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      Trump’s inner circle shifted view to support limited, one-off strike on Iran nuclear sites

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      Donald Trump’s move to bomb three nuclear sites in Iran came as those inside his orbit who were opposed to US intervention in the conflict shifted their views in favor of a limited and one-off strike.The US president had been under immense pressure from Republican anti-interventionists not to engage in any action against Iran out of concern that the US might be dragged into a protracted engagement to topple Iran’s leadership, or that strikes on facilities might have limited success.Some advisers both inside and outside the White House tried to dissuade him from becoming entangled in what they characterized as a conflict started by Israel. They initially suggested the US could continue to help Israel with support from the intelligence community.But in recent days, as Trump increasingly considered the prospect of strikes and told advisers he had no interest in a prolonged war to bring about regime change, some advisers shifted their public arguments to suggesting the US could do a quick bombing run if Israel could do nothing further.The evolving views gave Trump some cover to order a bombing run that targeted the three nuclear facilities in Iran. A US official said on Saturday that the strikes were complete, the B-2 bombers used in the raid were out of Iranian airspace and no further follow-up attacks were planned.However, the strikes will inevitably be seen by some as a victory for hardliners in the US who have pushed for a tough stance on Iran, a firm backing of Israel’s attack on the country and direct US military involvement in that effort.The US strikes in the end were limited to Iran’s nuclear uranium-enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, the facility buried deep underground that is seen as the most difficult to take offline, and a third site at Isfahan, where Iran was believed to have stored its near-weapons-grade uranium.It was unclear whether the bombing run did enough damage to set back Iran’s ability to acquire a nuclear weapon, and whether Iran had already moved the weapons-grade uranium out of the Isfahan laboratory as some officials suggested.Trump appeared to view the bombing run as comparable to his drone strike to assassinate Gen Qassem Suleimani of Iran, one of his proudest accomplishments from his first term and one he mentioned repeatedly at campaign rallies, despite his denouncements of US military action in the Middle East.Like he did after the Suleimani operation, Trump posted a giant graphic of the American flag on his Truth Social account shortly after he described the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities as “very successful” in a post announcing details of the operation.The comparison appeared to be an additional effort to underscore his intentions that he does not want a wider war with Iran and was only focused on the necessary steps to ensure Iran could not develop a nuclear weapon.Whether that hope plays out could depend on large part on how Iran interprets the strikes and its ability to retaliate. If Iranian leaders perceived them to be limited, it could lead to a more measured response. But if seen as too disproportionate, and with little to lose, Iran could open frontal attacks on numerous US bases in the region. More

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      Thousands of Afghans face expulsion from US as Trump removes protections

