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    Trump FCC chair to reportedly testify to Senate panel after Kimmel suspension

    Brendan Carr, the pro-Trump chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has agreed to testify before the Senate commerce committee following Disney’s decision to take talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel off air temporarily, according to multiple reports.Carr agreed to testify after speaking to committee chair Ted Cruz, Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter on Wednesday, adding the date of the hearing has not been set but was expected after November. Semafor was the first to report on the hearing.Carr, Disney, the White House and an FCC spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.On 17 September, ABC announced it would “indefinitely” suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s show, hours after Carr had appeared on a conservative podcast and appeared to pressure network affiliates to stop airing the show over comments by Kimmel on the death of the far-right pundit Charlie Kirk.“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr had said, explaining that he wanted broadcasters to “take action” on Kimmel.Nexstar and Sinclair, two major carriers of ABC programming, quickly announced plans to pull Kimmel’s show, seemingly forcing ABC’s hand.Ultimately, ABC decided to bring Kimmel back the following week, and Nexstar and Sinclair followed suit. The network’s decision reportedly followed a wave of cancellations of streaming service Disney+.The show returned on 23 September and hit a 10-year ratings high among adult viewers.Carr’s comments drew criticism from across the aisle. Cruz said some of Carr’s remarks were “dangerous as hell” and compared him to a “mafioso”.During a news conference last week, Carr was asked whether he regrets the phrasing he used when talking about Kimmel, Carr claimed “the full words that I said, the full context of the interview”, were very clear. More

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    Vance uses false claims to pin shutdown blame on Democrats as White House warns of layoffs

    JD Vance, the US vice-president, used false claims to blame Democrats for the government shutdown as the White House warned that worker layoffs were imminent.Federal departments have been closing since midnight after a deadlocked Congress failed to pass a funding measure. The crisis has higher stakes than previous shutdowns, with Trump racing to slash government departments and threatening to turn furloughs into mass firings.Making a rare appearance in the White House briefing room, Vance told reporters: “We are going to have to lay some people off if the shutdown continues. We don’t like that. We don’t necessarily want to do it, but we’re going to do what we have to do to keep the American people’s essential services continuing to run.”Vance denied workers would be targeted because of their political allegiance but acknowledged there was still uncertainty over who might be laid off or furloughed. “We haven’t made any final decisions about what we’re going to do with certain workers,” he said. “What we’re saying is that we might have to take extraordinary steps, especially the longer this goes on.”About 750,000 federal employees are expected to be placed on furlough, an enforced leave, with pay withheld until they return to work. Essential workers such as military and border agents may be forced to work without pay, and some will likely miss pay cheques next week.At the same briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that government agencies are already preparing for cuts.“Unfortunately, because the Democrats shut down the government, the president has directed his cabinet, and the office of management and budget is working with agencies across the board, to identify where cuts can be made – and we believe that layoffs are imminent,” she said.The press secretary acknowledged she could not be precise about timing or identify the percentage of workers likely to be affected.As the messaging war over the shutdown intensifies, Democrats, motivated by grassroots anger over expiring healthcare subsidies, have been withholding Senate votes to fund the government as leverage to try and force negotiations.Vance sought to upbraid Democrats over their demands, targeting Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC.“The Chuck Schumer-AOC wing of the Democratic party shut down the government because they said to us, we will open the government only if you give billions of dollars of funding to healthcare for illegal aliens. That’s a ridiculous proposition.”It is also a false claim. US law bars undocumented immigrants from receiving the health care benefits Democrats are demanding, and the party has not called for a new act of Congress to change that.At a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, said Trump and Republicans shut the government down to deny healthcare to working-class Americans.“The president has been engaging in irresponsible and unserious behaviour, demonstrating that, all along, Republicans wanted to shut the government down,” he said. “That’s no surprise, because for decades, Republicans have consistently shut the government down as part of their efforts to try to extract and jam their extreme rightwing agenda down the throats of the American people.”On another front, the White House began targeting Democratic-leaning states for a pause or cancellation of infrastructure funds.Russ Vought, the OMB director, said on X that roughly $18bn for New York City infrastructure projects had been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing to “unconstitutional DEI principles”. Later he said nearly $8bn in clean energy funding “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled”.Schumer and Jeffries responded in a joint statement: “Donald Trump is once again treating working people as collateral damage in his endless campaign of chaos and revenge.”Shutdowns are a periodic feature of gridlocked Washington, although this is the first since a record 35-day pause in 2018-19, during Trump’s first term. Talks so far have been unusually bitter, with Trump mocking Schumer and Jeffries on social media.The president’s most recent video showed Jeffries being interviewed on MSNBC with an AI-generated moustache and sombrero, and four depictions of the president playing mariachi music.Vance made light of the tactic. “I think it’s funny. The president’s joking and we’re having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while also making a little bit of fun at some of the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and even poking some fun at the absurdity of the themselves.“I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”Jeffries has denounced the memes as racist. Vance retorted: “I honestly don’t even know what that means. Like, is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?”Efforts to swiftly end the shutdown collapsed on Wednesday as Senate Democrats – who are demanding extended healthcare subsidies for low income families – refused to help the majority Republicans approve a bill passed by the House that would have reopened the government for several weeks.Congress is out on Thursday for the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday but the Senate returns to work on Friday and may be in session through the weekend. The House is not due back until next week.A Marist poll released on Tuesday found that 38% of voters would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown, 27% would blame the Democrats and 31% both parties. More

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    Once again, Netanyahu has outplayed Trump | Mohamad Bazzi

