World news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 225 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      They fled war and sexual violence and found a safe space in Athens. Then the aid cuts hit

      by

      The night of 29 May was sombre at 15 Mitsaki Street, a women’s shelter in the centre of Athens. Shoes, winter coats, shampoo bottles and sheets lay strewn around: belongings the 30 refugee women and five children living there had worked hard to acquire, and would now have to abandon. The next day, the shelter would be shuttered for good.“I was so stressed I couldn’t sleep,” says Oksana Kutko, a Ukrainian. “I knew I had nowhere to go.”Operated by the Greek aid organisation METAdrasi since 2020, the shelter’s closure came as a shock.Kutko, 51, had been living there for three years after fleeing Russian bombs in Kharkiv. She hauled what she could carry to a nearby church.Residents could not find alternative accommodation in the short time they were given to leave. A Congolese woman with a seven-year-old son simply laid out a sheet on the pavement outside.By evening, everyone had vacated the refuge, except for one woman.Évodie*, a woman in her 20s who fled severe sexual abuse and violence in the Republic of the Congo, refused to leave. For days after the other women had gone, Évodie clung to the place: the last semblance of stability in her life of uncertainty.Already in a fragile mental and emotional state, losing her place at the shelter cast her back into memories of horrific abuse. Eventually, the police evicted Évodie. She spent the next month homeless.The shelter’s closure is the new reality brought by governments’ overseas aid funding cuts, people with fragile lives being left without lifelines, struggling to stay afloat.“These women’s need for a safe place, their need for hope for the future, their need to heal the past – all these things are connected,” says Thaleia Portokaloglou, a psychologist who knows Évodie from the Melissa Network, an organisation for refugee women in Athens.As support is withdrawn, Portokaloglou is seeing women unravel. How do you ask a person pulled apart like that to keep functioning, she asks.The closure of the Mitsaki Street shelter can be traced back to 20 January 2025, when President Donald Trump, froze the US foreign aid budget hours after his inauguration. Contracts with humanitarian organisations were terminated and over the following months support networks in many countries, including Greece, were gutted; METAdrasi lost a third of its budget, resulting in the shelter’s closure.Greece has received nearly 1.3 million refugees and migrants since 2014. The wait to be granted asylum can take years, leaving many people dependent on humanitarian organisations while their cases are being processed.View image in fullscreenEuropean governments have also been steadily slashing their overseas aid budgets, diverging sharply from the postwar global consensus on humanitarian relief.Lefteris Papagiannakis, director of the Greek Council for Refugees, says: “We are losing the whole of the international protection system that has been in place for the last 80 years in six months.”Meanwhile, Athens has hardened its stance on migration – parliament suspended asylum applications from north Africa in July and instigated laws this month that could mean rejected asylum seekers receiving prison terms if they do not leave within 14 days.Around the world, humanitarian networks have been thrown into chaos. Dimitra Kalogeropoulou, director of the International Rescue Committee in Greece, says: “We are facing an unseen crisis where people are really suffering.”On 30 June, between walls hung with Afghan tapestries, officials from Greece’s migrant-support organisations held an emergency meeting at the Melissa Network.The NGO leaders were visibly shaken. Minutes earlier, they had left an interagency meeting of the Greek branch of the refugee agency, the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR).“All of us are facing an existential crisis,” says Nadina Christopoulou, director and co-founder of the Melissa Network.Before January, 90% of the UNHCR’s funding in Greece came from the US state department, says Papagiannakis. Now, half the funding and half the staff are gone. “Unfortunately, Europe is not stepping in,” he says. “They say, ‘Ah, that’s a good opportunity! We’ll stop too.’”The cuts mean aid organisations have been forced to make hard decisions. Funding for victims of sexual violence has been cut across the board.Christopoulou put it in simple terms: 970 asylum seekers would be stranded without assistance. At least 100 survivors of sexual violence would lose essential services, including emergency housing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreen“People will no longer come to our centre because they feel it is undignified to come without having taken a shower, without having slept on a bed – and perhaps having been raped overnight,” Christopoulou says. “Because that’s what happens when you sleep in a park.”After her eviction from the METAdrasi shelter, Évodie slept rough in parks and squares for a month. Christopoulou knows from Évodie’s case worker, Irida, that homelessness plunged her into a devastating mental spiral. She has since found a space in a new refuge, but remains uncertain how long she will be able to stay there.When Évodie first came to Melissa in 2023, traumatised by her experiences in the Congo, she did not speak and, unable to find housing, spent nights in a park where she was further harassed. Eventually, Melissa secured a hostel place for her, before she moved into the METAdrasi refuge.Initially, she sat in a corner, without saying a word. It was a surprise, then, when she decided to join Melissa’s choir.On 8 March last year, Évodie stepped on stage and started to sing. Those in the audience who knew her were stunned. “I was crying,” Christiana Kyrkou, a project manager at the Melissa Network, says.“It was one of the first times I heard, loudly and clearly, her voice,” Christopoulou recalls. “Everybody was happy, but Évodie was Oscar happy!”View image in fullscreenWeekly self-defence training sessions offered a space for Évodie to open up. The class instructor, Konstantinos Koufaliotis, says she was his most frequent participant.One day, after Évodie mastered the basics, Koufaliotis taught her how to throw him to the ground. He landed on the foam mats with such a bang that Christopoulou rushed to the room asking if everything was OK.“Évodie laughed and laughed, because she created this,” Koufaliotis says. “She owned that moment.”Over the summer, she opened up to Koufaliotis about her difficulty in trusting those around her. When the conversations were too much for her, Koufaliotis would put up his boxing mitts and they would go back to training.Victims of sexual violence have every reason not to trust people. “Even if you do manage to get out of the circumstances that have created trauma, it’s such a fragile edifice,” Christopoulou says. “What you’re building is so fragile that it may easily fall apart into pieces again.”Now, as funding dries up, and services from therapy to housing face being wrenched away in an instant, hard-earned trust that NGOs have taken years to build up vanishes with it.The shelter’s closure left Évodie once again sees everything as a threat and everyone as an aggressor. She is distrustful of those trying to help her. Melissa’s staff believe this will be a commonplace reaction as since the funding cuts began, needs have turned from healing to survival.“There’s a shift from more psychological requests to more practical, more urgent ones,” Portokaloglou says. “We’re going back to those very primal, basic requests.”The prospect of future funding cuts now risks the survival of the whole Greek humanitarian network. The only certainty is that no programmes will be left unscathed. “It’s vertical, horizontal, diagonal,” says Christopoulou. “Everybody’s impacted.”* Name has been changed to protect her identity More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Why is the Trump administration obsessed with autism? – podcast

