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      Trump signs executive orders to spur US ‘nuclear energy renaissance’

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      Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on Friday intended to spur a “nuclear energy renaissance” through the construction of new reactors he said would satisfy the electricity demands of data centers for artificial intelligence and other emerging industries.The orders represented the president’s latest foray into the policy underlying America’s electricity supply. Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office over and moved to undo a ban implemented by Joe Biden on new natural gas export terminals and expand oil and gas drilling in Alaska.Nuclear does not carry oil and gas’s carbon emissions, but produces radioactive waste that the United States lacks a facility to permanently store. Some environmental groups have safety concerns over the reactors and their supply chain.Trump signed four orders intended to speed up the approval of nuclear reactors for defense and AI purposes, reform the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the goal of quadrupling production of electricity over the next 25 years, revamp the regulatory process to have three experimental reactors operating by 4 July 2026 and boost investment in the technology’s industrial base.“Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation of an industry,” the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, said at an Oval Office event where Trump signed the orders.“President Trump here today has committed to energy dominance, and part of that energy dominance is that we’ve got enough electricity to win the AI arms race with China.”High-profile accidents at nuclear plants in the United States and abroad stirred public opposition to nuclear energy in decades past, but Trump described the technology as “very safe”.However, the effort of the “department of government efficiency” to downsize the federal workforce has created snafus like the temporary firings of some employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the US nuclear arsenal. It is also feared to hamper a long-running nuclear waste cleanup operation in Washington state.In Congress, Trump’s Republican allies have moved to implement his energy policies and repeal Biden’s.A sprawling tax-and-spending bill the House of Representatives passed this week changes the rules for tax incentives created under Biden for renewable energy power plants to make them available only for projects that begin construction within 60 days of the bill’s enactment, and are completed by 2028.But nuclear plants only have to be under construction by 2028, a less strict guideline. More

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      Trump says he is hitting EU with 50% tariff as trade talks are ‘going nowhere’

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      Donald Trump has said he will impose a 50% tariff on all EU imports to the US from 1 June after claiming trade talks between the two trading blocs were “going nowhere”.In a surprise announcement, the US president posted on his Truth Social platform that his long-running battle to secure concessions from the EU had stalled.He accused the EU of taking advantage of the US on trade, saying: “Our discussions with them are going nowhere! Therefore I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025.”Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump claimed the EU had “taken advantage” of the US and claimed the new tariffs would be imposed unless EU companies moved their operations to the US.“It’s time that we play the game the way I know how to play the game,” said Trump.Stock markets slumped in response to the news, the tech-heavy Nasdaq closed down 1% as Trump also signalled plans to impose tariffs on Apple, Samsung and other phone manufacturers. The broader S&P 500 lost 0.68%. The STOXX Europe 600 index fell by 1.7%. In London the FTSE 100 closed down 0.2% after initially dropping as much as 1.5%. Germany’s car makers were particularly hard hit, with BMW down 3.7%, Volkswagen off 2.6% and Mercedes-Benz down 4%.The US imposed a 20% “reciprocal” rate on most EU goods on 2 April, but halved that rate a week later until 8 July to allow time for talks. It has retained 25% import taxes on steel, aluminium and vehicle parts and is threatening similar action on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and other goods.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is a major escalation of trade tensions,” said Holger Schmieding, the chief economist at Berenberg, on Friday. “With Trump you never know but this would be a major escalation. The EU would have to react and it is something that would really hurt the US and European economy.”EU negotiators have been locked in meetings with White House representatives since Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs were first announced. Dozens of countries have been holding discussions to try to bring down their own levies before the 90-day pause elapses.The White House has relented on many of its most onerous tariffs, including lowering total tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30% after what Trump declared were constructive talks with Beijing, which lowered its retaliatory border taxes from 125% to 10% in response.A week ago the US president appeared to acknowledge that Washington lacked the ability to negotiate deals with scores of countries at once, saying the US would instead send letters to some trading partners to unilaterally impose new tariff rates.Perceptions of an easing back on a hardline approach to trade brought a period of calm to stock markets, but Friday’s threat of a 50% levy on EU goods, plus a separate threat made the same day of 25% tariffs on iPhones made abroad, have brought an end to the peace.The EU presented a fresh trade proposal to the US on Thursday. The offer included phased tariff cuts on non-sensitive goods, plus cooperation on energy, AI and digital infrastructure. The bloc was readying about $108bn in retaliatory tariffs if talks failed.To sweeten the deal, EU officials were also willing to extend a 2020 tariff-free arrangement on US lobster imports, according to the Financial Times. But it appears to have proved insufficient to persuade the US president to sign a deal allowing only his 10% universal tariff to apply to the EU, as it does the UK. More