    As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump claimed he would quickly end the war in Gaza. Eight months after taking office, Trump finally decided to exert some US pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, announcing a 20-point peace plan at the White House on Monday.But the deal that the US president struck with Netanyahu – after Trump dithered for months, allowing Israel to continue its genocidal war with US weapons and unwavering political support – is less a ceasefire proposal than an ultimatum for Hamas to surrender.After nearly two years of prolonging the war and obstructing ceasefire negotiations, Netanyahu got almost everything he wanted, thanks to Trump. The US plan calls on Hamas to lay down its weapons and release the Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza, but it allows Israeli troops to occupy parts of Gaza for the foreseeable future. It’s close to the “total victory” over Hamas that Netanyahu has consistently promised the Israeli public, but failed to deliver on the battlefield.What if Hamas rejects this deal that was drafted without its input, or that of any other Palestinian faction? Trump made clear he would enable Netanyahu to sow even more death and destruction in Gaza. “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” he said at the White House. On Tuesday, Trump added he would give Hamas officials “three or four days” to respond – and warned that the group would “pay in hell” if it turns down the agreement. In past negotiations, Hamas had rejected Israeli proposals that forced the group to disarm and pushed it out of any future role governing Gaza.Once again, Netanyahu has outplayed Trump, who considers himself a master deal-maker. But he’s been regularly outmaneuvered by strongmen like Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin.When Trump took office in January, he had the upper hand over the Israeli leader, having pushed Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza that went into effect a day before the president’s inauguration on 20 January. But Netanyahu, who worried that his rightwing government would collapse if he agreed to a permanent truce with Hamas, imposed a new siege on Gaza in early March. With Trump’s blessing, Israel deprived Palestinians of food, medicine and other necessities. Netanyahu then refused to continue negotiations with Hamas, and broke the ceasefire after two months.Thanks to his unwavering support of Netanyahu, Trump has made the US more deeply complicit in Israel’s war crimes. Since Netanyahu resumed the war in March, civilians made up about 15 of every 16 people that the Israeli military has killed in Gaza, according to the independent violence-tracking group Acled. Israel has also pursued a more severe starvation campaign and instigated a famine in northern Gaza. (In August, the Guardian reported that a classified database maintained by the Israeli military showed that 83% of Palestinians killed in Gaza, between the outbreak of war in October 2023 and May of this year, were civilians.)Along the way, Netanyahu has exploited Trump’s desire for flattery, allowing the Israeli premier to not to draw out the war on Gaza but also to conduct attacks on other countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Starting with billions of dollars in US weapons provided by Joe Biden’s administration and continuing under Trump, Israel has been able to bomb virtually anywhere in the region, with impunity. In June, Israel launched a surprise attack against Iran, killing dozens of top military officials and nuclear scientists. Netanyahu then convinced Trump to briefly join Israel’s war, when he ordered US planes to bomb three major nuclear facilities in Iran.Two weeks later, in early July, the Israeli premier showed up for dinner at the White House. Trump was eager to build on the momentum of a ceasefire he brokered between Iran and Israel, and was planning to cajole Netanyahu into making a deal with Hamas in Gaza. But Netanyahu avoided being publicly pressured by Trump to end the Gaza war, as Trump had done weeks earlier with the Iran ceasefire. Instead, Netanyahu stroked Trump’s ego by revealing that he had nominated the US president for the Nobel peace prize.Netanyahu managed to both flatter Trump and tap into his sense of grievance over being denied the world’s top peacemaking award. Trump has insisted for years that he deserves the Nobel prize for orchestrating a series of diplomatic agreements between Israel and several Arab countries during his first term. These so-called Abraham Accords were brokered in 2020 by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser at the time, and they included the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. But Trump couldn’t entice Saudi Arabia, the most important Arab state, and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to reach a normalization deal with Israel.Like Trump’s current peace plan for Gaza, the Abraham Accords were negotiated directly with Israel and autocratic Arab regimes – and they excluded Palestinians from any discussion of their future or aspirations. These are deals conceived by real estate tycoons like Trump, Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who has served as Middle East envoy and one of Trump’s top diplomats in his second term. Trump and Kushner have always viewed Gaza through the prism of a real estate project, where Palestinians are holdouts refusing to cave into pressure to make way for the renovation of prime beachfront property along the Mediterranean Sea.In one of the few positive developments for Gazans, Trump dropped his widely-derided idea, which he floated during a meeting with Netanyahu in February, for the US to take over Gaza and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, in effect endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.But on Monday, as Trump announced his latest plan, which would establish a temporary governing board for Gaza that he himself would chair, he couldn’t resist ad-libbing a digression about the perceived value of the territory’s waterfront. “As a real estate person, I mean, they gave up the ocean,” Trump said, referring to the Israeli government’s decision in 2005 to withdraw troops occupying Gaza, along with about 8,000 Israeli settlers. He added: “They gave up the ocean. I said: ‘Who would do this deal?’”In reality, even after its withdrawal, Israel maintained control over Gaza’s airspace, borders and shoreline. In 2007, after Hamas took military control of Gaza following its victory in Palestinian legislative elections, Israel imposed a blockade on the territory that continues until today. Israel gave up the beach, but it still controlled the sea.In the days leading up to Monday’s announcement at the White House, Kushner and Witkoff spent hours meeting with Netanyahu, who was able to make last-minute changes to Trump’s plan, including the scope and timing of Israeli troop withdrawals from Gaza. As he has for the past two years, the Israeli prime minister managed to impose his will on a US administration that should have far more leverage over him than the other way around. And that means Netanyahu may well doom Trump’s latest peace deal.

    Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University More

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    Trump’s peace plan is everything Israelis dreamed of. But it’s a fantasy | Roy Schwartz