      by

      Archive: Good Morning America, NPR, NBC News, WHAS11, BBC News, CBS News, Jimmy Kimmel Live, LiveNowFox
      Listen to Science Weekly’s episode factchecking Trump’s claims about paracetamol
      Buy Carter Sherman’s book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over its Future, here
      Buy Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitor’s Circle, here
      Buy John Harris’ book, Maybe I’m Amazed, about connecting with his son James, diagnosed with autism as a child, through music
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
      Support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politicspodus More

    • 238 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump celebrates James Comey indictment as ex-FBI director says ‘I’m innocent: let’s have a trial’ – as it happened

      by

      This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. We will return on Friday morning. Here are the latest developments:

      Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, as the White House aide he installed as a prosecutor this week indicted the man Trump holds largely responsible for the Russia investigation.

      Trump celebrated the indictment of “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to”, in a social media post that could be used as evidence that the prosecution is politically motivated.

      “I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either,” Comey said in an Instagram video statement. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial.”

      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the federal prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month.

      Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”

      Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the justice department and the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce to investigate what he claimed is an organized campaign of political violence and domestic terrorism funded by Democrats.

      The House Democratic campaign arm believes their lawmakers have the advantage in the tense battle over government funding, after last week refusing to back a Republican plan to prevent a shutdown unless their demands on healthcare and other issues are met.