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      Judge blocks Trump administration’s ban on Harvard accepting international students

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      A US federal judge on Friday blocked the government from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students just hours after the elite college sued the Trump administration over its abrupt ban the day before on enrolling foreign students.US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston issued the temporary restraining order late on Friday morning, freezing the policy that had been abruptly imposed on the university, based in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday.Meanwhile, the Trump administration has accused Columbia University of violating civil rights laws, while overseas governments had expressed alarm at the administration’s actions against Harvard as part of its latest assault on elite higher education in the US.Harvard University announced on Friday morning that it was challenging the Trump administration’s decision to bar the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students, calling it unconstitutional retaliation for the school previously defying the White House’s political demands.In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the government’s action violates the first amendment of the US constitution and will have an “immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders”.“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the university and its mission,” Harvard said in its suit. The institution added that it planned to file for a temporary restraining order to block the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out the move.The Trump White House called the lawsuit “frivolous” but the court filing from the 389-year-old elite, private university, the oldest and wealthiest in the US, said: “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.”Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most are graduate students and they come from more than 100 countries.Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Human Services’ office for civil rights late on Thursday cited Columbia University, claiming the New York university acted with “deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students from October 7, 2023, through the present”, marking the date when Hamas led the deadly attack on Israel out of Gaza that sparked a ferocious military response from the Jewish state, prompting prolonged pro-Palestinian protests on US streets and college campuses.“The findings carefully document the hostile environment Jewish students at Columbia University have had to endure for over 19 months, disrupting their education, safety, and well-being,” said Anthony Archeval, the acting director of the office for civil rights at HHS, in a statement on the action.It continued: “We encourage Columbia University to work with us to come to an agreement that reflects meaningful changes that will truly protect Jewish students.” Columbia University had not yet issued a statement on the citation as of early Friday morning.Orders by the Trump administration earlier this month to investigate pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University raised alarms within the Department of Justice, the New York Times reported. A federal judge denied a search warrant for the investigation.Earlier this year, Columbia University agreed to a list of demands from the Trump administration in response to $400m worth of grants and federal funds to the university being cancelled over claims of inaction by the university to protect Jewish students.Burroughs said Harvard had shown it could be harmed before there was an opportunity to hear the case in full. The judge, an Obama administration appointee, scheduled hearings for 27 May and 29 May to consider next steps in the case.The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported that the Department of Homeland Security gave Harvard 72 hours to turn over all documents on all international students’ disciplinary records and paper, audio or video records on protest activity over the past five years in order to have the “opportunity” to have its eligibility to enroll foreign students reinstated.Before Harvard filed suit, the Chinese government early on Friday had said the move to block foreign students from the school and oblige current ones to leave would only hurt the international standing of the US. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology extended an open invitation to Harvard international students and those accepted in response to the action against Harvard.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Friday afternoon, despite the judge’s ruling, Chinese students at Harvard were cancelling flights home and seeking legal advice on staying in the US and saying they were scared in case Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents came to their accommodation to take them away, as they have done to other foreign students.The former German health minister and alumnus of Harvard, Karl Lauterbach, called the action against Harvard “research policy suicide”. Germany’s research minister, Dorothee Baer, had also, before Harvard sued, urged the Trump administration to reverse its decision, calling it “fatal”.Harvard’s lawsuit lists as the plaintiffs the “President and fellows of Harvard college” versus defendants including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Justice and the Department of State, as well as the government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program and individual cabinet members – Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Marco Rubio, the secretary of state; and Todd Lyons, the acting director of Ice.The White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said on Friday: “If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.”She added: “Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits.”Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, wrote an open letter to students, academics and staff condemning an “unlawful” and “unwarranted” action by the administration.“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body,” it said.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Fear on campus: Harvard’s international students in ‘mass panic’ over Trump move