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      Thousands of Afghans who fled to the US as the Taliban grabbed power again in Afghanistan are in mortal dread of being deported back to danger in the coming weeks amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown.Many, including some who assisted US forces in Afghanistan before the botched withdrawal by the military in 2021, are contending with threats to their legal status in the US on several fronts.Donald Trump revoked safeguards from deportation for those in the US covered under temporary protected status (TPS), by taking Afghanistan off the list of eligible countries then, not long after, put Afghanistan on the list of countries affected by the revamped travel ban.Afghans are also affected by Trump’s refugee ban and that all comes amid almost daily news of stepped-up arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) affecting undocumented immigrants and also many with a legal status, from Central and South America, parts of Africa and Asia and other regions, caught in the dragnet and sending terror rippling through other communities.Shir Agha Safi, the executive director of Afghan Partners in Des Moines, a non-profit in Iowa where there are 500 families who evacuated from Afghanistan to escape the re-empowered Taliban, said members of his community are “traumatized because they have seen what happened to Venezuelan immigrants in other states”.The loss of TPS for Afghans, which also provides employment authorization, goes into effect on 14 July.With the government’s announcement, Safi said some in his community are too afraid to speak openly but had told him “they would choose suicide over being tortured and killed by the Taliban”.Asked to elaborate, he said: “They have said this because the Taliban is still there and if you send an Afghan back to Afghanistan that would mean a death penalty.”The US government initially granted Afghans in the US TPS in 2022, because the Biden administration agreed that it was too risky for them to return to Afghanistan due to the armed conflict and political turmoil that has forced millions to flee the country. Even before Trump returned to the White House their foothold in US society was uncertain.Now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argues that Afghanistan is safe to go back to.“Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country,” homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said in a recent statement.The department cited rising tourism as a factor, with the Federal Register’s item about revoking TPS for Afghans saying “tourism to Afghanistan has increased, as the rates of kidnappings have reduced”. It quotes that from a US Institute of Peace report that assessed conditions three years after the Taliban took back control and does include that sentence – but the majority of the report describes negative conditions in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, where “the rule of law has been replaced by the rule of force, where justice is not administered in courts but meted out through fear and violence”.The US state department website, meanwhile, puts the country in the highest-risk advice category for US citizens, warning: “Do not travel to Afghanistan due to civil unrest, crime, terrorism, risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping, and limited health facilities.”But immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers say Taliban-controlled Afghanistan remains a dangerous country for many, especially minorities, women and those who assisted the foreign war effort, including humanitarian work. Some foreigners living in Afghanistan have been arrested by the Taliban this year and detained for weeks.California state senator Aisha Wahab, the first Afghan American woman elected to US public office, challenged the Trump administration’s decision.“Pushing these individuals to Afghanistan again – Afghanistan being a country that lacks basic human rights, basic women’s rights, basic humanitarian support, a legal and justice system – is problematic,” said Wahab, who represents some of the largest Afghan immigrant communities in northern California.“Afghanistan is a country that is landlocked, that struggles with trade, that more than 50% of their population are not allowed to get an education beyond sixth grade. It’s a fact that it is led by a deeply religious regime that has a lot of problems,” she added.Hundreds of Afghans have been publicly flogged by the authorities since the Taliban took over in 2021, the Guardian reported last month.In a bipartisan approach, US Senators Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, have written jointly to secretary of state Marco Rubio.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are writing to express profound concern over the recent decision to terminate temporary protected status (TPS) for over 8,000 Afghan nationals currently residing in the United States. This decision endangers thousands of lives, including Afghans who stood by the United States. This decision represents a historic betrayal of promises made and undermines the values we fought for far more than 20 years in Afghanistan,” the letter reads.It added that revoking TPS, especially for women and minority groups, “exposes these individuals to the very real threat of persecution, violence and even death under Taliban rule”.While the US government hasn’t laid out a deportation plan, it has encouraged Afghans who lose their TPS status to leave the country.However, a DHS official said: “Any Afghan who fears persecution is able to request asylum. All aliens who have had their TPS or parole terminated or are otherwise in the country unlawfully should take advantage of the CBP Home self-deportation process to receive a free one-way plane ticket and $1,000 financial assistance to help them resettle elsewhere.”Bipartisan efforts to give Afghans permanent legal status in the US previously stalled for three years, with the Biden administration creating temporary avenues for those in limbo.Many Afghan families in the US still depend on the future of TPS, said Jill Marie Bussey, the director for legal affairs at Global Refuge, an immigrant rights group that has helped thousands of Afghans settle in the US.“Protection from deportation is the center, but the work authorization associated with the status is the only thing that is allowing them to send money to their loved ones right now and keeping them safe,” said Bussey.“I have a client, whom I message with almost on a daily basis, who is absolutely distraught, at a very high level of anxiety, because he fears that his spouse and children, including his four-year-old daughter, whom he’s never met in person, will suffer greatly if he loses his work authorization.”According to government data, since July of 2021, US Citizenship and Immigration Services has received nearly 22,000 asylum applications by Afghan nationals. Nearly 20,000 of them were granted.But given the immigration court backlog, which totals 3.5 million active cases and an average wait time between five to 636 days, many Afghans still haven’t heard any news on their applications on other status available to them, Bussey added.In a similar scenario are those who worked for the US government in Afghanistan and arrived on American soil. Many are still waiting for an approval from the US Department of State that would validate their eligibility for a special immigration visa (SIV), Bussey added. “Some were hesitant to apply for asylum because they were eligible for SIV and were waiting for their approval in order to apply for their green card,” she said. But things are badly held up in the backlog.“They were promised that green card based on their allyship to our country and then applying for asylum felt like a betrayal, an imperfect fit for them,” said Bussey.The Guardian requested information on how many Afghans currently protected by TPS have also been granted other legal status, but DHS did not respond. More

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      Relief and a raised fist as Mahmoud Khalil goes free – but release ‘very long overdue’