      We leave you with video of Hillary Clinton saying in a 2016 debate: “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.” He replied: “Because you’d be in jail.”
      Maurene Comey, the former FBI director’s daughter, who led the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and was fired this summer without explanation, cited Donald Trump’s hatred of her father in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed this month in federal court.The suit explains that Maurene Comey was “abruptly fired” on 16 July 16 from her job as an assistant US attorney in Manhattan despite an “outstanding” performance review just months earlier.The suit, which names the office of the president and the attorney general as defendants, says that they “fired Ms. Comey solely or substantially because her father is former FBI Director James B. Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.”It goes on to allege that Trump’s hatred of her father, and the antipathy of Trump’s outside adviser Laura Loomer, were major factors in her wrongful termination.According to the suit:
      James Comey served as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 until President Trump fired him in 2017. For the past nine years, President Trump has publicly criticized Mr. Comey for his actions while serving as FBI Director, and because after he was fired, Mr. Comey (i) wrote a memoir critical of President Trump, (ii) continued to publicly criticize President Trump and his Administration, and (iii) in May 2025 posted a message on social media that President Trump and others in the Trump Administration claimed to perceive as threatening.
      Following Mr. Comey’s May 2025 social media post and other critical statements, President Trump’s supporters called for Ms. Comey’s firing. Notable among those supporters is Laura Loomer, a social media influencer who, on information and belief, has political influence in the Trump Administration, including influence over the termination of federal employees. President Trump has publicly stated: “If you’re Loomered you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense.” On May 18, 2025, Ms. Loomer called for Mr. Comey’s “liberal daughter” and her “Democrat husband” to be “FIRED from the DOJ immediately” “for being a national security risk via their proximity to a criminal [i.e., Mr. Comey] who just committed a felony by threatening to assassinate the President.” Ms. Loomer also declared that, “under [Attorney General Pamela] Blondi [sic], every Deep State Operator is being emboldened,” and she “question[ed] the impartiality of Maurene and Lucas [Maurene’s husband] in their prosecutorial roles, especially in high-profile cases, due to the undeniable bias and influence stemming from James Comey’s public criticism of Trump and the ongoing investigation into his Instagram post.”
      James Comey’s son-in-law resigned as a federal prosecutor minutes after the former FBI director was indicted Thursday.Troy Edwards wrote in an email to Lindsey Halligan, the former White House aide with no prosecutorial experience parachuted into the job as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week that he was resigning “To uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country”.Edwards , who helped prosecute pro-Trump January 6 rioters later pardoned by Trump, was deputy chief of the national security section, which covers the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, and handles some of the highest-profile espionage cases.James Comey, the former FBI director, professed his innocence in a video statement posted on Instagram on Thursday after he was indicted by the former White House aide Donald Trump appointed US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia this week.“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said. “But we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”“I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does,” he added.“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial. And keep the faith,” he concluded.Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone in his administration to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, but the president has been so public about his loathing of the indicted man, and his desire to see him jailed, that it might be hard for prosecutors to convince a jury that the case was not brought for political reasons.Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 after he reportedly refused a request to pledge his loyalty to the newly elected president, and then publicly confirmed to Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian efforts to get Trump elected president in 2016.Trump’s firing of Comey backfired, however, because it helped convince then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, to, in his words “oversee the previously confirmed FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters”.Although Mueller’s report, issued in 2019, concluded that his team “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”, the investigation unearthed plenty of evidence that the Russian effort did take place and, in Mueller’s words, “established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome”.Mueller added that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”.While Mueller ultimately elected not to charge Trump’s son, Don Jr, with violating campaign finance laws by soliciting derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government in a meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, the investigation made it plain that the Trump campaign had been open to help from Russia.When a publicist for the Russian oligarch who paid Trump to stage his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013 wrote to tell Don Jr that a Russian prosecutor wanted to offer the Trump campaign “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia, calling it “part of Russia and its government’s support to Mr Trump”, Trump’s son replied, “If it’s what you say, I love it,” and got Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to attend the meeting.The indictment of Comey comes as Trump seeks to use the power of the justice department to punish a man he sees as a central figure in the Russia investigation he has continually described as “a witch-hunt” and “a hoax”.One of the ironies of the situation is that Comey, who cast himself as a rigidly non-partisan law enforcement official, played an outsized role in helping Trump to get elected in the first place.It was Comey who, as FBI director in the summer of 2016, decided not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state, but took it upon himself to hold a press conference to explain his decision.In that public forum, Comey said that while Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” he had concluded, as a former prosecutor himself, that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”.That news conference offered Trump, who was then running against Clinton, ammunition to describe her use of a personal email server as reckless. Trump embraced that line of attack with glee, particularly after WikiLeaks published emails from Clinton campaign aides that had been stolen by Russian government hackers.Then, days before the November election, Comey suddenly announced that the FBI had reopened its investigation of Clinton’s own emails, after copies of some mail was found on the laptop of the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, who was then married to Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin.Although Comey then announced, before election day, that the review of the additional emails had found nothing of substance, Clinton dropped in the polls in the closing days of the campaign, and narrowly lost to Trump.Another irony is that Comey, who has now been indicted by the new US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, is himself a former federal prosecutor in that office, who went on to serve as the US attorney for the southern district of New York, and deputy attorney general under George W Bush before later being appointed FBI director by Barack Obama in 2013.Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, and FBI director, Kash Patel, welcomed the indictment of James Comey, who served as deputy attorney general during the George W Bush administration and was fired as FBI director by Donald Trump in 2017 after he told Congress that the FBI was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the election of Trump as president in 2016.A justice department press release sent to reporters on Thursday began:
      Today, a federal grand jury has charged former FBI Director James Comey with serious crimes related to the disclosure of sensitive information. The indictment alleges that Comey obstructed a congressional investigation into the disclosure of sensitive information in violation of 18 USC 1505.
      The indictment also alleges that Comey made a false statement in violation of 18 USC 1001. Comey stated that he did not authorize someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source. According to the indictment that statement was false.
      The statement was followed by a quote from Bondi, which was posted on her official X account earlier. “No one is above the law,” the attorney general said. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”“Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability,” Patel added. “For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust. Every day, we continue the fight to earn that trust back, and under my leadership, this FBI will confront the problem head-on.“Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose. Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account – no matter their perch. No one is above the law.”Despite the intensity of those accusations from the most senior officials in the justice department, the statement included the following disclaimer, written in italics at the bottom of the page:“An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”In a sharp departure from the tradition that presidents should not comment on criminal cases, Donald Trump just celebrated the indictment of the former FBI director James Comey, in terms that could make it even easier for Comey’s lawyers to argue that he is the victim of selective prosecution.The indictment came days after Trump forced out a career prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia who had determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey, and posted a public instruction to Bondi to replace him with a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, who could be trusted to prosecute Comey and other officials Trump holds a grudge against.“JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI. Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation,” the president added.He then signed off with his political slogan: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”As the legality of Donald Trump’s tariffs remains in doubt, the president announced three more on Thursday.Writing on his social media platform, Trump said: “I will be imposing, as of October 1st, 2025, a 25% Tariff on all “Heavy (Big!) Trucks” made in other parts of the World. Therefore, our Great Large Truck Company Manufacturers, such as Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks, and others, will be protected.”In a separate post, he added: “We will be imposing a 50% Tariff on all Kitchen Cabinets, Bathroom Vanities, and associated products, starting October 1st, 2025. Additionally, we will be charging a 30% Tariff on Upholstered Furniture.”Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota, accused Donald Trump of inventing a story he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, about having supposedly asked Somalia’s president if he would “take her back.”Omar is a naturalized US citizen who was born in Somalia and raised in a refugee camp in Kenya, but Trump has frequently treated her criticism of him as an affront to the United States from someone he still regards as a foreigner.Trump brought up Omar on Thursday in the course of a rambling answer to a question about Jasmine Crockett, a fellow Democratic congresswoman. When Trump was asked by a conservative reporter if Crockett should face “consequences” for saying, “When I see Ice, I see slave patrols,” the president repeated the racist claim he frequently makes about Black leaders who challenge him: “she is a very low IQ person.”He then brought up Omar, whose name he mispronounced, unprompted.“This is a low IQ person, who I can’t I can’t believe is a congressperson, between her and Ilman Omar,” Trump said. “I met the head of Somalia,” he continued, “And I suggested that maybe he’d like to take her back, and he didn’t want her.”As Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, doubled over in laughter, and other members of his cabinet chuckled, the president said again: “He said, ‘I don’t want her.’”The White House was so proud of this quip that Trump’s special assistant, Margo Martin, posted video of it on an official government social media account.Omar responded by suggesting the president, who said last week he was not sure if Somalia even has a president, had made the whole thing up. “From denying Somalia had a president to making up a story, President Trump is a lying buffoon. No one should take this embarrassing fool seriously,” she wrote on X.Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, was in New York this week to address the United Nations, but he the US official he met with was not the president, but his advisor on African affairs, Massad Boulos, whose son is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany.James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of justice, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the latest move in the president’s expansive retribution campaign against his political adversaries.“No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, tweeted on Thursday.The indictment came shortly after Trump instructed Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.Lindsey Halligan, the president’s former lawyer who was recently sworn in as the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, asked a grand jury to indict Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in testimony on 30 September 2020 before the five-year statute of limitations expires in the coming days. Comey’s testimony before the Senate judiciary committee was related to his handling of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience, was elevated to the post after Erik Siebert was forced out of the job for failing to bring indictments against Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general. More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Like Amazon Prime but with human beings’: inside Trump’s deportation machine – podcast

