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      Shared prayers and tears: how Lammy wooed JD Vance and the White House

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      It was famously something that Tony Blair did not do with George W Bush, or at least not something to which the then British prime minister wished to admit. But these are very different times.When the US vice-president, JD Vance, and his family join David Lammy at the foreign secretary’s grace and favour home in Kent at the start of their summer holiday in the UK, they are expected to deepen their relationship by praying together, it is understood.Within the grounds of Chevening lies the pretty 12th-century St Botolph’s church. It is Anglican but, security risks and denominational differences aside, it may present one option for a place to take communion, sources suggested.Vance is a Catholic and Lammy has described his faith as Anglo-Catholic. The two men previously took mass in Vance’s residence in Washington when the vice-president hosted Lammy and his family in March.The burgeoning relationship between the two men, freshly evidenced by word that they will spend time together before the Vances head to the Cotswolds, may surprise some.As a backbencher, Lammy described Donald Trump as “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. Now, Trump is “someone that we can build a relationship with” and Vance is a “friend”.The philosophy behind Lammy’s foreign policy has been described as “progressive realism” – taking the world as it is and not as we might wish it to be.Sceptics might be temped to describe such a pivot in different terms but the outcomes were difficult to argue with, said Michael Martins, formerly a political specialist in the US embassy in London and founder of the consultancy firm Overton Advisory.“I think they have done a pretty good job and you can see it with some of the incoming tariff increases which have not affected the UK as they have with other trading partners, like Canada,” Martins said.“I think it is paying off. I think President Trump’s view on Putin and Russia has changed, is changing and softening, in a way that I think the British government has been pushing for. I think the dividends from the relationship building are starting to come.”Lammy, a touchy-feely sort of politician, targeted Vance for a full charm offensive early on, when Labour was in opposition and Trump’s re-election was far from certain, sources said. The then shadow foreign secretary had a significant obstacle to overcome: Lammy has been a friend of Barack Obama since they met at a 2005 gathering of Harvard Law School’s black alumni.Such was the love-in that Lammy’s wife, Nicola Green, an artist, was given “unprecedented access” to chronicle Obama’s 2008 campaign. It was this political and personal relationship that has been front and centre of every US newspaper profile of Lammy in recent times. “A Friend of Obama Who Could Soon Share the World Stage With Trump” was the New York Times headline last April.View image in fullscreenLammy had a further card to play. He has spoken about how Vance’s bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, bore parallels to his own story of growing up with a single mother and an absent, alcoholic father. Lammy has said Vance’s book “reduced me to tears”.“I said to JD: ‘Look, we’ve got different politics, but we’re both quite strong Christians and we both share quite a tough upbringing,’” Lammy said of an early meeting.He recently elaborated in an interview with the Guardian. During drinks with Vance and the deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, in the US ambassador’s residence at the time of the new pope’s inauguration, Lammy had an epiphany. It struck him that they were “not just working-class politicians, but people with dysfunctional childhoods”, he said. “I had this great sense that JD completely relates to me and he completely relates to Angela.”Donjeta Miftari, a former foreign policy adviser to Keir Starmer in Downing Street who is now a director at Hanbury Strategy, said: “David is an incredibly pragmatic person and he likes to take the world as it is. Frankly, you don’t have influence over which populations elect certain individuals in the country.”Lammy had had a gut feeling that the Republicans would win the White House back, she said, and he worked for “years, not months” on building the necessary relationships.“I’ve known him for a few years now, and I’d say that he is also, just on a personal level, one of the most empathetic and relational kind of MPs and politicians,” she said.“You know, in the early days of opposition and in government, I think he had a strong sense of where the US was going, and that is grounded in the fact that he studied out there, lived out there. He knows America well and it’s a big part of who he is.“So I think he sort of clocked basically that that is the direction in which the country was going so built these relationships well before they came to power in the US. And I think that gives it, like, extra kind of credibility and authenticity as well, because you’re not just calling them when you need them when you’re both in post. He’s an incredibly effective operator. Frankly, he’s quite good company as well, which always helps.”There will be a formal bilateral meeting between the two politicians before Vance’s wife, Usha, and their three children join Lammy, his wife and their children for the weekend. After their stay with the Lammys, the Vances are understood to be heading to a Cotswolds period property near Charlbury, about 12 miles (19km) north-west of Oxford.Martins, who was working in the US embassy at the time of Trump’s first state visit, said he recalled the delight that the president took in the pomp and ceremony. “I think vice-president Vance has to walk a bit of a delicate line,” he said. “Obviously he is angling for his own White House bid at the end of the Trump presidency. You know, I think he has to be careful not to appear as the primary recipient of international flattery.” More