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      Mahmoud Khalil squinted in the afternoon sun as he walked away from the fences topped with razor wire, through two tall gates and out into the thick humidity of central Louisiana.After more than three months detained in this remote and notorious immigration detention center in the small town of Jena, he described a bittersweet feeling of release, walking towards a handful of journalists with a raised fist, visibly relieved, but composed and softly spoken.“Although justice prevailed, it’s very long overdue and this shouldn’t have taken three months,” he said, after a federal judge in New Jersey compelled the Trump administration to let him leave detention as his immigration case proceeds.“I leave some incredible men behind me, over one thousand people behind me, in a place where they shouldn’t have been,” he said. “I hope the next time I will be in Jena is to actually visit.”Flanked by two lawyers, and speaking at a roadside framed by the detention center in the backdrop, he told the Guardian how his 104 days in detention had changed him and his politics.“The moment you enter this facility, your rights leave you behind,” he said.He pointed to the sprawling facility now behind him.“Once you enter there, you see a different reality,” he said. “Just a different reality about this country that supposedly champions human rights and liberty and justice. Once you cross, literally that door, you see the opposite side of what happens on this country.”Khalil is the most high profile of the students arrested and detained by the Trump administration for their pro-Palestinian activism. He was the final one left in detention, following an arrest that saw him snatched from his Columbia apartment building in New York.View image in fullscreenThe Trump administration has labelled Khalil a national security threat and invoked rarely used powers of the secretary of state under immigration law to seek his removal. The administration has fought vigorously to keep Khalil detained and continues to push for his removal from the US.Asked by the Guardian what his response to these allegations were, Khalil replied: “Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this. That doesn’t mean there is a right person for this. There is no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide.”He spoke briefly of his excitement of seeing his newborn son for the first time away from the supervision of the Department of Homeland security. The baby was born while Khalil was held in detention. He looked forward to their first hug in private. He looked forward to seeing his wife, who had been present at the time of his arrest.He smiled briefly.And then he turned back towards a car, ready to take him on the first leg of a journey back home. More

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      Iran says diplomacy with US only possible if Israeli aggression stops

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      Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said that his country is ready for more diplomacy with the US only if Israel’s war on his country is brought to an end “and the aggressor is held accountable for the crimes he committed”.After several hours of talks with European foreign ministers in Geneva on Friday, there was no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough – or a resumption of negotiations with the US.Araghchi said: “Iran is ready to consider diplomacy once again and once the aggression is stopped and the aggressor is held accountable for the crimes committed. We support the continuation of discussion with [Britain, France, Germany and the EU] and express our readiness to meet again in the near future.”Late on Friday, Donald Trump said he was unlikely to press Israel to scale back its campaign to allow negotiations to continue.“I think it’s very hard to make that request right now. If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.Araghchi said he was willing to continue talks with his European counterparts since they have not supported Israel’s attacks directly. But he said Iran was “seriously concerned over the failure of the three countries to condemn Israel’s act of aggression” and would continue to exercise its right to “legitimate defence”.He also said Iran’s capabilities, including its missile capabilities, are non-negotiable, and could not form part of the talks, a rebuff to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who in an earlier statement said they should be included in the talks.With Israeli diplomats and military commanders warning of a “prolonged war”, the route to direct talks between the US and Iran remains blocked, leaving the European countries as intermediaries.After Friday’s talks between Araghchi and his British, French and German counterparts, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “This is a perilous moment, and it is hugely important that we don’t see regional escalation of this conflict.”The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said there “can be no definitive solution through military means to the Iran nuclear problem. Military operations can delay it but they cannot eliminate it.”The talks are being held against the backdrop of Trump’s threat that the US could launch its own military assault on Iran within a fortnight – a step that would probably turn the already bloody war into a full-scale regional conflagration.European diplomats said they came to talks to deliver a tough message from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and special envoy, Steve Witkoff: that the threat of US military action is real but that a “diplomatic pathway remains open”.But without direct talks between the US and Iran it is hard to see how an agreement can be reached to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme in a way that satisfies the US headline demand that Iran must never have a nuclear bomb.Trump suggested that European efforts would not be enough to bring any resolution. He said: “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”The European ministers said they had expressed their longstanding concerns about Iran’s expansion of its nuclear programme, “which has no credible civilian purpose and is in violation of almost all provisions in the nuclear deal agreed in 2015”.The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said: “Today the regional escalation benefits no one. We must keep the discussions open.”Earlier on Friday, Macron said the European offer to end Israel’s war would include an Iranian move to zero uranium enrichment, restrictions on its ballistic missile programme and an end to Tehran’s funding of terrorist groups.The proposals were surprisingly broad, spanning a range of complex issues beyond Iran’s disputed nuclear programme, and appeared likely to complicate any solution unless an interim agreement can be agreed.One proposal recently aired is for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment for the duration of Donald Trump’s presidency. The concept of uranium enrichment being overseen by a consortium of Middle East countries – including Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – remains on the table.Macron, already accused by Trump of publicity seeking this week, set out a daunting agenda. “It’s absolutely essential to prioritise a return to substantial negotiations, including nuclear negotiations to move towards zero [uranium] enrichment, ballistic negotiations to limit Iran’s activities and capabilities, and the financing of all terrorist groups and destabilisation of the region that Iran has been carrying out for several years,” he said.In the previous five rounds of talks, the US insisted that Iran end its entire domestic uranium enrichment programme, but said it would allow Iran to retain a civil nuclear programme, including by importing enriched uranium from a multinational consortium.Iran claims that as a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, it has an absolute legal right to enrich uranium, a position neither the European nor American powers have endorsed. In the past, European negotiators have proved more adept than their US partners in finding compromises, including the temporary suspension of domestic enrichment, a principle Tehran reluctantly endorsed between 2003 and 2004. More