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      Harvard’s foreign students described an atmosphere of “fear on campus” following an attempt by the Trump administration to ban international scholars at the oldest university in the US.On lush, grassy quads filled with tents and chairs ready for end-of-year graduation celebrations, international students said there was “mass panic” after Thursday’s shock announcement by the Department of Homeland Security.The move triggered cancelled flights home for the summer, scrambles for housing to stay in the US over the break, and even swift attempts to transfer schools.On Friday, Harvard sued for a “blatant violation” of the US constitution and Allison Burroughs, a federal judge of the district of Massachusetts, temporarily blocked the White House from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, who comprise an estimated 27% of the student body, or about 6,700 students.Genia Lukin, a third-year PhD candidate from Israel in Harvard’s psychology department, found out during a lab meeting. She said: “It was definitely a moment of: ‘Oh wow, what?’ Obviously, a lot of people are extremely anxious and extremely bewildered and this weird combination of this situation that just exploded out of the blue for most of the international students.”The 41-year-old added that she was in “wait-and-see mode” following the injunction and had cancelled travel abroad with her husband for the foreseeable future. Said Lukin: “The uncertainty is driving people crazy right now. What’s going to happen? Can we complete our degrees remotely? I worked very hard to get into my program so losing the PhD in the middle where I’m a good way through would be pretty devastating.”But, fearful of repercussions following a nationwide crackdown on academics and student protesters, including the arrest and detention of local Tufts University undergraduate, Rümeysa Öztürk, in nearby Somerville, in March, many other students and staff spoke on condition of anonymity.One 24-year-old Ukrainian freshman, who is a Harvard undergraduate during term time and returns to a war-torn country during holidays, said that she had delayed her scheduled flights next week back to her parents who are displaced in western Ukraine, unsure if she can get back into the US.“I feel really shocked,” she said. “If I leave, I’m not sure I’ll get back in. I’m lucky, I have housing the whole summer, so if I need to stay I can. Not all my friends have that. Some people are talking about transferring to different schools, but the transfer window is basically shut now.”She added: “Getting into Harvard is a big deal, it’s transformative, but this is outside our control. It goes against logic, but things go against logic in America right now.”A Chinese visiting scholar from Peking University in Beijing, here for an 18-month research trip for her PhD, called the legal battle “really, really scary” and described “mass panic” among her international friends when the attempted ban was announced on Thursday.The 28-year-old woman said: “We stayed up all night talking about our options, our plan Bs. I was going to go to the UK this summer because my professor has a position in Manchester. I’m a bit worried I won’t be able to get back in. I have to go back to Beijing to finish my PhD, but a lot of students here had long-term plans to stay in America. Harvard is like a special light in the world. If something happens to Harvard it makes me frightened.”A Haitian master’s student, who recently graduated, said a town hall organised by the university to talk to students about their fears had a waiting list of 100 people within minutes, and a campus-wide text chat “blew up with hundreds of messages in an hour”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut she added that the strong statement by Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, and the block by the federal judge made her “hopeful”. She added: “They’ve got our back. I have to trust that they want what is best for all of us.”A member of administrative staff, who lives on campus with international students and works to support them, added: “It’s horrific and almost certainly unlawful. There is a feeling of fear on campus. Normally, you just face typical, internal student problems, but when it is the outside world coming in it is hard to know how to help them.”She added that there was a “misunderstanding that all international students are wealthy” and can afford to have cancelled or disrupted studies. “I would say 50% of them need significant financial aid, and Harvard has a really robust system. They have already been so disrupted because of Covid. Maybe some students can transfer, but maybe they can’t afford to go. And they have lost this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Poof, gone.”Garber said in a letter to the Harvard community: “We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action. It imperils futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities across the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”The Guardian has contacted Harvard for comment. More