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      US universities’ settlements with Trump ‘will only fuel his authoritarian appetite’

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      With the Trump administration’s campaign to reshape US higher education in full swing, some top universities have agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle antisemitism claims; others may soon spend more and submit to major restrictions on their autonomy to avoid billions in funding cuts and other crippling measures.The University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Brown University have reached settlements with the government in the past month, seeing millions in federal funding restored in exchange for adopting measures that advocates warn severely undermine their independence. Columbia also agreed to pay more than $220m to settle antisemitism allegations, including an employment discrimination claim that may qualify any Jewish employee who has allegedly experienced antisemitism to get a payout.The University of California, Los Angeles, also agreed last week to pay $6m to settle a lawsuit by Jewish students and a professor over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests – but that did not stop the Trump administration from citing “antisemitism and bias” to freeze more than $300m of the university’s funding.Harvard University is reportedly considering paying as much as half a billion dollars to restore billions in research funds and fend off further attacks by the government – even though the university’s president, Alan Gerber, has denied the reports.The settlements come amid a flurry of cuts, investigations and other measures designed to curtail the independence of universities that the Trump administration has described as “the enemy”.Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities says they mark “a watershed moment for American higher education” and will “further embolden the administration to use coercive tactics against other institutions”.“The weaponization of federal funds in an effort to enforce ideological conformity through the control of campus policies, the curriculum, research, and discourse inside and outside of the classroom poses a threat to the fundamental mission of US colleges and universities,” she said.UPenn, Columbia and Harvard did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment. A spokesperson for Brown said the agreement with the administration “preserves the integrity of Brown’s academic foundation and enables us to move forward after a period of considerable uncertainty”.The White House is reportedly negotiating with several other universities. About 60 institutions are under investigation over alleged antisemitism and several have had federal funding cut or threatened. Education advocates warn that with each settlement, more universities risk coming under attack.“When one university capitulates to Trump’s hostage-taking strategies it puts pressure on all institutions because it confirms that this strategy works,” said Isaac Kamola, a professor at Trinity College who studies conservative efforts to undermine higher education. “Every institution is now at risk.”Ripple effectColumbia, where pro-Palestinian students staged a 2024 protest encampment that was soon followed by dozens of others nationwide, was the first university to be targeted by the administration.When it reached a much-anticipated settlement after months of negotiations, the US education secretary, Linda McMahon, boasted that the deal would offer “a roadmap” for other universities. Columbia’s reforms “will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come”, she said.Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, called the settlement “a disaster” for “the independence of colleges and universities nationwide”. But he echoed McMahon’s prediction: “The settlement will only fuel Trump’s authoritarian appetite.”The deal sees Columbia submitting to the oversight of an independent monitor reporting to the government, and agreeing to review its Middle East curriculum and expand Israel and Jewish studies. That’s in addition to several measures the university had already taken, including the adoption of a controversial definition that conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel. Notably, the agreement does not preclude the government from issuing more demands in the future.Columbia also agreed to pay $200m to the government over three years, and $21m to settle a class-action lawsuit that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission described as the “largest such settlement” in two decades. That agreement follows a charge brought on behalf of “all Jewish employees” at Columbia, with the funds intended “to remedy alleged antisemitism harassment that may have been experienced by its employees”, the commission said. It added that a claims administrator would reach out to all “potential aggrieved individuals” with a confidential questionnaire to determine eligibility.A spokesperson for the commission said that all Jewish employees were entitled to part of the settlement “if they experienced discrimination, harassment, and/or retaliation” based on their Jewish or Israeli identity, and that they do not need to have previously filed a complaint to be considered. “What matters is their experience with antisemitism at Columbia,” the spokesperson said.Some of Columbia’s Jewish employees questioned the criteria.“Where is my antisemitism money?” James Schamus, a faculty member who previously denounced the university’s actions “in the name of Jewish safety” wrote in a post. He said that he suspected the payouts would be distributed not based on “Jewish-ness” as much as political considerations.But it is Columbia’s agreement to yield to the administration on academic matters that met the fiercest backlash. Last week, the prominent historian Rashid Khalidi announced in an open letter that he would cancel a class he had planned to teach in the fall, citing the settlement and adoption of the IHRA definition, and accusing Columbia’s leaders of having turned the storied institution into “a shadow of its former self” and an “anti-university”.Still, Columbia’s deal with the administration fell short of some of the most restrictive scenarios floated during negotiations, and even those critical of it acknowledge the university found itself in a near-impossible position.“We fully appreciate that the alternatives to settlement would have come with their own formidable costs and risks,” a group of scholars from Columbia’s own Knight First Amendment Institute wrote in an analysis on Monday. “It would be deeply unfortunate, however, if Columbia’s settlement were to become a model for the rest of the academy.”More targetsSo far, that seems to be the case. A week after Columbia’s announcement, Brown followed, reaching a deal with the administration to restore frozen federal funds in exchange for adopting the administration’s definitions of male and female, which advocates say infringe transgender rights. Brown will also pay $50m to Rhode Island workforce development organizations as part of the deal. The university also granted the government access to its admissions data to ensure it is “merit-based”. UPenn made similar concessions when it became the first university to settle in early July.Harvard has been the only university to fight back, suing over $2.6bn in funding cuts and the revocation of its eligibility to host international students. Both cases are proceeding in court, where the university has notched some early victories, even though Harvard is also negotiating with the administration and has passed measures pre-empting some of its demands.At UCLA, part of the largest public university system in the US, administrators also tried to anticipate the administration by issuing a flurry of new policies. They restricted the ability to protest on campus and centralized faculty hiring. A spokesperson for UCLA referred the Guardian to a statement by the university’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, in which he listed a host of measures it had taken to combat antisemitism.But that wasn’t enough to keep UCLA from becoming Trump’s latest target.“Unsurprisingly, the anticipatory obedience of UCLA administrators has not prevented Trump administration attacks,” the UCLA Faculty Association wrote in a statement. “Each university that falters legitimates the Trump administration’s attacks on all of our institutions of higher education and we must stand up now. To protect our democracy we must protect our universities.” More