    It didn’t take long before the Gospel of Donald became a message that everyone in Israel could embrace. The 20-point plan to end the ongoing war in Gaza, presented on Monday by the US president, is everything the Israelis had dreamed of – even fantasised about. The hostages will finally return, some to their families, others to their graves. Hamas will be gone, at least as a ruling organisation, and the soldiers will come home. The “peace plan” will, supposedly, mean a return to normality.A brief read-through of the one-page plan might suggest that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his people were involved in phrasing it. At times, it reads more like a list of Israeli demands than diplomatic compromises. Perhaps that’s why Netanyahu gave it his blessing rather quickly, which seemed to all but seal the deal. Even then, worth mentioning, his speech offered a slightly different version of the plan from the one in the written document – saying he didn’t agree to a Palestinian state or a full military withdrawal.Once you unwrap the package, remove the ribbons and the superlatives (“potentially one of the great days ever in civilisation”, as Trump put it), more than a few holes open up. The most obvious is the other side in the deal – Hamas, which has yet to approve it. This small detail seems to have been deemed almost irrelevant. Given Netanyahu’s record, one might wonder whether a Hamas refusal would actually be a convenient outcome for him. It would allow him to appear as someone who had genuinely attempted to end the war – while still retaining the full backing of the US to continue it. And since ending the bloodshed might also mean the collapse of his coalition, perhaps there are deeper political calculations at play.Another major question lies in the alternative response that Hamas might give: yes, but. In other words – support for a deal to end the war in principle, but with certain details requiring further negotiation. This would raise the question of how flexible Israel can be, given that Netanyahu’s government currently depends on far-right parties and that many of their members may view even the slightest compromise as grounds to dissolve the coalition (even the current plan has rattled them). At that point, it would become a test of how much pressure the US can realistically exert on Netanyahu – twisting his arm, if necessary. And if that fails, then what?Take section 17 of the plan, for instance. It states that even if Hamas rejects or delays the agreement, Israel will hand over “terror-free” areas to an international force. How exactly is that supposed to happen? How will such a force actually operate in a war zone? There are no answers to those questions.View image in fullscreenEven if we assume the original proposal goes through with assistance from Arab and Muslim countries, it won’t be the end of the doubts – only the beginning. Many of the uncertainties concern the so-called day after. The plan promises full humanitarian aid to Gaza, including the rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), hospitals, bakeries, and the entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and reopen roads. However, the allocation of funds is missing. The document provides no detail on how much this will cost or, crucially, on who will provide this funding.The same applies to the proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF). Which countries will send troops? How many? Who will have overarching authority over these forces? How will they coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)? Who will be in charge of ensuring Gaza doesn’t become a playground for various countries, each with their own interests and agendas? And, last but not least: who will give assurances to the people of Gaza that all of this is not just a new form of foreign occupation? These may seem like minor details, but they are essential – if not critical – to make the plan more than theoretical.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet the public conversation in Israel seems largely unbothered by such questions. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Many Israelis have been indifferent to the catastrophe in Gaza since the war began – including the mass death and starvation of unarmed Palestinians. It makes sense that they would not concern themselves with how Gaza moves forward. More often than not, it seems that, for Israelis, what happens in Gaza stays in Gaza – with no consequences for the other side whatsoever.In a way, the proposed end to the war fits comfortably within that same mindset. There’s a widespread sense that if the plan goes ahead, Israel can simply return to the days before it all happened. Everything that took place in Gaza will be forgotten, except, of course, the 7 October 2023 massacre won’t be. There will no longer be a reason to protest against Israel globally, and certainly not to impose sanctions on Israeli officials, or call for exclusion from international sporting events or the Eurovision song contest.The fact that, for the foreseeable future, the Gaza Strip will remain a devastated area with barely any infrastructure may seem insignificant within Israel. Nor does it appear to matter that it will take the people of Gaza a long time to rebuild their homes and return to work – or to bury their loved ones and grieve. Not to mention that further horrors are likely to be uncovered if Gaza becomes safer and opens up to the foreign press. These issues are scarcely discussed. Like a history book returned to the library, it’s simply closed and filed away.

    Roy Schwartz is a senior editor and op-ed contributor at Haaretz

    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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    US government shutdown live: first closure since 2018 begins after funding bill fails

    A US government shutdown has been triggered after a deadline to reach a funding agreement before the start of the new fiscal year, on 1 October, came and went without a deal.Democrats and Republicans angrily blamed each other and refused to budge from their positions as the country hurtled towards the midnight ET deadline, unable to find agreement or even negotiate as hundreds of thousands of federal workers stood to be furloughed or laid off.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans were trying to “bully” Democrats by refusing to negotiate on an extension of healthcare benefits and other priorities. Senate majority leader John Thune said Republicans were “not going to be held hostage” by the Democrats’ demands.Hours before the shutdown, Donald Trump told reporters he had “no choice” but to lay off federal workers if no deal was reached. Asked about why he was considering mass layoffs, Trump said: “No country can afford to pay for illegal immigration, healthcare for everybody that comes into the country. And that’s what they [Democrats] are insisting. They want open borders. They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everybody. They never stop. They don’t learn. We won an election in the landslide. They just don’t learn. So we have no choice. I have to do that for the country.”In a polarized Washington, with the chambers narrowly divided, shutdown threats have become a feature of recent congressional budget battles. A standoff in 2018, during Trump’s first term, resulted in a 34-day shutdown, the longest in the modern era. At the time, roughly 800,000 of the federal government’s 2.1 million employees were sidelined without pay.

    Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.

    The Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have blamed Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, saying they “do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people”.

    The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”

    Russ Vought, director of the White House office of management and budget, released a letter blaming “Democrats’ insane policy demands” for a shutdown. “It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict,” Vought wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the heads of federal offices and agencies.

