might have had with DEI. “Change doesn’t happen overnight,” she said, but there are advances, pointing to the widely used toolkit she helped develop for the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which instructs departments on how to implement interventions for dealing with people in a mental health crisis.Tragic killings like that of Daniel Prude have revealed the interplay between race and mental health in fatal police interactions. Prude was apprehended by Rochester, New York, police in the midst of a mental health crisis in 2020 and died of asphyxia after police put a mesh hood over his face and pinned him on the ground. Smith-Kea believes DEI-rooted solutions can prevent deaths like Prude’s. As an example, she points to the BJA toolkit’s potential to make all people, not just Black people, safer.Despite all the worries about DEI’s fate in policing, the ACLU’s Borchetta said departments have incentives to keep DEI because many learned in the 2020s that to solve crimes they “need to gain the trust of the people and that trust is more easily eroded when police departments don’t reflect the people they’re policing”.Borchetta noted that police departments also learned to use diversity to avoid accountability. She was the lead attorney in the case that brought an end to the New York police department’s unconstitutional practice of stop and frisk in 2013. While working on that case, she said, one of the NYPD’s key defenses was simply: “See how diverse our department is.”However, she also credited that diversity with helping to win the case, including the contribution of Latino and Black officers who raised alarms about stop-and-frisk. “That’s a reminder that diversity is important because it brings in perspectives of people who might be affected by your program in different ways,” she said.In Shaker Heights, where the mayor has vowed to continue its DEI initiatives, Jackson was optimistic about the future of DEI in policing. She believed that her work had touched people, and that kind of personal impact couldn’t just be erased with an executive order. She said she was certain she and other DEI professionals would continue the work, regardless of Trump’s efforts.“I recognize these executive orders could bring the end of this particular name for the work – DEI – but it doesn’t mean the work will stop,” Jackson said. When asked how she could be so sure, she said: “The work of DEI has been going on for generations. It’s the only reason why I, as a Black woman, have a job in the public sector, you know what I mean?”This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization covering the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook. More

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      Two suspects arrested for theft of Kristi Noem’s purse, Secret Service says

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      Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the theft last week of the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse as she ate at a Washington DC restaurant, officials said Sunday.Noem’s purse was nabbed on Easter Sunday and reportedly contained about $3,000 in cash and her keys, driver’s license, passport and homeland security badge. The homeland security department said Noem had cash in her purse to pay for gifts, dinner and other activities for her family on Easter.A suspect was taken into custody without incident in Washington after an investigation by the US Secret Service and the Metropolitan police department, according to a statement from Matt McCool, a Secret Service agent in Washington.That suspect was arrested on Saturday, the police department said.In a prepared statement, McCool called the suspect a “serial offender” and said there was no evidence Noem had been targeted because of her position.The Metropolitan police department said the suspect was connected to two other purse thefts in Washington restaurants earlier this month through video evidence. The suspect was charged with robbery for the other incidents.The Secret Service referred questions to the US attorney’s office, which did not respond to emails seeking more information.Noem thanked law enforcement agencies “for finding and arresting the criminal who stole my bag on Easter Sunday as I shared a meal with my family”.“This individual is a career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years,” Noem said in a prepared statement. DHS did not immediately respond to an email requesting further detail on the suspect’s immigration status.Later on Sunday, the Secret Service said a second suspect, believed to be a co-conspirator in the theft of Noem’s bag and other robberies, had been arrested in Miami with assistance from Miami Beach police and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents. More

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      Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker livestream sit-in against GOP funding plan