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      Trump’s ambush of South Africa’s president shows how low the US has fallen | Justice Malala

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      Donald Trump should really try harder.When the US president unexpectedly and dramatically dimmed the lights inside the Oval Office on Wednesday and played a video clip of the alleged burial site of white victims of “genocide”, he meant to embarrass and humiliate his guest, Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa. It was his “gotcha!” moment after four months of relentless social media attacks, executive orders, boycotts, and threats of economic and diplomatic sanctions.As the video played, a smug Trump claimed it was proof of “white genocide” in South Africa and mumbled: “It’s a terrible sight, never seen anything like it.”It was all lies. The crosses in the video did not mark actual graves. It was a memorial made in September 2020 after two white people were killed on their farm a week earlier. The crosses were meant to represent farmers who had been killed over the years. The idea that it is “genocide” has been debunked so many times over the past 10 years that it is extraordinary that the US president is not ashamed to repeat it in public. The state department under Trump released a report in late 2020 pointing out that, according to official South African statistics for the 2018-2019 period, “farm killings represented only 0.2 percent of all killings in the country (47 of 21,022)”.So here we have a man who has the mighty US state department, the wily Central Intelligence Agency and numerous other resources at his beck and call to help him discern the truth, relying on a badly made propaganda video sourced from a racist, rightwing, anonymous South African X account. Instead of embarrassing Ramaphosa on Wednesday, Trump merely illustrated just how low the US has fallen.His poorly produced Oval Office show, taken with the 28 February attempt to humiliate Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demonstrates that the country is now run by a man so steeped in discredited online conspiracy theories, so uncritical in his thinking, so poor in his grasp of global affairs, so careless in his exercise of power, that it is incredible that he is one of the most powerful figures in the world today. Such a figure’s power heralds instability and even danger for the world.The ambush of Ramaphosa is therefore not just spectacle. It is illumination. It underlines and emphasizes that Trump’s US is a fact-free, science-free, reality-television production lot whose leader daily defies court orders, alienates supporters of democracy, and tries to dismantle key practices such as the right to due process. It is an ugly place in which facts mean nothing and lies reign supreme.I was born under apartheid and lived under that heinous system until it was defeated in 1994. Those first 24 years were lived in Pretoria, in an impoverished village just an hour from Musk’s sumptuous family mansion in the suburb of Waterkloof. When I was teenager I walked the streets of Musk’s suburb, working as a “garden boy” or caddie, constantly harassed by police asking for my “pass book” – papers allowing me to be in the area designated “whites only”.I know apartheid. I grew up with it, breathed it and lived it every day. It is sickening to hear Trump compare the free, non-racist, democratic country that is South Africa today to the violent, murderous, hateful, system declared a “crime against humanity” by the United Nations in 1966.I know South Africa. I grew up in its brutal, cruel, divided past. I thrived in its hopeful democracy. I was one of the chroniclers of its political descent in the 2010s as its institutions came under assault from a leader with anti-democratic instincts. I visited my mother there last week. There is no genocide in South Africa. Yet, Trump recently posted on his Truth Social that he would not visit South Africa for the G20 summit when “white genocide” was happening there. Just more than 430,000 Americans visited South Africa in 2023, up 37.4% from 2022. I know of not a single one who can point to a genocide happening in the country.This is the president of the United States peddling lies.One is therefore not surprised by the numerous assaults on the American constitution by this administration. The kidnapping of student activists, the trampling upon of citizens’ constitutional rights, the assaults on institutions such as the judiciary, the shamelessness of politicians and their families and cronies enriching themselves – all this is typical of these kinds of corrupt regimes.What is going on in America? Kseniia Petrova, the Harvard Medical School researcher held for months in Louisiana for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss, told the New York Times: “I feel like something is happening generally in America … Something bad is happening. I don’t think everybody understands.”Petrova, who fled Putin’s murderous regime as darkness fell over Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, understands the profound cloud hanging over the US. Those of us who grew up in regimes such as apartheid understand this ominous period.Trump’s actions are scary enough. It is, however, the silence of the US as assaults on American constitutional principles unfold that is most disturbing.This is not a lament for South Africa and how badly it is being treated by the US. It is a lament for myself, for those of us who grew up under systems such as apartheid believing that the US would uphold the rule of law, stand up for truth and speak up for these principles, and for a better world. A monarchical Trump, defying the supreme court and abandoning fact-based decision-making, imperils it all. With every student bundled by masked men into a van, this vaunted republic becomes smaller, lesser. It becomes Putin’s Russia, it becomes something akin to the way I lived under apartheid – a place where a contrarian thought led to detention without trial, to disappearance and for many, to death.There was a telling moment in Wednesday’s interaction when Trump revealed himself. It was a moment which reminded one that corruption, or the smell of it, now sits in the White House. Trump had just referred to a reporter as a “jerk” and an “idiot” because he had confronted him about why he was accepting the “gift” of a jet from Qatar to use as Air Force One.“Why did a country give an airplane to the United States air force? So they could help us out, because we need an Air Force One,” Trump fumed.Ramaphosa quipped: “I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you.”Trump didn’t detect the disdain in Ramaphosa’s voice and doubled down on the corruption inherent in accepting such a gift.“I wish you did. I would take it. If your country offered the United States air force a plane, I would take it,” Trump said.And there was the emperor, naked: an unethical leader who worships the dollar and has no concept of how corrupt his actions look to the rest of the world. This is what Wednesday was all about: an America led by a man susceptible to lies and lacking in a moral centre.Wednesday was not about South Africa. It was all about America today.