    Democratic leaders say they are not backing down, but signs have emerged of dissent within their ranks. Three members of the Democratic caucus voted for the Republican proposal on Tuesday evening – two more than when the bill was first considered earlier this month. “I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration,” said Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
    We will bring you the latest news and reactions on the shutdown as we get them.Already diminished by cuts by the Trump administration, the US education department will see more of its work come to a halt due to the government shutdown.The department says many of its core operations will continue in the shutdown kicking off Wednesday. Federal financial aid will keep flowing, and student loan payments will still be due.But investigations into civil rights complaints will stop, and the department will not issue new federal grants, AP reports. About 87% of its workforce will be furloughed, according to a department contingency plan.AP reports:
    Since he took office, president Donald Trump has called for the dismantling of the education department, saying it has been overrun by liberal thinking. Agency leaders have been making plans to parcel out its operations to other departments, and in July the supreme court upheld mass layoffs that halved the department’s staff.
    In a shutdown, the administration has suggested federal agencies could see more positions eliminated entirely. In past shutdowns, furloughed employees were brought back once Congress restored federal funding. This time, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers.
    Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee in May, Education Secretary Linda McMahon suggested this year’s layoffs had made her department lean – even too lean in some cases. Some staffers were brought back, she said, after officials found that the cuts went too deep.
    “You hope that you’re just cutting fat. Sometimes you cut a little muscle, and you realize it as you’re continuing your programs, and you can bring people back to do that,” McMahon said. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January. It now has about 2,500.
    The US government shut down on Wednesday, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican plan to extend funding for federal departments unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.The GOP, which controls the Senate and the House of Representatives, repudiated their demands, setting off a legislative scramble that lasted into the hours before funding lapsed at midnight, when the Senate failed to advance both parties’ bills to keep funding going.The shutdown is the first since a 35-day closure that began in December 2018 and extended into the new year, during Trump’s first term. It comes as Democrats look to regain their footing with voters, who re-elected Trump last year and relegated them to the minority in both chambers of Congress.“Republicans are plunging America into a shutdown, rejecting bipartisan talks, pushing a partisan bill and risking America’s healthcare,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday evening, as it became clear a shutdown was inevitable.Last month, House Republicans passed a bill that would fund the government through 21 November, but it requires the support of some Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. It failed to gain that support in votes held late on Tuesday, while Republicans also blocked a Democratic proposal to continue funding through October while also making an array of policy changes.“Far-left interest groups and far-left Democrat members wanted to show down with the president, and so Senate Democrats have sacrificed the American people to Democrats’ partisan interests,” Senate majority leader John Thune said.Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”National Parks will largely remain partially open even as the federal government shuts down. A plan released late on Tuesday, hours before the shutdown was set to begin, outlined how swaths of land not able to be locked down – including open-air memorials, park roads, and trails – will remain accessible to the public.The document also detailed that more than 9,200 employees will be furloughed, reducing staff by roughly 64%. Only workers deemed necessary to protect “life and property”, will remain on duty.The former superintendent of Joshua Tree national park said in 2019 the park could take hundreds of years to recover from damage caused by visitors during the 2018-19 shutdown.In 2013, an estimated 8 million recreation visits and $414 million were lost during the 16-day shutdown, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, citing National Park Service data. During the most recent shutdown in 2019, many parks remained open though no visitor services were provided. The Park Service lost $400,000 a day from missed entrance fee revenue, according to the association’s estimates. What’s more, park visitors would have typically spent $20 million on an average January day in nearby communities.The Guardian’s video desk has compiled this video as Republicans and Democrats blame each other for the shutdown.Workers who were furloughed during the 2018-19 shutdown shared their stories with the Guardian in 2019. One, Leisyka Parrott, a furloughed employee with the Bureau of Land Management said: “The thing is when you get back pay, all the fees that you incur by missing payments – you don’t get paid back for those. If you are late for a payment and have a $25 fee, the government doesn’t pay for that.”“There’s all kinds of issues with raising families, just buying gasoline,” said Franco DiCroce, a US army corps of engineers employee speaking in his capacity as president of Local 98 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers told the Guardian. “Most of these people, their salaries are not skyrocketing. They’re suffering even more, because some of them live check-to-check, so if they don’t have money coming in, they’re going to have difficulty meeting their needs, to even buy groceries.”Many turned to food banks in order to eat. “You’ve worked for 10, 20, 30 years for the government,” said Nurel Storey, an officer for the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 22. “And all of a sudden things have just been shut off, for no fault of your own.”The 35-day partial shutdown of the US government that started in 2018 cost about $11bn and shaved 0.2% off the nation’s annual economic growth forecasts, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said in January 2019.According to the CBO, that shutdown hurt economic growth because it affected roughly 800,000 workers and delayed federal spending on goods and services.This shutdown is expected to be worse than previous ones. The impact on federal workers could be even more severe.Before Trump’s most recent threat of mass layoffs on Tuesday, a memo released last week by the White House’s office of management and budget told agencies not just to prepare for temporary furloughs but for permanent layoffs in the event of a shutdown.The memo directed agencies to ready reduction-in-force notices for federal programs whose funding sources would lapse in the event of a shutdown and are “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.OMB led the administration’s earlier efforts to shrink the federal workforce as part of a broader government efficiency campaign led by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”.In a statement on Thursday, AFL-CIO’s president, Liz Shuler, said government employees had “already suffered immensely” this year under the Trump administration’s vast cuts to the federal workforce. “They are not pawns for the president’s political games,” she said.Asked about the memo on Thursday, Trump blamed Democrats, saying a shutdown was what the party wanted. “They never change,” he said.At a news conference, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Thursday that Democrats “will not be intimidated” by the Trump administration’s threats to fire more federal employees if the federal government shuts down. He added that his message to Russell Vought, the head of OMB, was simple: “Get lost.”Gold hit a record high and Wall Street futures fell with the dollar Wednesday after the US government shutdown, though most Asian and European markets edged up.Britain’s stock market hit a new record high, as investors shrugged off concerns about the US government shutdown.You can follow all of the day’s business developments with Graeme Wearden in the business live blogA government shutdown raises questions about how the Environmental Protection Agency can carry out its mission of protecting the America’s health and environment with little more than skeletal staff and funding. The Associated Press has carried this report.In President Donald Trump’s second term, the EPA has leaned hard into an agenda of deregulation and facilitating Trump’s boosting of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal to meet what he has called an energy emergency.Jeremy Symons, a former EPA policy official under President Bill Clinton, said it’s natural to worry that a shutdown will lead “the worst polluters” to treat it as a chance to dump toxic pollution without getting caught.