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      The Guardian view on Putin’s propaganda: the strongman myth hides great strategic weakness | Editorial

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      For a quarter of a century, Russian media have cultivated a myth of Vladimir Putin’s inspired leadership. State propaganda allows no hint of presidential fallibility. When things go wrong, official news ignores the setbacks. When problems cannot be downplayed, Mr Putin is portrayed as the wise corrector of errors made by underlings.Foreign perceptions of Mr Putin have been shaped by this image. It has been boosted online by Kremlin influence operations and embraced by nationalist politicians who admire the Russian president’s methods of domestic control and contempt for the rule of law.Until recently, Donald Trump was the most powerful figure in that category. The US president is no convert to democratic pluralism but he has become notably more suspicious of Russia and less effusive in his admiration for its president. He has threatened Moscow with tightened sanctions if there is not progress towards a ceasefire in Ukraine by the end of this week. Steve Witkoff, the White House special envoy, met Mr Putin on Wednesday for talks. The substance of the discussion was unclear.Uncertainty also shrouds the reasons for Mr Trump’s shifting stance and its durability. June’s Nato summit appears to have been critical in nudging the president towards greater appreciation of the alliance and scepticism about Mr Putin’s claims to want peace.The presidential ego is also a factor. Mr Trump campaigned on a pledge to end the Ukraine war and imagined it could be done swiftly. His initial method was to sideline and bully Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, while offering sweeping territorial concessions to Russia. That was a disgraceful betrayal of an embattled democracy and a reward for unprovoked military aggression. It was a gift for the Russian president. Yet Mr Putin was not satisfied and instead intensified the onslaught.Mr Trump has no record of sympathy with Ukraine’s plight, but he is notoriously sensitive to a snub. Mr Putin embarrassed him by refusing to do a quick deal.The Russian president’s motives are also obscure. He may be betting on the US staying keen to secure a ceasefire on a land-for-peace basis, and so grabbing more land before White House patience runs out altogether. But he is also trapped by his own maximalist demands. He has sent hundreds of thousands of young Russians to their deaths on the grounds that the nation is locked in an existential struggle with the west. He has cast Ukraine as a rogue province to be reintegrated into the greater Russian motherland. He has geared the country’s economy for perpetual war. His image as a great military leader is in jeopardy if Mr Zelenskyy is still the president of a viable sovereign country when the guns fall silent.There seems no brilliant plan behind Mr Putin’s determination to continue a brutal war of attrition. He does it through inertia and paranoia. He appears afraid to end the fighting on terms that risk ordinary Russians fully grasping the horrific pointlessness of the whole bloody business.History will surely record Mr Putin’s conduct in Ukraine as the action of a delusional murderer. The myth of the Russian president as some kind of mastermind is just another weapon of propaganda. Its function is to project strength where there is weakness, and make victory seem inevitable when the facts of the war describe a litany of Kremlin failure.