      Justice Malala is a political commentator and author of The Plot To Save South Africa: The Week Mandela Averted Civil War and Forged a New Nation More

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      Trump’s barbarism is turning his biggest strength into a liability | Osita Nwanevu

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      If you can bear to hear it, there are still more than 1,300 days remaining in the Trump administration. That’s an interminably long time given all the havoc the president has been able to wreak since January alone; the chaos and cruelty of the term so far also happen to have used up his political capital remarkably quickly. The New York Times average of polls, which found him at 52% approval on inauguration day, had him at 51% disapproval on Wednesday. That collapse is less a problem for Trump specifically ⁠– assuming, perhaps optimistically, that he won’t appear on a ballot again ⁠– than it is for the Republican party, which will have to answer for the mess he’s made in next year’s midterms and beyond. And one of the challenges they seem likely to face is a changed public opinion landscape on immigration ⁠– a strength that Trump’s barbarism, just as in his first term, seems to be turning into a liability.While it remains his strongest issue, polls have shown the public’s confidence in Trump on immigration declining steadily since January ⁠– averages suggest the public is newly and evenly split on his handling of it and some polls taken around the 100-day mark even found an outright majority of Americans disapproving. It’s no mystery why. The shock-and-awe campaign the administration is waging against immigrants legal and not has produced a steady stream of headlines that sound awful to all but Stephen Miller and the nativist fanatics driving Trump’s agenda. The deportation of a four-year-old citizen suffering from a rare form of cancer. The end of temporary protected status for 9,000 Afghan refugees even as the administration welcomes Afrikaners supposedly fleeing “white genocide”, a myth most voters who don’t frequent white supremacist forums are probably unfamiliar with. The use of the immigration enforcement apparatus to pursue and persecute critics of Israel’s war in Gaza. Even as voters succumbed to a panic over the migrant surge under Biden, moves like this under Trump and a public backlash to them were inevitable.What should be especially dismaying to the president’s supporters ⁠– and especially heartening to the rest of us ⁠– is the administration’s absolute failure to win over the public on the Kilmar Ábrego García case. That battle was probably lost as soon as it was conceded that he was deported by mistake, but it’s notable that none of the efforts to muddy the waters and obfuscate the main issues at hand with lies and character assassination have worked. The escalatory rhetoric ⁠– Ábrego García is not an innocent man but a member of MS-13, not merely a member of MS-13 but one of “the top MS-13 members”, not merely one of “the top MS-13 members” but a terrorist ⁠– has been almost comic. The complaints that the media has been stretching the facts of the case have been pathetic. “Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, fumed last month, “you would think we deported a candidate for father of the year”.The administration was surely pleased when the domestic violence claims made by Ábrego García’s wife several years ago, which she dismisses now, began picking up traction in the press. And it is just as surely disappointed that a majority of Americans believe Ábrego García should be returned to America anyway ⁠– which suggests that the principles at stake in the case matter more and matter to more people than cynics might assume. Wholly irrespective of who Ábrego García is ⁠or what he might have done – and there remains no solid evidence at all that he belongs to MS-13 – he is entitled to due process under the law and fair treatment by our government. The fact that many Americans remain committed to this ideal here ⁠– despite the president’s best efforts to render Ábrego García unsympathetic, despite all that’s been done to frame undocumented immigration as an invasion and a society-breaking crisis ⁠– is one of the brightest glimmers of light against the pall Donald Trump and the right have cast over this country.Bright as it is, there are Democrats who are determined not to see it. Infamously in Axios last month, one anonymous House member ⁠– some nameless, brainless invertebrate, croaking from the bottom of a boot ⁠– warned the party against defending immigrants like Ábrego García or the makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero, also deported as a gang member for having tattoos. Trump, they said, was “setting a trap for the Democrats, and like usual we’re falling for it […] we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser”. In an appearance on Fox News Radio, the Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar argued that Ábrego García, in particular, was “not the right case” for Democrats to take up. “This is not the right issue to talk about due process,” he said. “This is not the right person to be saying that we need to bring him back to the United States.”Fortunately, most Americans disagree. And there is an opportunity here, for those with the good sense and courage to take it, to use the public’s dismay at the Ábrego García case and the realities of Trump’s immigration agenda to sell it on an alternative vision for our immigration policy and an alternative set of culprits for the problems immigrants have proven easy scapegoats for.Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents supposedly on the prowl for the thugs and thieves who’ve ruined communities and degraded our public infrastructure would be better off kicking down the doors of Congress than smashing the windows of asylum seekers. And, of course, if preserving law and order means that criminals who are sucking our public resources dry and who pose a danger to women ought to be dealt with harshly, we should insist on bringing the convict, grifter, and accused rapist in the White House to justice. The chief priority of his administration is terrorizing people for committing the crime of coming to this country and working harder for it than he ever has. His agenda here is corrosive to our values. It is degrading to our society. It materially profits no one. In important ways, it hurts us all.More and more Americans are wising up to this. Fewer and fewer are willing to stand for it.