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      CDC vaccine panel to review ingredient RFK Jr has targeted for removal

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      A key vaccine advisory panel reconstituted by health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr is slated to discuss thimerosal-containing influenza vaccines in its first meeting – an ingredient which has been a fixation of anti-vaccine activists for decades.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will hold two separate votes later this month: one on “influenza vaccines” and one on influenza vaccines that contain thimerosal.Thimerosal is an ethylmercury preservative used in multi-dose vaccine vials to prevent fungi and bacteria growth. The preservative has been studied and deemed safe, but was nevertheless removed from all routine childhood vaccines in 2001 as a precaution.“I was there when we went through this the first time,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center and an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, about debates over the preservative in the early 2000s.Offit served on the ACIP panel in question from 1998 to 2003. He said the issue of thimerosal was vigorously debated and found safe then, prompting him to ask: “What’s the point?”In a short history of the thimerosal controversy published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Offit described how some parents became convinced thimerosal gave their children autism, resulting in thousands of autistic children receiving heavy metal chelation treatments each year.Studies have found no link between thimerosal and autism, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has also denied claims of a thimerosal-autism link. Kennedy, however, has written a book arguing against the use of thimerosal.Offit said the discussion of thimerosal appeared to geared to, “accomplish [Kennedy’s] goals of making vaccines less affordable, less accessible and more feared”, he said.“Here’s what you do know – you do know RFK Jr is an anti-vaccine, science-denying conspiracy theorist. He is devoted to this, he is a zealot, there is no middle ground with him,” said Offit. “He believes we have merely substituted infectious diseases for chronic diseases.”The panel’s advisory recommendations are critical because they result in vaccine “schedules”. These schedules are relied on by health insurers to determine which vaccines to cover and by clinicians who use them as an evidence-based guide on immunization – effectively giving the American public access to the medicines.Although the CDC does not always take the panel’s advice, the CDC typically affirms the panel’s decisions. However, the agency is currently without a leader, as Senate hearings have not yet been held for nominee and CDC career official Susan Monarez. As a result, Kennedy has signed off on some previous ACIP recommendations.Kennedy wrote a book on the preservative thimerosal in 2014 called Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak, in which he argues that “there is a broad consensus among research scientists that thimerosal is a dangerous neurotoxin that should be immediately removed from medicines”. Kennedy said in the book he is “pro-vaccine”.Until 9 June, the ACIP was an independent panel of 17 experts who served staggered terms and were rigorously vetted by career CDC staff. Kennedy broke with tradition when he fired the entire panel, claiming in a Wall Street Journal editorial that he was working to “restore public trust in vaccines”.The same week, Kennedy appointed eight new members to the committee, including medical professionals with little vaccine expertise and known vaccine skeptics.A wide spectrum of groups criticized the decision, from MomsRising, who said they were “alarmed and disgusted”, to major doctors’ groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, to public health leaders who described Kennedy’s actions as “a coup,” to the former members of the committee, who warned the independent panel was at “a crossroads”.The group is scheduled to meet the last week of June. Prior to Kennedy’s changes, they had been expected to discuss reducing the number of shots needed for human papilloma virus (HPV) and a meningococcal vaccine.On Wednesday, the panel released a draft agenda for its upcoming meeting. A wide range of vaccines will be discussed – including those against influenza; the tropical disease chikungunya; the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) vaccine; anthrax; Covid and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).The agenda scheduled a vote on recommendations for flu vaccines, including the multidose versions that still contain thimerosal. These vaccines are used only in adolescents and adults. The panel is also scheduled to vote on recommendations for maternal and pediatric versions of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).Notably, despite Kennedy’s repeated pledges of “radical transparency”, the draft agenda does not include the names of many speakers, which are listed as “TBD” (to be determined) for instance on “Covid-19 safety update”.New ACIP members have not been added to a conflict of interest tracker for ACIP members developed by the Trump administration. A spokesperson for HHS said the new members ethics agreements “will be made public” before they start work with the committee.In addition to the new draft agenda, there have also been changes to the committee’s meeting times not reflected in the Federal Register, according to Politico. The group will meet for two days instead of three, and there does not appear to be a vote scheduled on Covid vaccines. More