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      World awaits Trump’s next move as Russia ceasefire deadline approaches

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      After taking six months to conclude that Vladimir Putin may not be a kindred transactional authoritarian leader but an ideological nationalist seeking the return of what “belongs to Russia”, the deadline Donald Trump set for the Russian president to agree a Ukraine ceasefire or face US sanctions on oil exports arrives on Friday.What Trump – who some had claimed was a Russian asset – does next to punish Putin could define his presidency.It is a remarkable turnaround and one that seasoned Trump watchers such as Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, said they had never expected. Only months ago the debate was about what further inducements Trump would offer Putin to end the fighting. His administration has not introduced any sanctions against Russia, compared with at least 16 sets of actions in every prior six months back to February 2022, according to a report submitted to the Senate banking committee by top Democrats this week.Trump first set Putin a 50-day deadline then cut weeks off it. “Secondary sanctions and tariffs against China, India and Brazil, which buy Russian oil, are the obvious next step in an attempt to stop the conflict,” the US ambassador to Nato, Matthew Whitaker, predicted on Tuesday.But as the deadline approaches, there is lingering scepticism about how far Trump will go. He has dispatched his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Moscow for the fifth time for last-minute talks and on Friday Trump admitted he did not think sanctions would have much impact as Russians are “wily characters and pretty good at avoiding sanctions”.He has also given himself maximum room for political manoeuvre by ensuring the US Senate did not pass legislation before its summer recess that would have empowered him to slap bone-crushing 500% tariffs on exports from countries that import Russian oil, principally India, China, Brazil and Turkey.View image in fullscreenTrump had argued that the congressional legislation was unnecessary as he can act through executive orders, mentioning instead 100% tariffs on economies that import Russian oil – a whopping number, even if lower than the 500% floated by the Republican senator Lindsey Graham.It is striking that in the run-up to Witkoff’s talks in Moscow that Trump, normally keen to tout his leverage before a negotiation, has given only sketchy detail of the punishments the importers of Russian energy may face, either in terms of US sanctions on foreign refineries importing Russian oil or US tariffs on countries importing Russian oil.Some of Trump’s warnings this week to the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, that he would raise tariffs on India because its government did not care “how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian war machine” do not yet seem to fit into a wider strategy. The tensions appears as much about Trump’s previous complaints with India’s trade practices as its purchases of cheap Russian oil. They are due to start on August 27.Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Centre for a New American Century, said if India was to receive a penalty but China – the largest buyer of most Russian crude – did not, the Russian oil trade may just go further underground. Some of Trump’s advisers, notably the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warned China last week of tariff hikes related to Russia energy purchases, but it is hard to see such threats as credible given Trump’s eagerness for a trade deal with China and the risks associated with a sudden stop to trade between China and the US. In 2024 China accounted for 32% of Russian petroleum and oil exports.McFaul told Foreign Policy magazine about a possible boomerang effect if generalised increases in tariffs turn into a full trade war.Trump has wavered about the impact of economic pressure on Putin. Many academics say that sanctions on oil reshape economic relationships and change markets rather than produce changes in state behaviour.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThree years of sanctions on Russia have so far been – at best – a slow burn. Russia chalked up economic growth of 4% in 2023 and 2024, kept unemployment to an astonishing 2%, and even reduced social inequality by sustaining real wage growth that has disproportionately benefited Russians at the lower end of the economic ladder, a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based thinktank, found. The authors predicted that Russia’s economy can withstand the current level of sanctions for at least three more years.But the report also pointed to developing vulnerabilities in Russia. Interest rates are at 18%, inflation stubbornly high and growth is stalling. Russia has had to rework its 2025 budget as oil revenues slipped, largely because of a fall in prices and the discounts importers such as India could demand. As a result, government revenues from Russian oil and gas in May-June were 35% lower than the same period in 2024, the Kyiv School of Economics said in its July review. Russian oil export revenue is projected to drop 16% from $189bn (£142bn) in 2024 to $163bn in 2025 and $151bn in 2026.The federal budget deficit reached 3.7tn rubles ($40.4bn) in the first half of 2025 – 97% of the full-year target of 3.8tn rubles. This is more than five times larger than the deficit in the first half of 2024 and 57% higher than the largest first six-month deficit in recent years (2023). Oil prices are unlikely to recover significantly, meaning Russia will miss its budget target by a wide margin, increasing reliance on its national welfare fund (NWF) and domestic debt issuance.View image in fullscreenThe NWF’s liquid assets are also under pressure, with Russia expected to draw heavily on these reserves by year end. In a report this week, Oxford Economics predicted that Russia “may tip into recession”.The overall reason is simple: the level of military spending, including the cost of voluntary recruitment is distorting the economy. The economist Janis Kluge, who conducts research on Russia at the Berlin thinktank SWP, thinks overall Russian military spending is 8 to 10% of GDP once all expenditure including regional recruitment is included.The pressure could grow. The EU’s most recent sanctions package included a ban from next January on buying oil products made from Russian crude. The package for the first time put sanctions on a big Indian refinery, Nayara Energy, causing Microsoft this week to suspend software services. Other refineries could be placed under sanction – with the UK likely following suit – but the question then arises as to how the supply gap created by the loss of Russian oil can be filled.Moreover, if Trump is joining sanctions, the US and Europe will have to come to a joint decision on the continuing value of the elaborate oil price cap, a Biden-era device designed to squeeze Russian oil profits while keeping the global price of oil low.The cap was introduced across the G7 in December 2022 and operates by withdrawing insurance from any shipping company that has not obtained a certificate that it is selling Russian oil below $60 a barrel, but a multitude of problems have arisen.In recent months, as the price of oil has fallen, it’s become evident the $60 cap was set too high. The cap has also led to the birth of a shadow fleet of oil tankers operating without formal insurance that are now being sanctioned by the EU, the US and the UK. The UK and the EU have agreed to lower the price cap from 2 September to $47.60 a barrel, but Trump is keeping the US cap at $60 a barrel, a recipe for circumvention.The one prerequisite is that Trump must not back off, McFaul said. “Making threats and not carrying through with them is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in diplomacy.” The former ambassador recalled George Shultz, the great Reagan-era US secretary of state, saying “never point a gun at anyone unless you are prepared to shoot”. More