      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Suspect charged with murder in shooting of Israeli embassy staffers

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      The US justice department on Thursday charged the lone suspect in a brazen attack that killed two young Israeli embassy staff members outside an event at the Jewish museum in downtown Washington DC with two counts of first degree murder.Jeanine Pirro, the interim US attorney for Washington, said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon that authorities were also investigating as a “hate crime and a crime of terrorism” the killings that left the US capital in shock as world leaders condemned the “horrible” and “antisemitic” shootings.Early on Thursday morning, federal agents in tactical gear descended on a Chicago apartment believed to be the alleged gunman’s home. According to a post on X from the FBI’s Washington field office, agents in Chicago were “conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity” that it said was “in relation to yesterday’s tragic shooting in Washington, DC”.The FBI director, Kash Patel, described the slaying as an “act of terror” and “targeted anti-Semitic violence”. The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that US authorities believed the suspect acted alone. “We are doing everything we can to protect our entire community, and especially our Jewish community right now,” said Bondi, who was at the crime scene. “It was horrific,” she added.At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Donald Trump was “saddened and outraged” by the deadly act and vowed that the US Department of Justice “will be prosecuting the perpetrator of this to the full extent of the law”. She said Trump spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.The killings occurred shortly after 9pm on Wednesday evening, outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where, according to officials, a gunman approached a group leaving an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee and opened fire at close range.The victims, identified as Yaron Lischinsky, who grew up in Germany and Israel, and Sarah Milgrim, a US citizen from Kansas, were a young couple about to be engaged, according to Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the US. Leiter told reporters Lischinsky had “purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem”.The suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, was observed pacing outside the museum before the shooting, the Metropolitan police chief, Pamela Smith, said. After opening fire, he walked into the museum, was detained by event security and began to chant “Free, free Palestine,” she said.Officials have said the suspect was not on any security watchlists and there were no heightened security threats before the shooting. The firearm believed to be used in the killings was retrieved as well, officials said.The FBI deputy director, Dan Bongino, said the suspect was interviewed by authorities within hours of being taken into custody. Officials were aware of “certain writings” possibly authored by the suspect that have been circulated online, he wrote in a post on X, adding: “We hope to have updates as to the authenticity very soon.”The flags at Israeli diplomatic missions around the world were lowered to half mast, and Netanyahu ordered security to be stepped up following what he called “the horrifying antisemitic murder”.The attack comes as Israel expanded its ground offensive in Gaza, and faces growing international pressure, including from the US, to end its nearly three-month long blockade of food, medicine and other supplies that humanitarian groups say has pushed the enclave to the brink of famine.The shooting occurred in an area of the US capital crowded with federal buildings and embassies. The Capital Jewish Museum is located steps from the FBI’s Washington field office.Leaders in the US and Israel have said the attack was part of what Netanyahu called “the terrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against Israel”.