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      Hegseth reportedly orders ‘passive approach to Juneteenth’ at Pentagon

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      The office of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, requested “a passive approach to Juneteenth messaging”, according to an exclusive Rolling Stone report citing a Pentagon email.This messaging request for Juneteenth, a federal holiday commemorating when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free, was transmitted by the Pentagon’s office of the chief of public affairs. This office said it was not poised to publish web content related to Juneteenth, Rolling Stone said.The mandate comes amid Donald Trump’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the government, including the US military, which Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has enthusiastically executed.“The President’s guidance (lawful orders) is clear: No more DEI at @DeptofDefense,” Hegseth said in a January post on X.“The Pentagon will comply, immediately. No exceptions, name-changes, or delays,” Hegseth also wrote. He posted an apparently hand-written note that read “DOD ≠ DEI.”Hegseth has continued to espouse anti-DEI talking points, claiming without evidence that these policies put military service members in harm’s way.In prepared testimony to a Senate hearing this week, Rolling Stone noted, Hegseth said: “DEI is dead. We replaced it with a color-blind, gender-neutral, merit-based approach, and the force is responding incredibly.”In response to Rolling Stone’s request for comment, the Pentagon said that the Department of Defense “may engage in the following activities, subject to applicable department guidance: holiday celebrations that build camaraderie and esprit de corps; outreach events (eg, recruiting engagements with all-male, all-female, or minority-serving academic institutions) where doing so directly supports DoD’s mission; and recognition of historical events and notable figures where such recognition informs strategic thinking, reinforces our unity, and promotes meritocracy and accountability”.Asked for comment by the Guardian, a defense spokesperson said: “We have nothing additional to provide on this.”President Joe Biden in 2021 made 19 June a federal holiday. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery in the midst of the civil war.It was not until this date in 1865 that enslaved Black persons in Galveston, Texas, were told about Lincoln’s decree. While Robert E Lee had surrendered that April, some supporters of the Confederacy continued to fight.Trump signed an executive order in January that eliminated DEI in the military. He also appeared to sound off on DEI initiatives in an address to graduating West Point cadets on 24 May.“They subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes, while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars. We fought for other countries’ borders but we didn’t fight for our own borders, but now we do like we have never fought before,” Trump said.He also stated “the job of the US armed forces is not to host drag shows or transform foreign cultures”, an apparent allusion to drag shows on US military installations.Biden’s defense department ended drag shows on military bases in 2023 amid Republican criticism. More

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      Ice is cracking down on Trump’s own supporters. Will they change their minds? | Tayo Bero