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      US judge blocks Trump officials from diverting disaster prevention grants

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      A federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Tuesday from diverting funds from a multibillion-dollar grant program designed to protect communities against natural disasters.US district judge Richard Stearns in Boston issued a preliminary injunction preventing the government from spending money allocated to the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (Bric) program for other purposes.Twenty mostly Democratic-led states sued the administration last month, saying the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) lacked power to cancel the Bric program without congressional approval.Fema is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Neither agency immediately responded to requests for comment.Created in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first term, the Bric program helps state and local governments protect major infrastructure such as roads and bridges before the occurrence of floods, hurricanes and other disasters.According to the lawsuit, Fema approved about $4.5bn in grants for nearly 2,000 projects, primarily in coastal states, over the last four years.But the agency announced in April it would end the program, calling it wasteful, ineffective and politicized.Stearns said that while Fema does not appear to have since canceled grants, states should not have to wait to sue until after they lose funding, while the cancellation of new grants suggested Fema considered an eventual shutdown a fait accompli.He also said the states have shown a realistic chance of irreparable harm if the Bric program ended.“There is an inherent public interest in ensuring that the government follows the law, and the potential hardship accruing to the states from the funds being repurposed is great,” the judge wrote.“The Bric program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives,” Stearns added. “The potential hardship to the government, in contrast, is minimal.”Led by Massachusetts and Washington, the 20 states that sued also include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.The offices of Massachusetts’ and Washington’s attorneys general had no immediate comment. More

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      Trump firing of statistics chief puts US data credibility at risk, experts warn