“Nobody will be holding polluters accountable for what they dump into the air we breathe, in the water we drink while EPA is shut down,” said Symons, now a senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former agency officials advocating for a strong Earth-friendly department.A scientific study of pollution from about 200 coal-fired power plants during the 2018-2019 government shutdown found they “significantly increased their particulate matter emissions due to the EPA’s furlough.” Soot pollution is connected to thousands of deaths per year in the United States.The EPA’s shutdown plan calls for it to stop doing non-criminal pollution inspections needed to enforce clean air and water rules. It won’t issue new grants to other governmental agencies, update its website, issue new permits, approve state requests dealing with pollution regulations or conduct most scientific research, according to the EPA document. Except in situations where the public health would be at risk, work on Superfund cleanup sites will stop.Marc Boom, a former EPA policy official during the Biden administration, said inspections under the Chemical Accident Risk Reduction program would halt. Those are done under the Clean Air Act to make sure facilities are adequately managing the risk of chemical accidents.“Communities near the facilities will have their risk exposure go up immediately since accidents will be more likely to occur,” Boom said.He also said EPA hotlines for reporting water and other pollution problems likely will be closed. “So if your water tastes off later this week, there will be no one at EPA to pick up the phone,” he said.While many airport employees, including air traffic controllers, are required to work during the shutdown as they are categorized as essential, they will not be paid and it’s likely there will be staffing issues. That could mean travel disruptions in the US and for overseas visitors.What is the likely impact on air travel?Flights will continue but delays and cancellations are very likely. Air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration employees who staff airport security checkpoints are essential workers, but will be working without pay. In previous shutdowns flights were significantly disrupted and security lines were lengthy.The shutdown could also impact the air traffic control system. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recruied 2,000 new controllers in 2025 but training will be hit by the shutdown.What about trains?Amtrak trains will run. Amtrak does receive federal grants, but generates revenue, so it doesn’t depend on government funding in the short term. It cannot operate indefinitely though and if a shutdown went on for long enough, it could be affected.Passports and visas?A State Department spokesperson told CNN on Monday that “Consular operations domestically and abroad will remain operational. This includes passports, visas, and assisting US citizens abroad.”National Park staff are among federal workers required to stop working in a government shutdown. But staff feared Trump officials could once again push for leaving America’s parks open when they are unstaffed.Irreversible damage was done at popular parks, including Joshua Tree in California, following a month-long shutdown in Donald Trump’s first term, when his administration demanded parks be kept open while funding was paused and workers were furloughed.Without supervision, visitors left behind trails of destruction. Prehistoric petroglyphs were vandalized at Big Bend national park. Joshua trees, some more than a century old, were chopped down at Joshua Tree national park, as trash and toilets overflowed. Tire tracks crushed sensitive plants and desert habitats from illegal off-roading vehicles in Death Valley. There were widespread reports of wildlife poaching, search-and-rescue crews were quickly overwhelmed with calls, and visitor centers were broken into.“National parks don’t run themselves. It is hard-working National Park Service employees that keep them safe, clean and accessible,” 40 former superintendents said in a letter issued to Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, this week, urging him to close the parks if a shutdown occurs. “If sufficient staff aren’t there, visitors shouldn’t be either.”A plan released late on Tuesday, mere hours before the shutdown was set to begin, outlined how swaths of land not able to be locked down – including open-air memorials, park roads, and trails – will remain accessible to the public. The document also detailed that more than 9,200 employees will be furloughed, reducing staff by roughly 64%. Only workers deemed necessary to protect “life and property”, will remain on duty.A deep impasse between Donald Trump and congressional Democrats prevented Congress and the White House from reaching a funding deal. So what will take to end the shutdown?What Republicans wantTrump’s Republicans control both the House and the Senate, and have already scored some big budget wins this year. The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ passed in July and it boosted spending for defense and immigration enforcement, rolled back spending on green energy and other Democratic priorities, while making major cuts in the Medicaid healthcare program for low-income and disabled people to help pay for tax cuts focused mainly on the wealthy. Republicans also have broadly supported the White House’s efforts to claw back money that had already been approved by Congress for foreign aid and public broadcasting, even though that undermines lawmakers’ constitutional authority over spending matters. They have said they would vote for a continuing resolution that would extend funding at current levels through 21 November to allow more time to negotiate a full-year deal.What Democrats wantAs the minority party, Democrats do not have much power. But Republicans will need at least seven Democratic votes to pass any spending bill out of the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to advance most legislation in the 100-seat chamber.This time, Democrats are using that leverage to push for renewing expanded healthcare subsidies for people who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Their proposal would make permanent enhanced tax breaks that are otherwise due to expire at the end of the year and make them available to more middle-income households. If those tax breaks were to expire, health insurance costs would increase dramatically for many of the 24 million Americans who get their coverage through the ACA, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.Democrats also want language inserted into any funding bill that would prohibit Trump from unilaterally ignoring their ACA provisions or temporarily withholding funds.They also want to roll back other restrictions on ACA coverage that were enacted in the so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’. Those changes would provide health coverage for seven million Americans by 2035, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but also increase government healthcare spending by $662bn over 10 years. Republicans say they are open to considering a fix for the expiring tax breaks, but say the issue should be handled separately. Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to use the stopgap funding bill to open the gates for government healthcare subsidies for immigrants in the US illegally.The former Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris took aim at Republicans over the shutdown, posting on X:
    President Trump and Congressional Republicans just shut down the government because they refused to stop your health care costs from rising. Let me be clear: Republicans are in charge of the White House, House, and Senate. This is their shutdown.
    Congresswoman Shontel Brown said Donald Trump and Republicans alone are responsible for the shutdown. She said in a statement:
    Washington Republicans have totally and completely failed in their responsibility to fund the government. House Republicans weren’t even in Washington this week as the government was close to shutting down. This was no accident; it was a deliberate choice.
    We came to work to save health care – they went on vacation.
    Every day this shutdown drags on, families, workers, and communities in Northeast Ohio will pay the price: service members and federal employees will miss paychecks, Social Security and veterans’ services could be delayed, and small business loans will stall.
    Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett said Republicans “chose chaos” in a post on X:
    Make no mistake: Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. This is THEIR shutdown. They had every tool to govern and chose chaos instead. The American people are the ones paying the price.