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      House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and New Jersey senator Cory Booker were holding a sit-in protest and discussion on Sunday on the steps of the US Capitol in opposition to Republicans’ proposed budget plan.Billed as an “Urgent Conversation with the American People”, the livestreamed discussion comes before Congress’s return to session on Monday, where Democrats hope to stall Republicans’ economic legislative agenda. Throughout the day, they were joined by other Democratic lawmakers, including the senator Raphael Warnock, who spoke as the sit-in passed the 10-hour mark.The proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year, the New York Times reported on Friday, includes cuts to programs that support childcare, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly.“Republican leaders have made clear their intention to use the coming weeks to advance a reckless budget scheme to President Trump’s desk that seeks to gut Medicaid, food assistance and basic needs programs that help people, all to give tax breaks to billionaires,” Booker and Jeffries aid in a statement.“Given what’s at stake, these could be some of the most consequential weeks for seniors, kids and families in generations,” they added.Booker wrote separately on X: “This is a moral moment in America. Sitting on the Capitol steps with Leader Hakeem Jeffries this morning to discuss what’s at stake with Trump’s budget and affirm the need for action to protect Medicaid, food assistance, and other safety net programs.”Booker and Jeffries started their sit-in around 6am and were joined by lawmakers including Democratic senators Chris Coons and Angela Alsobrooks and representatives Gil Cisneros and Gabe Amo, among others.Reverend Dr William J Barber II and the National Education Association president, Becky Pringle, also joined. Pringle said the Trump administration was perpetuating “the greatest assault on public education that we’ve ever seen in this country”.Democrats and independents have added a new degree of physicality to their opposition to the Trump agenda. Earlier this month, Booker set a new record for the chamber’s longest speech when he held the floor, without a bathroom break, for more than 25 hours.Booker said he was doing so with the “intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States senate for as long as I am physically able” in order to protest the actions of Trump and his administration.The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, and the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been on a “Fighting Oligarchy” nationwide tour of the US to protest the “oligarchs and corporate interests that have so much power and influence in this country”.On Sunday, Sanders, who has accused Democrats of significantly ignoring working-class priorities, said that the party does not have “a vision for the future”.“You have Democrats appropriately, and I’m working with them, talking about Trump’s movement toward authoritarianism, vigorously opposing the so-called reconciliation bill to give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the 1% and make massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition and housing, opposing what Musk is doing to dismember the Social Security Administration and the Veterans Administration, making it hard for our veterans to get decent healthcare or benefits on time,” Sanders told NBC’s Meet the Press.Throughout Sunday’s livestreamed sit-in, groups of curious passersby also found themselves sitting on the Capitol steps listening and weighing in on the discussion. More

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      Journalists defend press freedom at muted White House correspondents’ dinner