      by

      Near the 13th hole of a golf course in Alexandria, rural Louisiana, the Guardian US’s southern bureau chief, Oliver Laughland, could see ‘a telling image of where America is at the moment’. On one side, golfers teeing off on a scorching hot day; on the other, in the distance and through a fence, ‘lines of people shackled at the feet and hands, loaded on to planes’.They were people being held at the Alexandria staging facility, a detention and removal centre that has become central to Donald Trump’s deportation regime.The centre’s role was revealed by a Guardian investigation of leaked data, detailing tens of thousands of flights transporting immigrants across the US, carried out for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice).Laughland and the immigration reporter Maanvi Singh talk about what the investigation tells us about the inner workings of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies – and concerns about the denial of due process and the ‘disappearance’ of people from lawyers and their families.Is the chaos and the cruelty by accident, asks Helen Pidd, or is it by design? More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      White House tells agencies to prepare for firings if government shuts down

      by

      The White House is telling federal agencies to prepare large-scale firings of workers if the government shuts down next week in a partisan fight over spending plans – prompting the Democrats to accuse Donald Trump of intimidation tactics.In a memo released on Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, is not otherwise funded and is “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when federal workers not deemed essential were furloughed but returned to their jobs once the US Congress approved a new financial plan.A mass firing would eliminate employees positions, which would trigger yet another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that has already faced major rounds of cuts this year, leading with the dramatic intervention by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) early in the second Trump administration.When asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon about the possibility of a government shutdown, Trump said: “Could be, yeah, because the Democrats are crazed. They don’t know what they’re doing.”Asked whether he would agree to a request from Democrats for an extension of subsidies for the costs of healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, on which millions of Americans depend for health insurance – which has become the sticking point in negotiations over the government funding bill – Trump simply repeated his false claim that Democrats are insisting on funding “to give the money to illegal aliens”.Once any potential government shutdown ends, agencies are asked to revise their reduction in force plans “as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions”, according to the memo, which was first reported by Politico.This move from the OMB significantly increases the consequences of a potential government shutdown next week and escalates pressure on the US Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats.The two leaders have kept nearly all of their Democratic lawmakers united against a clean funding bill pushed by the US president and congressional Republicans that would keep the federal government operating for seven more weeks, demanding immediate improvements to health care in exchange for their votes to approve the short term plan, known as a continuing resolution (CR).“We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” Jeffries wrote in a post on X shortly after the OMB memo was released. “Get lost.”Jeffries called Russ Vought, the head of the OMB, a “malignant political hack”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchumer said in a statement that the OMB memo is an “attempt at intimidation” and predicted the “unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back.”“It has never been more important for the administration to be prepared for a shutdown if the Democrats choose to pursue one,” the memo reads, which also notes that the GOP’s signature law, a major tax and anti-immigration spending package, gives “ample resources to ensure that many core Trump Administration priorities will continue uninterrupted.” OMB noted that it had asked all agencies to submit their plans in case of a government shutdown by 1 August.Meanwhile, hundreds of federal employees who were fired in Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.The General Services Administration ( GSA) has given the employees – who managed government workspaces – until the end of the week to decide, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press. Those who accept must report to work on 6 October after what amounts to a seven-month paid vacation.“Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed,” said Chad Becker, a former GSA real estate official. “They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.” More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      George Soros foundation hits back at Trump after report that DoJ plans to target group