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      Donald Trump’s firing of the head of the main agency for producing jobs figures risks propelling the US into the same category as countries notorious for “cooking the books” such as Argentina and Greece, experts have warned.Donald Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner last Friday, after accusing her agency of “faking” the latest employment figures for “political purposes,” which showed the US economy adding a lower-than-expected 73,000 jobs in July.The BLS, the US government official source for labor statistics since 1884, also revised down the estimates of new positions created in May and June by a combined 258,000.Trump provided no evidence for his accusations against McEntarfer, which he reinforced in social media posts on Monday, calling the bureau’s latest reports “rigged” and concocted.But his decision jeopardizes the US’s tradition of impartial and reliable statistic collection on which the country’s economic stability and international reputation depends, specialists have told the Guardian.Erica Groshen, McEnterfer’s predecessor as BLS commissioner during Barack Obama’s presidency, warned earlier this year that an impending civil-servant rule change that presaged last Friday’s sacking could usher in a “politicization” of government statistical bodies – whereby experts are pressured to produce massaged numbers that fitted an incumbent president’s agenda.She raised the specter of Greece and Argentina, where official statistics became discredited as a result of government-instigated misrepresenting of figures.The International Monetary Fund stopped accepting the Argentinian government’s inflation figures in 2013 after officials were found to have deliberately understated the rate for the previous six years.After threatening Argentina – historically one of the IMF’s biggest borrowers – with expulsion, the organization did not extend another loan to it until 2018.In the case of Greece, government statisticians were accused of having made inflation and soaring budget deficits “disappear” in the 1990s as the country sought respectable-looking numbers that would enable to qualify for the single European currency, the euro.Greece subsequently joined the currency, but at an exorbitant long-term price. The 2008 global financial crash plunged its economy into a deep recession, and the government was forced to accept multi-billion dollar bailouts from the IMF and European Union – at the cost of painful cuts to social services.Andreas Georgiou, who became head of Greece’s main statistics agency during the crisis, even faced prosecution after he discovered that authorities had been dramatically understating budget deficits for years.Both countries experienced severe political backlashes.In Argentina, after two further IMF loans failed to stabiliize its economy, Javier Milei, a populist economist and ally of Trump, was elected in 2023 promising to take a chainsaw to the governing bureaucracy and many public services.In Greece, a succession of left and rightwing governments have taken office amid a rise in support for radical and populist parties, giving rise to concerns for the health of the country’s democracy.Talking to the Guardian, Groshen warned of comparable scenarios following a rule change rolled by the White House’s office of personnel management in April.“Bureau of Labor Statistics leaders could be fired for releasing or planning to release jobs or inflation statistics unfavorable to the president’s policy agenda,” she wrote in a briefing paper.The revision altered the category of about 50,000 permanent civil servants to “policy/career” status, making their removal easier.Originally tabled in April to allow 30 days for comments, it gave agencies the right “to expeditiously remove career employees in policy-influencing positions for poor performance or misconduct, such as corruption or for injecting partisanship into the performance of their official duties”.The precise roles of officials affected were not defined, but Groshen pointed out that, if implemented, the president would determine who would be reclassified.The change stemmed from an executive order Trump issued on his first day back in the White House on 20 January. It stated that the power of “policy-influencing” civil servants is “delegated by the president, and they must be accountable to the president”.Groshen, now a specialist in government statistics at Cornell University, said the changes in civil servant status would make it easier for the government to tamper with numbers it disliked.“There are a number of changes to the civil service that makes it much easier for the administration to interfere with the activities of statistical agencies and that worries me,” she said.Under increased threat of removal, civil servants in federal statistics bodies “might also face pressure to change methodologies or reveal pre-release information”, she wrote.“By making it easier to remove employees if a president determines that they are interfering with his or her policies, it increases the potential for passivity or political loyalty to be prioritized over expertise and experience.” More

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      Texas House reconvenes without quorum as Democrats flee state