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      Journalists rallied in defence of press freedom on Saturday, insisting they “are not the enemy of the people” at a Washington media gala snubbed by Donald Trump.The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner was a muted affair with no US president, no comedian and notably fewer politicians or Hollywood stars than in past years.The event took place under the shadow of a second Trump administration that has launched a wave of fresh attacks on freedom of the press, barring the Associated Press from the presidential pool and moving to shut down the Voice of America broadcaster.In a typical year the president attends the WHCA dinner to congratulate journalists on their work, give a jokey speech and take it on the chin as a comedian jabs at their expense. But Trump, who has branded the media “the enemy of the people”, gave the dinner a wide berth during his first term and stayed away again this time.Eugene Daniels, who leads the WHCA, noted that presidents from both sides of the political spectrum are invited every year. “We don’t invite presidents of the United States to this because it’s for them,” he said. “We don’t invite them because we want to cosy up to them or curry favour.“We don’t only extend invites to the presidents who say they love journalists or who say they’re defenders of the first amendment and a free press. We invite them to remind them that they should be.”Daniels then showed a video montage of past presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden, addressing the dinner with self-deprecating jokes while also expressing their admiration for the press and its central importance in safeguarding democracy. Trump was conspicuous by his absence.As guests watched, Daniels continued: “We journalists are a lot of things. We are competitive and pushy. We are impatient and sometimes we think we know everything, but we’re also human. We miss our families and significant life moments in service to this job.“We care deeply about accuracy and take seriously the heavy responsibility of being stewards of the public’s trust. What we are not is the opposition, what we are not is the enemy of the people and what we are not is the enemy of the state.” The giant ballroom erupted in applause.The Trump administration has had multiple skirmishes with the press in recent months. Federal funding for public broadcasters NPR and PBS is under threat. Trump has also launched legal assaults on private network CBS and the local Des Moines Register newspaper in Iowa, and brought to heel ABC, which paid $15m under threat of a libel lawsuit.The dinner announced scholarships for aspiring journalists and paid tribute to trailblazing figures in White House press history. It presented awards recognising excellence in reporting, writing and visual journalism. Winners delivered acceptance speeches that were careful not to criticise Trump directly but did unite around the theme of defending the first amendment, which protects freedom of speech.Alex Thompson of Axios, who won an award for coverage of Biden, silenced a room that was otherwise buzzing all night when he called out the media for failing to adequately investigate Biden’s mental acuity. The issue blew up when the 81-year-old gave a disastrous debate performance four months before the election.“President Biden’s decline and its cover up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception,” Thompson said. “But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves.“We, myself included, missed a lot of this story and some people trust us less because of that. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust and being defensive about the further erodes it. We should have done better.”It was a night of few laughs. The WHCA had invited then cancelled comedian Amber Ruffin after she referred to the Trump administration as “kind of a bunch of murderers” and asserted that “nobody wants” Trump to attend the dinner.Ruffin was excoriating in her response to being dropped, telling talk show host Seth Meyers: “We have a free press so that we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners. That’s what it says in the first amendment.”The dinner – a formal occasion where the dress code is tuxedos and gowns – has in past years hosted celebrities such as George Clooney, Carrie Fisher, Tom Hiddleston Scarlett Johansson, Sean Penn and Steven Spielberg. Not on Saturday, although Jason Isaacs, the British actor who stars in the latest series of The White Lotus, put in an appearance.White House officials and members of Congress were also unusually scarce but did include Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator for Minnesota. She told the Guardian: “I thought it was great. The dinner was back at its roots, honouring these incredible journalists and it was actually a lot of fun. I felt like I was at the journalists’ Academy Awards and it was really good.”Klobuchar added: “They hardly talked about Donald Trump. They just talked about their work and through Democratic and Republican presidents and why they do it.” More

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      The White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Red Carpet Arrivals

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      The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington had fewer big-name celebrity guests than it did during the Biden presidency, when Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Sean Penn mixed with journalists and politicians. But on Saturday a red carpet was rolled out nonetheless.President Trump, who skipped the annual black tie dinner during his first term, made no plan to attend the gathering before leaving Washington to attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome.An appearance by the comedian Amber Ruffin, who had been booked as the host, was scrapped last month “to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division,” as the association’s president, Eugene Daniels, put it in a letter to members.Here’s how the people who attended the event — known as “nerd prom” in the capital — looked when they arrived at the Washington Hilton Hotel.The actor Jason Isaacs.Ken Cedeno/ReutersThe CNN host Abby Phillip.Ken Cedeno/ReutersThe designer Neri Oxman and the financier Bill Ackman.Ken Cedeno/ReutersThe actor Dean Norris.Ken Cedeno/ReutersEugene Daniels, left, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, with his husband, Nate Stephens.Ken Cedeno/ReutersThe CNN host Kaitlan Collins.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesDasha Burns, White House bureau chief for Politico.Ken Cedeno/ReutersLynda Carter, the actress and singer.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesThe CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.Ken Cedeno/ReutersMary Bruce, the ABC News White House correspondent.Ken Cedeno/ReutersJacob Soboroff, a correspondent for NBC News.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesThe political commentator Kennedy.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesThe CNN host Jake Tapper.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesThe actress and comedian Alex Borstein.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesThe physician and medical journalist Alok Patel.Ken Cedeno/ReutersRepresentative Nicole Malliotakis, Republican of New York.Ken Cedeno/Reuters More