      by

      The Open Society Foundations (OSF), the major philanthropic group funded by George Soros, has criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society” after a report that the justice department had instructed federal prosecutors to come up with plans to investigate the charity.The New York Times reported on Thursday that a lawyer in the office of Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, sent a memo to several federal prosecutors in attorney’s offices in California, New York, Washington DC, Chicago and Detroit, offering a range of charges to consider against the group. Those charges included racketeering, arson, wire fraud and material support for terrorism, the newspaper reported.The push comes as Trump has ramped up efforts to deploy the justice department to target his enemies. He has pledged to crack down on leftwing groups in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing and has repeatedly singled out Soros, a major funder of liberal groups, as a target. “We’re going to look into Soros, because I think it’s a Rico case against him and other people,” Trump said on 12 September, using an acronym to refer to racketeering charges. “Because this is more than like protests. This is real agitation.”In a statement, the OSF described the effort as “meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the first amendment right to free speech”.“The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law,” it said in a statement.“When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk. Our work in the United States is solely dedicated to strengthening democracy and upholding constitutional freedoms. We stand by the work we do to improve lives in the United States and across the world.”Trump has pledged to prosecute Soros and has increased pressure on the justice department to prosecute his political rivals. Last week, Trump forced out a top federal prosecutor in Virginia after it was determined there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James.Trump installed a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, in the role, and prosecutors are said to be nearing filing charges against Comey. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US authorities remove Trump-Epstein statue from National Mall

      by

      An impromptu statue of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands was unceremoniously removed from the National Mall in Washington just a day after a group of anonymous artists erected it there.The piece showed the president and the late convicted sex offender, who were friends in the past, looking joyful together, with wide grins and feet kicked back.A plaque stated that it was built in honor of friendship month. “We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J Trump and his ‘closest friend’ Jeffrey Epstein,” the accompanying text stated.The Secret Handshake, the group that created the art, had obtained a permit that allowed it to keep the statue displayed in the capital until 8pm on Sunday.But the National Park Service, the federal agency that oversees the area, removed the statue because “it was not compliant with the permit issued”, Elizabeth Peace, a spokesperson for Department of the Interior, said to CNN.Trump, who usually is adept at shaking free of any scandal, has not been able to temper the widespread curiosity and also anger from some on the right over the administration not disclosing the so-called Epstein files – all the material the authorities have on the business dealings, crimes and investigations into same regarding the New York financier, who killed himself in jail while awaiting federal trial in 2019 on sex-trafficking offenses. His accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a long prison sentence.A Secret Handshake artist who identified himself as Patrick but would not provide his full name to the Guardian said in a telephone interview that the group built the Trump-Epstein statue to “honor the one and only true friend Donald Trump seems to have in his life”.In 2002, Trump told New York magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be with” but has repeatedly said in recent times that the two fell out long ago. The White House has called Epstein “a creep”.Epstein had also told the journalist Michael Wolff that he was Trump’s “closest friend for 10 years”.Trump recently said he was “not a fan” of Epstein and that he stopped talking to him because Epstein “stole people that worked for me”.Patrick said he was confused by the authorities’ decision to remove the statue.“The Trump administration has mostly been all about rebuilding statues that have already been torn down, of Confederate generals and other racist tropes and figures from the past” he said. “I would argue that Trump is a racist figure from the past, so why would you tear that down?”In a statement to the New York Times, the White House said: “Democrats, the media and the organization that’s wasting their money on this statue knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents.” More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US is violating human rights laws by backing fossil fuels, say young activists in new petition