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      Texas Democrats in the state legislature denied its speaker a legislative quorum Monday by leaving the state, forestalling plans proposed by the White House to redistrict Texas’s congressional lines to more greatly favor Republicans.When the legislature gaveled in at 3pm local time on Monday, Republicans fell short of a quorum by eight votes after Democrats fled to Illinois, a legislative conference in Boston, New York and elsewhere.In an extraordinary escalation, the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said he he had ordered the Texas department of public safety to “locate, arrest and return to the House chamber any member who has abandoned their duty to Texans”.“There are consequences for dereliction of duty,” Abbott said in a statement on Monday, after the Republican-dominated House issued civil arrest warrants in an attempt to compel the return of the members who fled. “This order will remain in effect until all missing Democrat House members are accounted for and brought to the Texas Capitol.”Democrats hold 62 of the 150 seats in the legislature’s lower chamber, so as long as at least 51 members remain out of Austin, the Texas legislature cannot move forward with any votes, including a plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps to give Republicans five more seats in Congress.The Texas speaker, Representative Dustin Burrows, adjourned the house until 1pm on Tuesday after issuing a call for absent lawmakers and threatening their arrest. He cited pending legislation on flood relief and human trafficking – and not the contentious redistricting proposal before the chamber – in his call for Democrats to return.“Instead of confronting those challenges, some of our colleagues have fled the state in their duty,” Burrows said. “They’ve left the state, abandoned their posts and turned their backs on the constituents they swore to represent. They’ve shirked their responsibilities under the direction and pressure of out-of-state politicians and activists who don’t know the first thing about what’s right for Texas.”Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who fled his own impeachment hearings and refused a court order to release his travel records after speaking at the rally in Washington that preceded the January 6 insurrection, has described wayward Democratic legislators as “cowards”.Speaker Burrows said the house would not sit quietly. “While you obstruct the work of the people, the people of Texas are watching and so is the nation, and if you choose to continue down this road, you should know there will be consequences.”The Texas House Democratic Caucus said in response: “Come and take it.”“We are not fighting for the Democratic party,” state representative James Tallarico said in a video message recorded at an airport. “We are fighting for the democratic process, and the stakes could not be higher. We have to take a stand.”Most of the Democratic caucus absconded to Chicago, a city with a Democratic mayor and city council in a state with a Democratic governor and legislature.Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who owns the Chicago Hyatt hotel, announced on Monday he would provide free rooms to the Texas Democrats for as long as they are out of state.A special session of the Texas legislature lasts for 30 days, but Abbott can renew the call for a special session at will. Under new rules the Texas house adopted in 2021, each lawmaker will be fined $500 a day for each day they abscond from the state. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene says Republican party has lost touch with its base

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene, historically one of the most prominent voices in Donald Trump’s Maga movement, has declared in an interview that she feels that the Republican party has lost touch with its base, but she said she has no plans to leave the party.After telling the Daily Mail this week she was questioning whether she still belongs in the Republican fold, the Georgia congresswoman told the Guardian she would not become independent or seek a third party option.“No – I’m urging my own party to support ‘America first’,” Greene said.Still, she made clear resounding frustration with GOP leadership and her place within the party’s planning.“I don’t know if the Republican party is leaving me, or if I’m kind of not relating to Republican party as much any more,” Greene said in the Daily Mail interview. “I don’t know which one it is.”Greene, who boasts 7.5 million followers on X and commands one of the largest social media audiences of any Republican woman, accused party leaders of betraying core conservative principles.She did not criticize Trump himself, instead preferring to express her ire for what she attempted to paint as political elites.“I think the Republican party has turned its back on America First and the workers and just regular Americans,” she said, warning that GOP leadership was reverting to its “neocon” past under the influence of what she termed the “good ole boys” network.The 51-year-old lawmaker, in the roughly six-month mark following Trump’s return to the White House, said she was particularly frustrated with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, saying: “I’m not afraid of Mike Johnson at all.”Her remarks reflect a broader pattern of voter dissatisfaction with traditional party structures. Americans appear to also be holding deeply unfavorable views of both major parties: a July Wall Street Journal poll found 63% view the Democratic party unfavorably, its worst rating in 35 years, while Republicans fare only marginally better in most surveys.Independent or independent-leaning Americans now account for nearly half the electorate, according to July Gallup polling, and public support has increasingly shifted toward Democrats through those leaners in recent months.On Monday, Greene used social media to criticize the lack of accountability over what she deems key issues to the base, sharing a table showing no arrests for the “Russian Collusion Hoax”, “Jan 6th”, and “2020 Election”.“Like what happened all those issues? You know that I don’t know what the hell happened with the Republican Party. I really don’t,” she said in the interview. “But I’ll tell you one thing, the course that it’s on, I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and I just don’t care any more.”Her recent bills have targeted unconventional Republican territory: preventing cloud-seeding, making English the official US language, and cutting capital gains taxes on homes. She is also the first Republican in Congress to label the crisis in Gaza a genocide, and has called for ending foreign aid and using the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to cut down fraud and waste in the government.Greene acknowledged her isolation within the party, saying: “I’m going alone right now on the issues that I’m speaking about.” More