“When antisemitism is normalized, that’s where we start to see the real danger that results in the violence we saw last night,” Ted Deutch, a former Florida congressman and the chief executive of the American Jewish Committee, which had put on the reception for young diplomats on Wednesday night, said in an interview on MSNBC. “Everyone has a role to play in making sure that doesn’t happen.”In a social media post early on Thursday, Trump wrote: “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli foreign minister, blamed critics of the Israeli government, including the “leaders and officials of many countries and international organizations, especially from Europe” for inciting violence and hatred against his country since the Israel-Hamas war began on 7 October 2023.France on Thursday denounced Sa’ar’s comments as “unjustified” and “outrageous”. “France has condemned, France condemns and France will continue to condemn, always and unequivocally, any act of antisemitism,” the foreign ministry spokesperson Christophe Lemoine said.International criticism of Israel over the Gaza war has risen in recent weeks. On Tuesday, in an unprecedented, joint statement with Canada and the UK, France condemned “the appalling language” of members of Netanyahu’s government, and the “outrageous actions” and the “intolerable level of suffering” of civilians.The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the deadly attack as “completely unacceptable” and said that political violence “only undermines the pursuit of justice”.“While millions of Americans feel extreme frustration at the sight of the Israeli government slaughtering Palestinian men, women and children on a daily basis with weapons paid for with our taxpayer dollars, political violence is an unacceptable crime and is not the answer,” the group said in a statement.Tributes poured in for the slain victims of the attack from the US and overseas as those who knew Lischinsky and Milgrim described the couple as “bright” and “talented”.Lischinsky, 30, who worked as a research assistant in the political department of the Israeli embassy in Washington, was born in Nuremberg, according to the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor. “He was a Christian, a true lover of Israel, served in the IDF, and chose to dedicate his life to the State of Israel and the Zionist cause,” he wrote on X, sharing that he came to know Lischinsky as his master’s student at Reichman University in Israel.Milgrim, 26, an American from Kansas, organized trips to Israel, according to a spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry, officials said. She was also a volunteer with Tech2Peace, an advocacy group training young Palestinians and Israelis and promoting dialogue between them, according to the organization.KU Hillel, a Jewish student organization at her alma mater, the University of Kansas, described Milgrim as a “bright spirit” whose “passion for the Jewish community touched everyone fortunate enough to know her”. Those who knew her best said she was “the definition of the best person”, the statement said.Lischinsky was preparing to propose to Milgrim when they traveled to Jerusalem next week to meet his family, according to officials. Lischinsky had purchased an engagement ring, which Miligram’s family only learned of after the shooting.“The ironic part is that we were worried for our daughter’s safety in Israel,” her father, Robert Milgrim, told the New York Times in an interview. “But she was murdered three days before going.” More

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      Key takeaways: RFK Jr’s ‘Maha’ report on chronic disease in children