      by

      By continuing to fund and support a fossil fuel-based energy system, the US is violating international law, a group of young people have argued to an international human rights body.The petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), filed late on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, says the government’s actions have violated the petitioners’ human rights.“The US’s actions over the past 50 years constitute an internationally wrongful act that implicate its international responsibility,” the petition to the Washington DC-based commission says.The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is a quasi-judicial body that reviews and investigates complaints about human rights violations, then issues reports with findings and recommendations to the accused states. Its recommendations are not legally binding.The plea comes after the publication of two strongly worded advisory opinions on the climate crisis from two top international courts. It was filed by 15 of the 21 youth climate activists who previously brought the groundbreaking federal climate lawsuit Juliana v US, which was effectively dismissed last year.“This petition is about truth and accountability,” said Levi, an 18-year-old petitioner who was eight years old when the Juliana case was filed. “For over 50 years, the US government has knowingly protected fossil fuel interests while putting people, especially young people, in harm’s way.”View image in fullscreenLike Juliana, the new filing details the myriad ways the climate crisis has caused the young petitioners to suffer. Levi, for instance, grew up in Florida on the Indialantic barrier island. He and his family were frequently forced to evacuate amid dangerous hurricanes; eventually, they became so severe and frequent that his parents decided relocating was the only option.“Part of why we left was so that my baby sister could grow up in a home with a smaller risk of flooding,” he said. “One of the most difficult moments was losing my school after it was permanently closed due to storm damage.”Levi and the other young activists accuse the US of breaching international human rights law, customary international law and the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man – an international human rights instrument that guarantees economic, social and cultural rights, as well as equality under the law.The bid comes just after the release of an early July advisory opinion from the inter-American court of human rights (I/A court HR), a separate human rights body which can issue binding recommendations but which the US does not recognize. The opinion said that the climate crisis carries “extraordinary risks” felt most by already-vulnerable populations, and that the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man requires countries to set ambitious greenhouse gas-cutting targets.“Before that happened, we had already been planning to file this,” said Kelly Matheson, deputy director of global strategy at the non-profit law firm Our Children’s Trust, which is representing the petitioners. “The timing is pure serendipity.”The I/A court HR opinion is non-binding, and the US does not recognize the jurisdiction of the top court from which it came. However, international courts and commissions can draw on the opinions to interpret the law.By denying the plaintiffs “access to justice” – and by expanding fossil fuel production – the US is violating an array of rights guaranteed to the young activists, including the right to life, liberty and security; the right to health; the right to benefits of culture; and special protections for children.“We are bringing our case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because domestic courts would not hear the full story,” said Levi. “This petition is a statement that what has happened to us is not just unfortunate or political but that it is a violation of our human rights.”The petitioners also accuse the US of violating their right to a healthy climate, referencing another recent nonbinding advisory opinion on greenhouse gas emissions from the international court of justice – a United Nations top court. The young activists have been trapped in that violation since birth, Matheson said.“These young people were born into a climate emergency, they were born into a rights violation, and they have lived every single day with their right to a healthy climate system being infringed upon,” she said. “We could get to a healthy climate system by 2100 if we make changes, but even then, these young plaintiffs will live their entire lives without ever being able to fully enjoy and exercise their right to a healthy climate system … Their hope is that their children or their grandchildren might.”Filed in 2015, Juliana v US argued that the government violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights with pro-fossil fuel policies. Our Children’s Trust, which brought the case, made its final attempt to revive the case last year by asking the supreme court to allow the suit to proceed to trial in a lower court; its bid was denied in March.By denying the young challengers access to effective remedies to the climate crisis and thereby continually causing them harm, the courts failed to fulfill its international legal obligations, the new filing says.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US is also breaching its obligations by continuing to perpetuate a fossil fuel-based energy system, argues the petition to the IACHR.“The US government, the leading cumulative contributor to climate change, has caused real harm to our health, our homes, our cultures and our futures,” said Levi.With the new petition, the young activists are demanding “precautionary measures” aimed at protecting their rights and obligations, as well as a hearing. In their best-case scenario, the IACHR would visit the US to hear the stories of the petitioners, then hold a public hearing to allow them to present their evidence to the world, and finally declare that the US has committed “wrongful acts” and make recommendations to push the country to improve its behavior.“We want the commission to declare that these systemic actions have violated our rights under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man,” said Levi. “This would carry legal weight across the Americas and help set a precedent that governments can’t continue to violate our rights without consequences.”Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University, said the commission the activists are petitioning tends to act slowly. The body took five years to review one pollution-focused complaint from a Louisiana community filed in 2005.If the commission issues strong recommendations for the US, he said, US officials will be under no obligation to follow it.“The Trump administration wouldn’t care what this commission says, but the next administration might,” he added.The petition follows news that planet-warming pollution from the US rose in the first half of 2025. It also comes amid widespread attacks on climate protections by the Trump administration, which has launched more than 150 anti-environmental and anti-renewable energy actions since retaking the White House in January.“We are bringing this petition forward now because the science is urgent, the harm is accelerating and our rights are still being violated,” said Levi.Our Children’s Trust has represented young people in an array of state and federal lawsuits. During a two-day hearing in Montana this month, young plaintiffs in one federal case argued that three of Trump’s pro-fossil fuel executive orders should be blocked. The law firm in 2023 notched a landmark win in the lawsuit Held v Montana, when a judge ruled that the state’s pro-fossil fuel policies violated a group of youth plaintiffs’ rights under the state’s constitution.Just hours before Our Children’s Trust filed the petition, Trump addressed the United Nations claiming that the climate crisis was the “greatest con job perpetrated on the world” and “a hoax made up by people with evil intentions”.“This courageous action aims to tell the truth and do something about it,” said James R May, of counsel to Our Children’s Trust. More