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      By now, the cycle of Donald Trump supporters being slapped in the face by his policies is common enough that it shouldn’t warrant a response. What is noteworthy is the fact that his crusade of mass deportations seems to have taken the Maga crowd by surprise in a way that makes little sense if you’ve been paying attention to Trump, his campaign promises, his party and the people he surrounds himself with.Even as they witness friends and family members hurt by this administration’s immigration clampdowns, some Trump supporters appear resistant to doing a full 180.Bradley Bartell, whose wife, Camila Muñoz, was recently detained, says he has no regrets about voting for Trump. Muñoz is from Peru and overstayed a work-study visa that expired right when Covid hit. She was trying to get permanent residency in the US when she was detained.“I don’t regret the vote,” Bartell told Newsweek. His rationale? Trump is a victim of a bad immigration system that his administration inherited. “He didn’t create the system but he does have an opportunity to improve it. Hopefully, all this attention will bring to light how broken it is.”For Jensy Machado from Manassas, Virginia, things are a bit more complex. Machado, a naturalized US citizen, was driving to work when, according to NBC 4, he was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, who brandished guns and surrounded his truck. According to Machado, a man facing a deportation order had given Machado’s home address as his, and when Machado assured agents that they had the wrong person and offered them his Virginia driver’s license, they ordered him to leave his car and handcuffed him.“I was a Trump supporter,” Machado, who is Hispanic, said. “I voted for Trump last election, but, because I thought it was going to be like … against criminals, not every Hispanic, Spanish-lookalike.“They will assume that we are all illegals,” he continued. “They’re just following Hispanic people.”Machado said his support for the administration had been shaken. Others have been rattled by how and where Trump’s policies are being applied.That dissonance is well articulated in a recent New York Times piece about a small Missouri town that supported Trump – and is now grappling with the effects of his decisions.Many residents of Kennett, Missouri, were stunned when a beloved neighbor, Carol, was arrested and jailed to await deportation after being summoned to Ice offices in St Louis in April. According to the government, Carol came to the US from Hong Kong in 2004, and has spent the past two decades trying to secure legal stay in the country, ultimately being granted a temporary permission to stay known as an order of supervision. Carol’s most recent order of supervision was supposed to be valid through August 2025, but on the day of her arrest, she was told it was being terminated.Now, despite the fact that she’s spent the last two decades building a life and community in this small town, getting married and buying a house, she’s spent weeks moving between jails as she awaits a final decision on her deportation.“I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” said Vanessa Cowart, who knows Carol from church. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves … This is Carol.”That last line – and the Kennett story as a whole – reveals a deeply American way of thinking about law and order and civil liberties: that anything is fair game once someone is considered a “criminal”. It’s an idea that has been sent into overdrive in the Trump years, where “criminal” has become a catch-all for the most evil, dangerous and undesirable in our communities, and shorthand for referencing anyone society doesn’t want to deal with.Trump ran on a campaign of hate, and the voters who helped cement that hatred and codify it into policy are now encountering the kind of state-sanctioned violence they endorsed at the ballot box.Still, to say “I told you so” in a moment like this is not only useless, it feels like a cruel understatement when the thing you were warning about is so destructive.So what can we learn from this? US leadership is clearly invested in the destruction of vulnerable American lives. If people who have been directly affected by Trump’s behaviour still find reasons to rationalize his leadership, it’s a reminder that ousting this regime will require the rest of us to speak out against tyranny and the establishment politics that got us here in the first place.

      Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘What’s so controversial about kids learning?’: students compete over history in the face of Trump cuts