    Now that a lapse in funding has occurred, the law requires agencies to furlough their “non-excepted” employees. Excepted employees, which include those who work to protect life and property, stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.The White House Office of Management and Budget begins the process with instructions to agencies that a lapse in appropriations has occurred and they should initiate orderly shutdown activities. That memo went out Tuesday evening.The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed, with the total daily cost of their compensation at roughly $400m.FBI investigators, CIA officers, air traffic controllers and agents operating airport checkpoints keep working. So do members of the Armed Forces.Those programs that rely on mandatory spending generally continue during a shutdown. Social Security payments still go out. Seniors relying on Medicare coverage can still see their doctors and health care providers can be reimbursed.Each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan, outlining which workers would stay on the job and which would be furloughed.Health and Human Services will furlough about 41% of its staff out of nearly 80,000 employees, according to a contingency plan posted on its website. As part of that plan, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would continue to monitor disease outbreaks, while activities that will stop include research into health risks and ways to prevent illness.Research and patient care at the National Institutes of Health would be upended. Patients currently enrolled in studies at the research-only hospital nicknamed the “house of hope” will continue to receive care. Additional sick patients hoping for access to experimental therapies can’t enroll except in special circumstances, and no new studies will begin.As the shutdown neared, the National Park Service had not yet said whether it will close its more than 400 sites across the US to visitors. Park officials said Tuesday afternoon that contingency plans were still being updated and would be posted to the service’s website.Many national parks including Yellowstone and Yosemite stayed open during a 35-day shutdown during Trump’s first term. Limited staffing led to vandalism, gates being pried open and other problems including an off-roader mowing down one of the namesake trees at Joshua Tree national park in California.At the Food and Drug Administration, its “ability to protect and promote public health and safety would be significantly impacted, with many activities delayed or paused”. For example, the agency would not accept new drug applications or medical device submissions that require payment of a user fee.What does a government shutdown mean?When Congress fails to pass funding legislation, federal agencies are required by law to halt operations, triggering a shutdown. Employees classified as “non-excepted” are placed on unpaid furlough, while excepted staff – those whose jobs involve protecting life and property – must continue working without pay until after the shutdown ends.Until Congress acts, many federal services will be temporarily halted or disrupted as certain agencies cease all non-essential functions.In a polarized Washington, with the chambers narrowly divided, shutdown threats have become a feature of recent congressional budget battles. But more often than not, the parties’ leaders are able to cobble together an 11th hour compromise to forestall a lapse in funding. Not this time.How long will the government be shut down, and what was the longest shutdown?How long it will last remains unclear. A standoff in 2018, during Trump’s first term, resulted in a 34-day shutdown, the longest in the modern era. At the time, roughly 800,000 of the federal government’s 2.1 million employees were sidelined without pay.Why is the government shutting down this time?The federal government’s new fiscal year began on Wednesday, without an agreement on a short-term funding bill.Democrats, locked out of power in Washington, have little leverage, but their votes are needed to overcome the filibuster in the Senate. They are demanding an extension of subsidies that limit the cost of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and are set to expire, a rollback of Medicaid cuts made in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the restoration of funding to public media that was cut in the rescissions package.Congressional Democrats are under pressure to use their leverage to stand up to Trump and his administration. In March, Schumer lent the necessary Democratic votes to approve a Republican-written short-term funding measure without securing any concessions – a move that infuriated the party’s base.Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, are refusing to negotiate with Democrats over their healthcare demands. Instead, GOP leaders in the Senate have vowed to keep forcing Democrats to vote on a stopgap measure that would extend funding levels, mostly at current levels, through 21 November. That bill narrowly passed the House but fell short of the 60-vote threshold in the Senate on Tuesday.Donald Trump hosted Congressional leaders at the White House earlier this week, but the meeting failed to produce a breakthrough.Why is this year’s threat to shut down the government more serious?This time, the impact on federal workers could be even more severe. In a memo released last week, the White House’s office of management and budget (OMB) told agencies not just to prepare for temporary furloughs but for permanent layoffs in the event of a shutdown.The memo directed agencies to ready reduction-in-force notices for federal programs whose funding sources would lapse in the event of a shutdown and are “not consistent with the president’s priorities”.The OMB led the administration’s earlier efforts to shrink the federal workforce as part of a broader government efficiency campaign led by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”.At an event on Tuesday, Trump said “a lot of good can come down from shutdowns” and suggested he would use the pause to “get rid of a lot of things we didn’t want, and they’d be Democrat things”.The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, has said that Democrats “will not be intimidated” by the Trump administration’s threats to fire more federal employees if the federal government shuts down. He has said that his message to Russell Vought, the head of OMB, was simple: “Get lost.”Two major federal employee unions sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, accusing it of illegally threatening mass layoffs during a shutdown.What happens when the government shuts down?In the event of a full or partial government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal workers may be furloughed or required to work without pay. Approximately 750,000 federal employees will be furloughed each day of a government shutdown, according to an estimate by the congressional budget office released on Tuesday.Operations deemed essential – such as social security, Medicare, military duties, immigration enforcement and air traffic control – would continue, but other services may be disrupted or delayed. Mail delivery and post office operations would continue without interruption.Agencies have been releasing updated contingency plans in the event of a shutdown. The Department of Education said nearly all its federal employees would be furloughed, while most of the Department of Homeland Security workforce would remain on the job.According to an interior department contingency plan posted late on Tuesday evening, national parks will remain partially open. “Park roads, lookouts, trails, and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors,” it said.During the government shutdown in 2019, national parks reported garbage, staffing shortages and even three deaths as a result of the financial crunch.The impact of a shutdown can be far-reaching and potentially long-lasting. Previous shutdowns have disrupted tourism to national parks and the Smithsonian museums in Washington, slowed air travel, delayed food-safety inspections, and postponed immigration hearings.While the broader economy may not feel the effects immediately, analysts warn that a prolonged shutdown could slow growth, disrupt markets and erode public trust.A US government shutdown has been triggered after a deadline to reach a funding agreement before the start of the new fiscal year, on 1 October, came and went without a deal.Democrats and Republicans angrily blamed each other and refused to budge from their positions as the country hurtled towards the midnight ET deadline, unable to find agreement or even negotiate as hundreds of thousands of federal workers stood to be furloughed or laid off.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans were trying to “bully” Democrats by refusing to negotiate on an extension of healthcare benefits and other priorities. Senate majority leader John Thune said Republicans were “not going to be held hostage” by the Democrats’ demands.Hours before the shutdown, Donald Trump told reporters he had “no choice” but to lay off federal workers if no deal was reached. Asked about why he was considering mass layoffs, Trump said: “No country can afford to pay for illegal immigration, healthcare for everybody that comes into the country. And that’s what they [Democrats] are insisting. They want open borders. They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everybody. They never stop. They don’t learn. We won an election in the landslide. They just don’t learn. So we have no choice. I have to do that for the country.”In a polarized Washington, with the chambers narrowly divided, shutdown threats have become a feature of recent congressional budget battles. A standoff in 2018, during Trump’s first term, resulted in a 34-day shutdown, the longest in the modern era. At the time, roughly 800,000 of the federal government’s 2.1 million employees were sidelined without pay.

    Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.

    The Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have blamed Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, saying they “do not want to protect the healthcare of the American people”.

    The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”

    Russ Vought, director of the White House office of management and budget, released a letter blaming “Democrats’ insane policy demands” for a shutdown. “It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict,” Vought wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the heads of federal offices and agencies.

    Democratic leaders say they are not backing down, but signs have emerged of dissent within their ranks. Three members of the Democratic caucus voted for the Republican proposal on Tuesday evening – two more than when the bill was first considered earlier this month. “I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration,” said Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
    We will bring you the latest news and reactions on the shutdown as we get them. More

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    US government shuts down after Democrats refuse to back Republican funding plan

    The US government shut down on Wednesday, after congressional Democrats refused to support a Republican plan to extend funding for federal departments unless they won a series of concessions centered on healthcare.The GOP, which controls the Senate and the House of Representatives, repudiated their demands, setting off a legislative scramble that lasted into the hours before funding lapsed at midnight, when the Senate failed to advance both parties’ bills to keep funding going.The shutdown is the first since a 35-day closure that began in December 2018 and extended into the new year, during Trump’s first term. It comes as Democrats look to regain their footing with voters, who re-elected Trump last year and relegated them to the minority in both chambers of Congress.“Republicans are plunging America into a shutdown, rejecting bipartisan talks, pushing a partisan bill and risking America’s healthcare,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday evening, as it became clear a shutdown was inevitable.Last month, House Republicans passed a bill that would fund the government through 21 November, but it requires the support of some Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold for advancement in the Senate. It failed to gain that support in votes held late on Tuesday, while Republicans also blocked a Democratic proposal to continue funding through October while also making an array of policy changes.“Far-left interest groups and far-left Democrat members wanted to show down with the president, and so Senate Democrats have sacrificed the American people to Democrats’ partisan interests,” Senate majority leader John Thune said.Senate Republicans have scheduled another round of votes on the two funding bills on Wednesday morning, with the stated goal of giving Democrats an opportunity to change their minds.The White House has responded to the shutdown threat by announcing plans to fire federal workers en masse if funding lapses. “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs, so we’d be laying off a lot of people,” Donald Trump said earlier on Tuesday, adding: “They’re going to be Democrats.”Shortly after the failed votes, Russ Vought, director of the White House office of management and budget, released a letter blaming “Democrats’ insane policy demands” for a shutdown. “It is unclear how long Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of the shutdown difficult to predict,” Vought wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the heads of federal offices and agencies.Democrats have demanded an extension of premium tax credits for ACA plans, which expire at the end of the year. They also want to undo Republican cuts to Medicaid and public media outlets, while preventing Trump’s use of a “pocket rescission” to further gut foreign aid.The total cost of those provisions is expected to hit $1tn, while about 10 million people are set to lose healthcare due to the Medicaid cuts, as well as to changes to the ACA. Without an extension of the tax credits for premiums, health insurance prices will rise for around 20 million people.While Thune has said he would be willing to negotiate over extending the ACA credits, he insists new government funding be approved first.Democratic leaders say they are not backing down, but signs have emerged of dissent within their ranks. Three members of the Democratic caucus voted for the Republican proposal on Tuesday evening – two more than when the bill was first considered earlier this month.“The cracks in the Democrats are already showing,” Senate Republican whip John Barrasso said.Democrats who broke with their party indicated they did so out of concern for what the Trump administration might do when the government shuts down. Federal law gives agencies and departments some leeway in determining which operations continue when funding lapses.“I cannot support a costly shutdown that would hurt Nevada families and hand even more power to this reckless administration,” said Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto.Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, called the vote “one of the most difficult” of his Senate career, but said: “The paradox is by shutting the government we’re actually giving Donald Trump more power, and that was why I voted yes.”Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, the sole Democrat to vote for the Republican funding bill when it was first considered a week and a half ago, supported it once again, saying: “My vote was for our country over my party. Together, we must find a better way forward.”While the party that instigates a shutdown has historically failed to achieve their goals, polls have given mixed verdicts on how the public views the Democrats’ tactics.A New York Times/Siena poll taken last week found that only 27% of respondents said the Democrats should shut down the government, while 65% thought they should not. Among Democrats, the split was 47% in favor of a shutdown and 43% against, while 59% of independents were opposed to a shutdown.A Marist poll released on Tuesday found that 38% of voters would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown, 27% would blame the Democrats and 31% would point a finger at both parties.Republican senator Ted Cruz – an architect of a 2013 shutdown intended to defund the ACA – described Democrats’s shutdown threat as a “temper tantrum” that would go nowhere.“They’re trying to show … that they hate Trump,” Cruz told reporters. “It will end inevitably in capitulation. At some point they’re going to turn the lights on again, but first they have to rage into the night.” More

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    Delayed US report on global human trafficking is released

    The US Department of State has released a long-delayed, legally required report on human trafficking after an investigation by the Guardian and bipartisan pressure from Congress.The 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which details conditions in the United States and more than 185 countries, was initially scheduled for release at an event in June featuring the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the Guardian has reported, but the event was scrapped and staff at the state department office charged with leading the federal government’s fight against human trafficking were cut by more 70%.The US Trafficking Victims Protection Act requires that the state department provide the report to Congress each year no later than 30 June. The delay in the release of the report this year raised fears among some anti-trafficking advocates that the 2025 document had been permanently shelved.The report was published quietly on the agency’s website on Monday without a customary introduction from the secretary of state or the ambassador tasked with monitoring and combating human trafficking, a position Donald Trump has not filled.The state department did not answer repeated questions from the Guardian about why the report had been delayed, but said it was subject to “the same rigorous review process as in years past”.The Guardian highlighted the report’s delay in a 17 September article reporting that the Trump administration has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking. White House officials called the Guardian’s findings “nonsense” and said the administration remains committed to anti-trafficking efforts.Representative Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, who won unanimous approval from the House foreign affairs committee for an amendment that added additional oversight of federal anti-trafficking efforts hours after the Guardian’s investigation was published, expressed a mix of relief and frustration. “Let’s be clear: this report should never have been delayed in the first place,” she said in a statement.McBride said she would “be reading it closely, alongside advocates and survivors, to ensure that it lives up to its mission – shining a light on trafficking and pressing governments to act”.Current and former state department officials told the Guardian that unlike the department’s annual human rights report, which was significantly weakened amid reports of political interference, the human-trafficking report largely appears to represent an honest assessment of agency experts on anti-trafficking work abroad. There was a notable exception. Earlier this year, an effort to draft a section on LGBTQ+ victims, written in coordination with two trafficking survivors, was terminated.Jose Alfaro, one of the survivors invited to draft the now-excised section, said he was told that Trump’s executive order banning references to diversity, equity and inclusion was the reason he and the rest of the team were pulled off the project.The term “LGBTQ” doesn’t appear in the 2025 report, and Alfaro says this is a mistake. Without “critical context” about what makes some groups vulnerable to trafficking and how to identify potential victims, “we only contribute to the problem rather than solving it”, he said.According to a state department spokesperson, “Human trafficking affects human beings, not ideologies. The 2025 TIP report focuses on human trafficking issues directly, as they affect all people regardless of background.”A state department spokesperson said the US had made significant strides in ending forced labor in the Cuban export program and working with the Department of Treasury in imposing sanctions on entities using forced labor to run online scam centers.As for shifts in anti-trafficking strategy, the state department provided a statement from Rubio saying the agency is “reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens. We are continuing essential lifesaving programs and making strategic investments that strengthen our partners and our own country.”The report names Cambodia a “state sponsor” of trafficking for the first time, a designation that can lead to sanctions. It alleges senior Cambodian government officials profit from human trafficking by allowing properties they own to be “used by online scam operators to exploit victims in forced labor and forced criminality”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfghanistan, China, Iran, North Korea and Russia – which the report says forcibly has transferred “tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, including by forcibly separating some children from their parents or guardians” – are also listed among the state sponsors of trafficking.Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who wrote the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, released a statement praising Trump. “The president is absolutely right to spotlight and criticize those countries that are not only failing to stop human trafficking, but in many cases, are actively profiting from it,” he said.Brazil and South Africa were put on a state department “watchlist” of countries that show insufficient efforts to combat human trafficking and may face sanctions for the first time, with the department citing failures of both countries to demonstrate progress on the issue, with fewer investigations and prosecutions.The document is also critical of Israel, describing as “credible” reports that “Israeli forces forcibly used Palestinian detainees as scouts in military operations in Gaza to clear booby-trapped buildings and tunnels and gather information”.The allegations were first raised by Palestinian sources and confirmed by Israeli soldiers in testimony gathered by Breaking the Silence, an organization of current and former members of the Israeli military. They have since been substantiated in investigations by Israeli media.Joel Carmel, a former IDF officer who serves as Breaking the Silence’s advocacy director, said he hoped the report “would be used to be sure Israel is held accountable” and “doesn’t end up sitting on a shelf somewhere”. He said despite a ruling by the Israeli supreme court that declared the use of human shields to be illegal, “there’s certainly the fear that this is the new norm for the IDF”.Under previous administrations – including Trump’s first – the TIP report was released with great fanfare. The secretary of state typically hosts a “launch ceremony” featuring the TIP ambassador and anti-trafficking “heroes” from around the world.​​The delayed report release is part of an ongoing retreat in the Trump administration’s support of anti-trafficking measures, including the impending lapse of more than 100 grants from the Department of Justice, which advocates say could deprive thousands of survivors from access to services when funding runs out today.