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      Donald Trump’s health secretary and long-time vaccine skeptic, Robert F Kennedy Jr, presented a highly anticipated report on children’s health this week.The “Maha commission” report, referring to the “Make America healthy again” movement, was required by a presidential executive order in February. The report focuses on chronic disease among children.The 68-page report broadly summarizes five areas affecting children’s health, with a focus on ultra-processed foods, environmental chemical exposure, lack of physical activity, “overmedicalization”, and “capture” of regulatory agencies.It notably omits some of the most common causes of chronic disease and death in children, insinuates there could be harms where there is lack of evidence, and avoids discussing how Republicans have already changed the health system in ways researchers believe are harmful.Art Caplan, a professor of bioethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told the Guardian that the report has “interesting ideas about health and children’s health and crackpot fringe tin-hat-wearing nonsense – it’s got it all”.Here are five of the key takeaways from the report.1. The report ignores some common dangers to childrenThe most common causes of death among children are car crashes and firearm accidents. The report ignores these issues, as well as behaviors that often start in adolescence and lead to chronic disease in adulthood, such as smoking and alcohol use. It also criticizes water fluoridation, without mentioning its protective effects against cavities.Also, absent from the report is a discussion of how the administration has already changed the health department in ways that advocates argue will benefit industry and could exacerbate chronic disease.For instance, Kennedy eliminated two smoking prevention offices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in what one former regulator told Stat was “the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century”. He also eliminated a world-leading sexually transmitted infection laboratory.In another example, one of the nation’s leading researchers of ultra-processed foods quit his “dream job” after facing what he described as censorship from the administration (the health department reportedly asked him to return). In a similar vein, the Trump administration cut a program that delivered local whole foods to schools soon after taking office, in spite of Kennedy calling for healthier school meals.2. The report focuses on issues key to Kennedy’s view of healthThe report is roughly broken up into five sections focusing on ultra-processed foods, environmental chemical exposures, children’s mental health, “overmedicalization” and “corporate capture” of regulators by the industries they are supposed to oversee.Kennedy has harped on many of the issues listed in the report for months in public appearances and even though his defunct presidential campaign – especially including ultra-processed foods and obesity. Although some of these concerns may find bipartisan support – such as the focus on “forever chemicals” such as Pfas – it also pushes into areas where the science is unsettled.For instance, the report mentions that high levels of fluoride are potentially associated with reduced IQ, but does not mention its well-established protective effects against cavities – the most common chronic condition in children, according to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.Similarly, the report argues that the childhood vaccine schedule is causing concern among parents for,“their possible role in the growing childhood chronic disease crisis” – without citing evidence that vaccines are linked to any specific chronic disease.3. It’s likely to face diverse pushback – and create new alliancesEven before the report was published, congressional lawmakers were being bombarded by calls from agricultural and chemical lobbyists wary of how the report would criticize their products – and indeed it did.One of the report’s sections questions whether “crop protection tools” including “pesticides, herbicides and insecticides” could harm human health. It then specifically name-drops glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, and atrazine, a common herbicide. That is sure to make for strange political bedfellows and consternation within the Republican party. Similarly, the report cites synthetic dyes and ultra-processed foods are potentially harmful.Chemicals and food additives have been issues of concern for decades on the left. However, the Maha movement has also catalyzed opposition to them on the right.4. The report’s authors are not namedThe commission’s members are made up of the heads of intersecting agencies, including Kennedy at the Department of Health and Human Services, and the heads of the departments of agriculture, housing, education, veterans affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others.However, the exact authors of the report are unknown. This contrasts with Kennedy’s repeated promise at his confirmation hearing that his health department would practice “radical transparency”.The work of the “Maha” commission was reportedly spearheaded by senior Kennedy adviser Calley Means, a former food lobbyist and healthcare entrepreneur who rose to prominence as a Maha truth-teller. Means co-wrote a bestselling book with his sister, current US surgeon general nominee Casey Means, which blames many of America’s ills on sedentary lifestyle and poor diet.5. Changing any of the issues identified is likely to be toughOne of the key issues the report identifies is the influence of food, pharmaceutical and chemical companies on American policy. They are monied and powerful.As a result, getting real change through Congress is certain to be tough – especially in an administration devoted to reducing regulations. More