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      View image in fullscreenIt only took 10 minutes for the trio of eighth-grade girls to recount the life story of Carol Ruckdeschel, the alligator-wrestling environmental activist sometimes called the “Jane Goodall of sea turtles”.Inside the student union at the University of Maryland, about a 20-minute drive from Washington DC, and armed with papier-mache reptiles, they embarked on a performance that included a litany of costume changes and a pony-tailed rendition of the late president Jimmy Carter, an ally of the 83-year-old Ruckdeschel’s work.When it concluded, the scary part began. A panel of judges peppered the girls with questions.Why did some people consider Ruckdeschel to be controversial?The girls hesitated. “Sorry,” said one, “but what does that word mean?”It was the first day of National History Day (NHD). In its 51st year, the annual US-based competition invites the top middle and high school students from more than half a million competitors to present their projects: documentaries, performances, websites, papers and exhibits on any topic from history, as long it adheres to the year’s theme. The winners get cash prizes and the admiration of their teenage peers.View image in fullscreenThe students come from all over – places like Oregon, Indonesia, North Dakota, Guam, Arkansas and China. Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, competed more than 20 years ago, as did Guy Fieri, whose project on the soft pretzel’s origin helped inspire a future career as a TV star restaurateur.I also competed in NHD, reaching the Florida state competition in 2007 and 2009 with my twin brother. As I reported this year, I joked with students that I’d finally made it to nationals, just 16 years too late. Hardly any of them were even alive then, and the national reality couldn’t have changed more.In April, NHD lost $336,000 after the Trump administration and the “department of government efficiency” slashed funding for the National Endowment of Humanities, putting NHD in jeopardy.“We had so many messages from kids saying, ‘Please, please, please we can’t let History Day go down,’” said Cathy Gorn, NHD executive director since 1995 and “the Taylor Swift of history”, as one student dubbed her last year (to many, there is no greater compliment). On social media she made an impassioned plea for donations. Last-ditch fundraising followed, including contributions from students, like a group from New York that held a bake sale and sent Gorn more than $300 in proceeds.With that, the competition found new legs – for this year, at least. “It’s kids learning,” said Gorn. “What is controversial about that?” And these students want to learn the full history – both its roses and its thorns, or what Alexis de Tocqueville called “reflective patriotism”.View image in fullscreen“They have no filter,” John Taylor, the NHD state-coordinator from Maine, told me. “They’ll call anyone and ask them anything.”When I competed, the cardinal rule was to abstain from any citing of Wikipedia, a transgression that today seems nostalgically benign. Students now learn to hunt down reputable sources in an era defined by untrustworthy generative AI and revisionist histories. Some students even found that sources they had cited in their research this spring – from governmental websites, no less – had disappeared altogether.“You start to realize that many of them do more research for NHD than you did for your master’s thesis,” Taylor laughed. He told me about a 130-page bibliography a student once turned in: “That thing could have taken down a woodland creature.”These are history-defining times. Do students at NHD see the parallels, the precedence, in their projects? “Oh yeah,” said Gorn, “they get it.”The scene from the student union last Monday could have come straight from a Where’s Waldo book. In one corner, a life-size cutout of George Washington leaned against a wall, until it was scooped up by girls in colonial-era ballgowns. Four lanky boys huddled together, their traffic-cone-orange dress shirts illuminated in the morning light. I heard a boy reading through a script, his manufactured accent undulating between George Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and wild west cowboy.In another hallway, lanyarded coordinators carried folders full of research papers and flash drives loaded with digital backups of student-directed documentaries (after a snafu at the state level, one group told me they had brought eight). Nervous students were tailed by teachers and nervous parents with little brothers and sisters in tow, just happy to be along for the ride.View image in fullscreenAs I walked in and out of competition rooms over the next three days, I saw a spectrum of stories that spoke to this year’s competition theme, “Rights and Responsibilities” – the Elgin marbles, birthright citizenship, lobotomies, Martin Luther King Jr, social security, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the first Black character to appear in Charlie Brown. The theme, which sought to magnify the relationship between individuals and society, seemed especially prescient, even though it is one of several that NHD has recycled over the years.At a table finishing up a meal from Chick-fil-A sat Chloe Montgomery, an eighth-grader from Indiana, with her father, Ryan. The topic she chose to research – the Salem witch trials – had been bubbling up for years. “You grow up hearing about the trials a lot,” said Chloe, “like in Hocus Pocus!”Her project had ascended from the local competition in her home town of Mishawaka, through regionals and states, all the way to nationals. Now, father and daughter were in the US capital for the very first time. She, too, was impressed by the spectrum of project topics: “I saw one about Green Day!”In the hallway after the performance about Ruckdeschel, I caught up with the eighth-grade trio. “We’ve had hundreds of sleepovers to work on this!” said Zoe Otis. Not only that, they had traveled from their homes in Knoxville, Tennessee, ferried from mainland Georgia and then biked about 35 miles roundtrip – “half of that was in the dark!” – to meet Ruckdeschel on Cumberland Island, where she lives alone in a cabin.They had spoken with the octogenarian recluse, who still keeps a research lab with jars of turtle guts and bugs. For the girls, it was an eye-opening experience that at times bordered on gut-wrenching. “There was a giant, dead boar on the side of her house,” said Gemma Walker. “She hunts, and eats roadkill.”