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      ‘Maga Catholics’ are gaining ground in the US. Now their sight is set on the Vatican

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      Once the papal conclave starts, the cardinals choosing Pope Francis’s successor will be strictly shut off from the world until a new pope is named. But the coming days before the conclave begins on 7 May will see competing factions of Catholics, including many laypeople, campaigning in the Vatican and the US to influence the church’s future – none with more urgency than those discontented with Francis’s liberal reign.American Catholics will fight to play a central role. Soon after the news of Francis’s death reached faithful the world over, the American counter-revolution mobilized, Vatican watchers say. Red-eyes to Rome were booked. Long-distance phone calls were made. Various cardinals likely received sudden dinner invitations.No one involved calls it “lobbying” – that would be untoward, and it’s “subtler than what you see in DC”, Philip Lawler, a conservative Catholic writer and the author of a book critical of Francis, said. “But representatives of all points of view, from across the spectrum, will be doing their best to ensure that the cardinals understand their concerns.”“I’m going to Rome on Saturday, and I’m late to the game,” Francis X Maier, a Catholic writer and the former adviser to Archbishop Charles Chaput, said last week. “There are all sorts of people already meeting with bishops and cardinals and trying to create the environment that they want.”For conservative, traditionalist or self-described “orthodox” Catholics, fresh from 12 uneasy years under Francis, this interregnum will be the last chance in a long time to try to reset a church that they believe has drifted too far left. To some, that means pushing for a church that clearly affirms polarizing but longtime Catholic teachings on sexuality, marriage and abortion. Others, many of them associated with the priorities of Donald Trump and his supporters, would go further, and press for a church that is explicitly, politically rightwing – or at least less hostile to the Maga movement’s stances on immigration, social welfare and the environment.Steve Bannon, perhaps the most public and inflammatory voice of rightwing Catholic discontent, has said he intends to organize a “show of force of traditionalists” with confrontational “wall-to-wall” media coverage. Most politicking, however, will take the form of quieter wheeling and dealing.Conservative Catholics have their papal draft picks – Raymond Burke, Gerhard Müller, Péter Erdő and Robert Sarah are often mentioned – though observers are skeptical that the next pope will break Francis’s mold, in part because he appointed most of the cardinals who will choose his successor. Yet conservative Catholic Americans are unusually influential and wealthy, and the Vatican needs “American money and American influence”, said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of religious studies at Villanova University.And while the conservative faction is a minority, it “shouldn’t be dismissed. For them, this conclave is just one battle in a war that lasts decades.”“Do I have time to talk to the Guardian about the fake pope?” Steve Bannon asked when I reached out for an interview. “Of course I do. Always.”For years, Bannon – Trump’s former adviser and a self-described traditionalist Catholic, though he has been divorced three times – has used his massively popular political podcast, War Room, to wage blistering attacks on the Francis pontificate. He has charged the pope with being a Marxist subversive, a globalist anti-American, even illegitimate.View image in fullscreenMuch of conservatives’ anger centers on Francis’s record of pronouncements that seemed to relax or render ambiguous Catholic social doctrines. In 2013, when a reporter asked Francis if there were gay men in the Vatican, he famously remarked: “Who am I to judge?”“‘Who am I to judge?’” Bannon repeated, incredulous. “Yo, dude, you’re the pope. That’s kind of the gig. You’re supposed to be judgmental. This ‘empathy’ is all phony. He brought the therapeutic 20th century into the church. The church is not supposed to be therapeutic.”Devout Catholics have historically been difficult to place in the American political binary. They were often anti-abortion but in favor of immigration and a social safety net. “I believe all the church teaches,” Leah Libresco Sargeant, the author of two books on her Catholic faith, told me. “I try to live up to it. And obviously that makes me a poor fit for either political party.”Still, working-class Catholics were a traditional base of 20th-century Democratic party support, and activist Catholic clergy marched in protests for Black civil rights and against the Vietnam war. Yet the legalization of abortion drove some prominent Catholics who had previously supported leftwing causes to the conservative movement.While the stereotypical Christian conservative of popular imagination may be a Bible-thumping southern Protestant, Catholics have for years dominated the intellectual leadership of the American right. Five of the US supreme court’s six right-leaning justices are Catholic, despite the fact that Catholics account for only about a fifth of the US population. JD Vance – the vice-president who earlier this year sparked a feud of sorts with the Vatican about immigration and compassion and also met briefly with Francis shortly before his death – converted to Catholicism in 2019.Although borderline sacrilege by normal Catholic standards, Bannon’s fulminations against Francis have found a ready audience among a demographic that the New York Post has coined “Maga Catholics”: Catholic Americans who are militantly conservative, both theologically and politically, and see no tension.Francis did a favor to a resurgent Catholic right, Bannon argues: “His reign of terror has been nothing short of disastrous. And that’s why you’re having a massive reaction, particularly in North America, where he rejuvenated the traditional church here.”View image in fullscreenGregory A Smith, who studies religious demography at Pew Research Center, noted that polling shows that most American Catholics – including most Catholic Republicans – viewed Pope Francis favorably throughout his pontificate. Yet starting around 2018, an ideological gap began to open, with Catholic Republicans reporting less favorable views of Francis than Catholic Democrats.Pointedly referring to Francis mostly by his secular, pre-papal surname, Bergoglio, Bannon outlined numerous grievances.Among his arguments: that the pope was hostile to the old-fashioned Latin mass liturgy beloved by some American Catholics, did not hold alleged abusers in the clergy fully accountable, muddled longstanding doctrines about sexuality and marriage, undermined US sovereignty by celebrating mass immigration, and betrayed persecuted Christians abroad by allowing the Chinese communist government control over the church there.“He’ll burn in hell just for that,” Bannon said of the agreement with China. He admitted that his stance was probably not representative of the average person in the pew.Yet many of these complaints, in more respectful form, are common to the orthodox Catholics who are the church’s most engaged, influential and financially generous constituency.While disagreeing with some of the conservative characterizations of the state of the church, Faggioli said that American detractors of Pope Francis have momentum, to some extent, on their side. American priests starting their vocations today are on average more conservative, not less, than their older peers, he noted.Latin masses are popular where they are offered. And the past couple years have seen a surprise influx of young adults converting or reverting to Catholicism, many of whom seem to want “smells and bells” and moral certitude, rather than the casual Catholicism they associate with their parents’ generation, or the rainbow flag-adorned progressivism of many mainline Protestant churches.“The living and vibrant parts of the US church are not those who were most enthusiastic about the Francis pontificate, but those who have embraced the ‘all-in’ Catholicism of John Paul II and Benedict XVI,” George Weigel, a neoconservative Catholic writer, told me by email as he traveled to Rome. “In the main,” he argued, “Francis’s most vocal supporters were the ageing and shrinking parts of the American church.”He contrasted the Anglican church. “[A] lot of the most engaged Catholics in the United States don’t think of the Church of England as a very impressive model of Christian vitality, and they rightly attribute its decline to its embracing a lot of contemporary culture, rather than working to convert that culture.”His views echo outside the US, as well. Recent data suggests that Catholics may soon outnumber Anglicans in Britain for the first time since the 16th-century Reformation, with the change driven in large part by gen-Z churchgoers, even as British society as a whole continues to become more secular.View image in fullscreenNot all conservative or orthodox Catholics were unhappy with Francis.In the magazine First Things, the conservative writer Sohrab Ahmari, who converted to Catholicism in 2016, argued recently that the substance of Francis’s preaching was often “far more ‘trad’ than critics appreciated”. Yet he was dogged by “the emergence of a veritable anti-Francis cottage industry” that worked to “prime a subset of Catholics against the pope”.In an email, he told me: “I personally loved the late Holy Father, and generally tried to relate to the Vatican as a medieval peasant might: pay, pray and obey.”Catholics For Catholics is one of the political faces of a newly militant Catholic right. In March, the organization hosted a prayer event at Mar-a-Lago for the second year in a row. The organization also worked to mobilize Catholic swing-state voters for the Republican party last fall, with a particular focus on millions of “low-propensity” Catholics who don’t regularly vote.John Yep co-founded Catholics For Catholics two and a half years ago, he told me, to “advocate for Catholics in the public square, and to just reaffirm our beliefs and present them to our politicians so that they are aware of them and respect who we stand for and what we believe”.The organization is well to the right of the average Catholic, by most metrics, and perhaps even to the right of the average conservative Catholic: it published a book by Bishop Joseph Strickland, a Texas clergyman who was removed from office in 2023 after becoming one of Francis’s fiercest critics.Faggioli, the Villanova professor, believes that traditionalists overreacted to Francis. “Conservative Catholics got used to a certain kind of papacy and a sympathy for their causes during the 35 years of John Paul II and Pope Benedict, and some of them thought that history was over,” he said.But Yep’s political instincts about Catholics as a voting bloc may be apt. According to an AP analysis, Trump won 54% of Catholic voters in the 2024 election, a four-point improvement on 2020, when he and Biden received roughly equal shares of the Catholic vote. And although white Catholics support Trump at higher rates than Latino Catholics, Trump also benefited from a swing in the Latino Catholic vote.Bannon believes that a rupture between traditionalist North American Catholics and the larger church is coming – and even welcomes it. Observers are skeptical of that idea, in part because most Catholics, regardless of their ideological stripe, would find the prospect of a 21st-century schism with the mother church in Rome unthinkable. But either way there seems to be a growing gap between a Catholic community in the US that is becoming more conservative and a church leadership in Rome that is open to new ideas.Faggioli believes that “in some sense, this church is already in a situation of soft schism”. But he doesn’t think a full-blown schism is in the cards.“The real goal of [most] neo-traditionalist voices is not to break away and make their own small church,” he said. “Their project is to win back the entire Catholic church, in the long term, to what they think is real Catholicism.” More