    Aaron Glantz is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

    Bernice Yeung is managing editor at the investigative reporting program at UC Berkeley Journalism

    Noy Thrupkaew is a reporter and director of partnerships at Type Investigations More

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    ‘It’s hard to know what day it is’: families tell of grim Ice detention in Texas

    At the South Texas Family Residential Center, guards allegedly refer to detained immigrant families as “inmates”, spouses aren’t allowed to hold hands, and children don’t know where they can kick around a ball without getting in trouble, according to a stark court filing.Yet those are minor indignities compared with accounts given to outside monitors of a lack of clean drinking water, sleep, healthy food, privacy, hygiene supplies and appropriate healthcare. Alongside government admissions of what attorneys called “prolonged unexplained detention” at the facility in the remote town of Dilley, Texas anxiety levels for detainees are high.“It is hard to know what day it is because we have been at Dilley for so long,” one 35-year-old parent told watchdogs who had been sent in to assess the conditions.Legal experts made a barrage of allegations about illegal deprivations, violations of basic detention standards and humanitarian concerns at the only known Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) center in the US currently holding immigrant families, as initially detailed in part one of the Guardian’s report.“My main question is: when can I get out of here?” asked an 11-year-old child who had already been detained at Dilley for 53 days, far longer than the general 20-day legal limit for immigrant children in unlicensed facilities, according to the filing in federal court in Los Angeles.The detainees’ accounts were published earlier this month by attorneys acting as outside monitors for standards of child detention, who visited Dilley four times since it reopened as a family detention facility after Donald Trump returned to the White House with his mass deportation agenda.The center is run for Ice by the private corrections and detention company CoreCivic, which declined requests for comment on conditions at Dilley and referred the Guardian to Ice, which then referred on to its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), from which the Guardian also requested comment but none was forthcoming.However, CoreCivic, in response to similar allegations made by detainees at a different facility, in California, company spokesperson Brian Todd said that all its facilities “operate with a significant amount of oversight and accountability, including being monitored by federal officials on a daily basis, to ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for every individual”.Families held at Dilley gave accounts of their experiences, with their names and countries of origin redacted in the publicly available court documents. Some described a “prison-like” environment, even though immigration proceedings are civil matters in the US, not criminal. Detainees spoke of the many rules they endure under lock and key.“I got in trouble for touching my mom,” one 13-year-old said. “The lady [staff member] said: ‘You can’t touch her.’ And I said: ‘But she’s my mom.’ And she said: ‘You can’t touch her.’”The Dilley center is surrounded by a metal perimeter fence.Within, families live in “isolated, cell-like trailers”.“I tried to sit outside to look at the moon and stars one time, but they wouldn’t let me,” the 13-year-old said.Adults lamented the struggle to parent and comfort their children without autonomy over their lives, unable to fulfill a kid’s simple requests, like going to a playground to break the monotony, or providing a banana to eat.
    “It feels so hard to be a good mother here, where there is so much stress and we have so little control over what happens to us,” said one parent, adding: “I am doing all I can to be strong for my children and take care of them. They do not understand why we have to be in this prison. It is impossible to be a good parent in this place.”Detainees described a lack of potable water, even when it’s supposedly filtered.“We just don’t trust that the water is cleanly dispensed and sometimes the water really smells bad. Maybe that is why so many people here are sick,” said one parent.The paid commissary sells bottled water, but its cost – over a dollar per bottle – is out of reach for many of the families. One parent, who had been detained at Dilley for 42 days, said the available free water “has a strong smell of bleach”. The parent bought bottled water for their toddler but could not afford more for personal consumption. “The staff here will not drink the water, but we do not have any other choice,” the parent told the visiting attorneys, according to the court filing.The 11-year-old who had been detained for 53 days and asked when they could get out, described the food as “the same, the same, the same”. Another family said they “eat just enough to survive”.“I don’t eat a lot here and I’ve lost weight since being at this center. I usually do not want to eat because I feel so much anxiety,” a 16-year-old said.Similarly, a 14-year-old already detained for 54 days with their seven-year-old brother said “the chicken tastes like plastic” and “if I don’t like the food that day, I usually just have bread and water and that’s it”. Their brother had stopped eating, they said, and “my parents had to almost beg the medical staff to give him PediaSure”, a nutritional drink for children.“Being here has affected my little brother a lot,” the 14-year-old added. “He doesn’t sleep well. He cries all night. Yesterday he had an attack where he would not stop crying from 7pm to 9pm, and he was outside the room crying that he didn’t want to go back in, and he wanted to be free.”Several families described their children falling behind on their education and development. The onsite school consists mainly of coloring, drawing, painting and doing basic worksheets, with only one hour a day of class for each age group, they said. Many of the children got so bored they stopped attending.“My parents are so worried for me that we are not studying or able to do anything to support our future here,” said a 13-year-old.In terms of health, families described inadequate care and medical staff who downplayed illnesses or even disabilities, according to the filing. One nine-year-old with autism was so sensitive to cleaning chemicals and other odors in the bathrooms that he would vomit when he entered.“Because he would not want to go in there, he would hold it and hold it, and then eventually he would pee his pants. Some days, I would need to change his clothes five or six times,” his parent said, describing the ordeal as “heartbreaking”. The boy started soiling himself and “was in the bathroom crying and yelling and hitting himself”. They had to resort to diapers for the first time since he was two, the court document said.Meanwhile sleep was chronically elusive for many. One family described frequent checks by guards.“They come in and out of the room without knocking. Some are polite, but others barge in without warning … They do not turn off the lights at night. It is difficult for my son to sleep because of the lights and … the staff talk on very loud walkie-talkies throughout the night.”When they did sleep, some families also reported that children suffered from nightmares, but when they went to see the resident mental health staff, they were just told to pray, do breathing exercises and participate in activities.“The psychologist did not ask what the nightmares were about,” said a parent, whose sons aged eight and 10 were having “so many” bad dreams. “She didn’t check if the boys were thinking about hurting themselves or if they had thoughts about wanting to die. She just said nightmares are normal.” More