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      From peppercorns to plastic forks: US businesses that rely on Chinese products reel from Trump tariffs

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      Chang Chang, a Sichuan restaurant in Washington DC, was already noticing that some of its business had dropped off after tens of thousands of federal workers living in the area lost their jobs. But the recent tariff rate hikes mark an even greater blow for the restaurant.Sichuan peppercorns, which create the signature numbing spice of the regional Chinese cuisine, along with other ingredients, face an at least 145% tariff after last week’s tit-for-tat trade battle between China and the United States. The steep rate is an existential threat for restaurants across the country that rely on specialty ingredients imported from China to craft the authentic flavors of their dishes, said operators who were blindsided.“We’re really worried,” said Jen Lin-Liu, the director of events for Chang Chang. The restaurant is part of the Peter Chang restaurant group that operates a dozen Sichuan restaurants across Washington, Virginia and Maryland.The restaurant group sources meats and vegetables from local farmers, including an Amish community in the Finger Lakes region that supplies its shiitake mushrooms and organic pork. Still, it is dependent on imported items such as fermented chili peppers and soy sauce, which give the dishes their unique taste.“Some of the products that we need just do not exist in the United States,” Lin-Liu said.The cost of other items is rising as well. “There are increases in any supply you can think of, from takeout boxes to printer paper to menu printing paper,” she said, adding that if the tariff rates stick, the price of a $20 dish may rise to $35 or $40.View image in fullscreenGeorge Chen, the chef who created Eight Tables, a fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco, said that while some of the items on his menu may be replaceable with options from Taiwan, it undermines the integrity he’s put into sourcing the unique ingredients for his dishes.“Replacements disrupt complex long-term relationships,” explained Chen. “It took me years to find the special spice vendors or the organic tea farmer in China from my many years living and working there.”Eight Tables is part of a larger marketplace called China Live, which includes a dining hall, a cold-drinks bar and a shop that sells wares including chopsticks, glass tea mugs and pots.“The area most concerning is our retail platform,” said Chen. For those items, “it’s not possible to re-order at the tariff rates”.For direct importers, like the Mala Market, an online shop, the tariffs on Chinese products threaten its entire business model. Sichuan peppercorns are popular on the site, but it also sells a number of items produced in their original region using traditional methods. The owner, Taylor Holliday, calls these “heritage products”, which include soy sauce handcrafted in Zhongba, fermented soybeans aged for three years in Sichuan and sesame paste stone-ground in Shandong.“These are products which have been made in that exact area for hundreds if not thousands of years,” said Holliday. “They have such a history, there’s no way these products can be made anywhere else.”While part of Holliday’s business supplies wholesale items to restaurants around the country, the majority of its orders are from home cooks.“A lot of our customers are people who have a cultural or emotional attachment to China,” Holliday said. “It’s more than just the food, it’s a cultural attachment to these products.”EMei, a Sichuan restaurant in Philadelphia, sources not only its peppercorns from China but also items such as chopsticks and plastic cutlery for takeout orders. Similar to many Chinese restaurants, delivery is a major part of the restaurant’s business.“So far, this is the main impact for us,” said Dan Tsao, the owner of EMei, who said the tariff hikes add about $1 to $1.50 to each delivery order.The tariffs may also create a supply issue for these items.“Importers are pausing more of their orders from China. They think 125% is crazy,” Tsao said.While the restaurant sources many of its ingredients from local farmers, it still relies on some imports from other countries. It orders broccoli from Mexico, shrimp from Ecuador and rice from Thailand. Rice is especially critical; the restaurant runs through a supply of about 200 pounds each night, Tsao said. Since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” announcement earlier this month, the price per pound has already risen more than 25%.View image in fullscreenThe frenetic nature of the tariff policy shifts has left owners and suppliers cautious about which steps to take and how to plan for the future.Tsao has plans to open two more restaurants later this year and has noticed some construction estimates for renovations rising. Most of the building materials come from China, too.“I’m hesitating now,” he said. The possibility of a recession while the prices of supplies and renovations keep going up may change his calculation. “There will be all these ripple effects on the system and there’s so much economic uncertainty,” he added.Holliday said she has one container of product already on the way from China that is scheduled to clear US customs in about five weeks, but will not raise prices until she is forced to.“I’m praying that something happens by then,” she said. But if it doesn’t, she’s resigned to paying the tariffs.“There’s no other way we can run our business,” she said. More