“We always tell ourselves to ‘embrace the cringe’,” said Addy Aycocke, laughing. This, it turned out, was part of the reason Ruckdeschel was considered controversial, along with her decades-long jousting with the National Park Service and the Carnegie family over environmental protection of the island and its sea turtles.It’s this flavor of research – active, firsthand, hands-dirtying – that history professors at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who started NHD in 1974, saw as the antidote to the traditional textbooks and multiple choice repetition that often went hand in hand with learning history. A science-fair-like competition, they hoped, would propel students to both dig into dusty archives and track down primary accounts – to feel history, rather than to memorize it.View image in fullscreenLater on, I heard stray conversation about Trump’s deployment of the national guard and marines in Los Angeles. Less than 10 miles away, tanks were arriving in Washington for a military parade. “You look at the news, and all you see is negativity,” Gorn told a room of volunteer judges. “But spend a couple of days at National History Day and it’ll give you hope.”It was true. There was an attitude of genuine, mutual encouragement that seems difficult to come by these days. The students seem to understand that nothing is a zero-sum game, that striving for excellence and being amiable with competitors are not mutually exclusive.When I spoke to Gorn a week before, we had discussed the critical role of history, and its sometimes precarious place in the school curriculum.“No Child Left Behind left history education behind,” she said of the 2001 congressional act that, in a quest for equality and accountability in schools, shifted focus to standardized testing and left less time for the humanities. Meanwhile, the national emphasis on Stem subjects could be traced to the National Defense Education Act that followed the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957. These subjects are important – she doesn’t argue that – but “not at the expense of history”.“It’s a real disservice to our democracy,” said Colleen Shogan, who works with NHD and was archivist of the United States until February, when she was dismissed by Trump without reason. “We are not teaching kids how the constitution functions and what the principles are that we all agree upon as Americans.”View image in fullscreenThe politicized situations that some history teachers find themselves facing are a marked difference from when Gorn began in education in the 1980s. Disgruntled parents and school boards sometimes seek repercussions if lessons don’t align with their own interpretations of history, often along the lines of race and equity. “I’ve heard many [teachers] say, ‘If I can’t teach complete history, I can’t teach any more,” Gorn said.Not only that, she lamented the attitude that learning the thorny parts of the nation’s past is somehow teaching kids “to hate America”. Not true, she said. “Kids are resilient and they know when you’re pulling it over their eyes.” Young people need to understand that there has been struggle. “That’s how we develop empathy,” she said. “Learning history does that.”It was 6.58pm on Monday, and a crowd had gathered around flat screens throughout the student center. In a few minutes, they would display the list of competition finalists. Students were anxious. Some killed time by doing each other’s hair.At 7pm, several shrieks sounded. A little brother covered his ears and mouthed “Oww!” while student faces split into a telling binary of smiles and frowns. Teachers and parents – quite a respectful bunch when compared with the kind you might find on a suburban soccer field – squinted to read the tiny font. “Maybe that judge wasn’t so bad after all,” said one mother.Three of the smiling students were from Minnesota. Sara Rosenthal and Helen Collins had been selected to move on for their documentary about Radio Free Europe, the American soft-power station begun during the cold war to spread democratic influence to communist countries. Their friend, Jack Grauman, was also advancing. For months, he had researched Frank Kameny for his one-person performance about the astronomer who had been removed from the US army in 1957 for being gay.It was “powerful” to be headed to the finals, Grauman said, and just miles away from Washington, no less, where the current administration is targeting LGBTQ+ rights. Meanwhile, funding for Radio Free Europe is on the Doge chopping block, as are press freedoms around the world. Their teacher told me the girls had to update the ending of their documentary several times to keep up.Even here, students and educators sometimes hesitated before answering my questions. One group of students, from Singapore, was talkative until I asked about their projects’ relevance to today – one was specifically about American borders. In my periphery, I saw their classmates miming the slit-throat gesture, as if to say “don’t answer that one”.Later, I spoke with a group of judges inside the forest of elaborate poster board presentations. One of them kindly declined to go on the record: “I’m a federal worker. I don’t want any attention.”View image in fullscreenBack with the Minnesotans, the outlook was rosy. How would they be celebrating? “We’re going to the dance!”Before leaving campus for the evening, I poked my head into what I’d expected to be an awkward affair. Bass of early 2000s hits – oldies to this crowd – pounded through the walls. I passed two middle-schoolers outside.“It’s weird to talk about your exes to your new boyfriend, you know?”“But I want to know everything!”Inside, hundreds of students were cherishing their success or drowning their relative disappointment with fruit juices and soda. It was a mocktail of hoodies, high heels, recycled homecoming dresses, black-suited vests, and one especially-civic-minded student in a T-shirt that said “Support Local Music”.The trading of pins – each state or country delegation had brought their own – provided much of the necessary social lubrication.And then it was Thursday: results day. Across the hardwood of an indoor arena, delegations marched in like at an Olympic closing ceremony, some carrying flags and inflatable animals and wearing bedazzled top-hats.View image in fullscreenOnce everyone took their seats, Gorn stepped up to the microphone, pumped her hands in the air and roared: “Happy History Day everybody!” Then she teed up a special treat: a congratulatory video from a real-life Thunderbird pilot and NHD alum.Finally, it was time to hear the results. It was a successful day for the Minnesotan contingent. Grauman won a special prize for “equality in history”, climbing the steps to the stage wearing a large smile and a pair of Crocs. Almost two hours of nervous waiting later, Rosenthal and Collins heard their names announced at last – the silver for middle school documentary was theirs. The gold went to a pair of students from Chiang Mai, Thailand, for their look into the UK miners’ strike of 1984.If funding comes through, next year’s NHD theme – “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History” – will again seem especially relevant. If there was a silver lining to the uncertainty, Gorn said, it was that students felt how a decision made far away in the nation’s capital could directly affect them.As Vritti Udasi, a high schooler from Florida, told me: “The place where we are today didn’t come out of thin air. If we study history, dissect it, then we can progress.” More