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      Protesters fill the streets in cities across the US to denounce Trump agenda

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      Protesters poured into the streets of cities and towns across the United States again on Saturday, in the second wave of protests this month, as organizers seek to turn discontent with Donald Trump’s presidency into a mass movement that will eventually translate into action at the ballot box.By early afternoon, large protests were under way in Washington, New York and Chicago, with images of crowds cascading across social networks showing additional demonstrations in Rhode Island, Maryland, Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, California and Pennsylvania, among others. Americans abroad also signaled their opposition to the Trump agenda in Dublin, Ireland, and other cities.More than 400 rallies were planned, most loosely organized by the group 50501, which stands for 50 protests in 50 states, one movement.Opponents of Donald Trump’s administration mobilized from the east coast to the west, including at rallies in Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon, decrying what they see as threats to the nation’s democratic ideals.The events ranged from a massive march through midtown Manhattan to a rally in front of the White House, and a demonstration at a Massachusetts commemoration marking the start of the American revolutionary war 250 years ago.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenIn Massachusetts, 80-year-old retired mason Thomas Bassford told CBS News that he believed US citizens were under attack from their own government, saying: “This is a very perilous time in America for liberty. Sometimes we have to fight for freedom.”Protesters identified a variety of concerns, each unified under a common theme: opposition to the second Trump presidency.“We are losing our country,” demonstrator Sara Harvey told the New York Times in Jacksonville, Florida. “I’m worried for my grandchildren,” she said. “I do it for them.”It is the fourth protest event to be staged by the group since Trump was inaugurated on 20 January. Previous events included a “No Kings Day” on President’s Day, 17 February, a theme adopted before Trump referred to himself as a king in a social media post days later.View image in fullscreenOrganizers have called for 11 million people to participate in the latest rallies, representing 3.5% of the US population.Such a figure would likely surpass the numbers who took part in the “Hands Off” rallies staged on 5 April, when 1,200 demonstrations were staged across the US to register opposition to Trump’s assault on government agencies and institutions, spearheaded by the president’s chief lieutenant, the tech billionaire Elon Musk, and his unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIndivisible, the progressive movement behind the “Hands Off” events, said it was seeking to send a message to opposition politicians and ordinary voters that vocal resistance to Trump’s policies was essential. It also said it was seeking to build momentum that would lead to further and larger protests.Heather Dunn, a spokesperson for 50501, said the goal of Saturday’s protests was “to protect our democracy against the rise of authoritarianism under the Trump administration”.She called the group a “pro-democracy, pro-constitution, anti-executive overreach, nonviolent grassroots movement” that was nonpartisan.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen“We have registered Democrats, registered independents and registered Republicans all marching because they all believe in America, because they all believe in a fair government that puts people before profits,” she told the Washington Post.Academics who have tracked the slide of democracy into authoritarianism say protests can be part of a wider of strategy to reverse the trend.“Oppositions to authoritarian governments have to use multiple channels always,” said Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University and co-author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of How Democracies Die. “They have to use the courts where those are available. They have to use the ballot box when that’s available, and they have to use the streets when necessary – that can shape media framing and media discourse, which is very, very important.”In Washington DC on Saturday, a protest planned by the 50501 movement is scheduled to take place in Franklin Park, and a march will start near the George Washington monument and head towards the White House in support of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadorian man with US protected status wrongly deported to El Salvador from Maryland. More