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      ‘Standing up for Christian values’: US evangelicals keep the faith with Trump

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      When asked about Donald Trump’s Easter morning post wishing a happy holiday to “the Radical Left Lunatics … fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners” to the United States, Jackson Lahmeyer, an Oklahoma evangelical Christian pastor, said: “Isn’t it terrible that they are wanting to do that?”Lahmeyer, the founder of the Pastors for Trump organization, was not bothered by Trump’s extreme and divisive message on the Christian religious holiday, because, he said: “You cannot unify with evil.”Lahmeyer’s attitude appears typical of many white evangelical leaders who still strongly support Trump despite what – for many – is violent, extremist-laden language that many would see as unsuitable for any religious occasion, let alone one intimately connected to rebirth, forgiveness and peace.But those leaders in the US say Trump – unlike some past Republican presidents – has followed through on campaign promises concerning core issues such as abortion, immigration, the location of the US embassy in Israel and, more generally, his pledge to “bring back Christianity”.More good things could be in store for that demographic because in a second Easter post on his platform Truth Social, Trump said he would make America “more religious, than it has ever been before!!!”“He has moved the needle for the Christian agenda unlike anyone else, especially in modern times,” said Lahmeyer, who attended an Easter dinner at the White House. “As a pastor, obviously, that is music to my ears.”White evangelical voters also turned out in large numbers for George W Bush when he ran for president in 2000 and 2004, but they were disappointed because they felt he did not do enough to oppose same-sex marriage or to ban abortion. Bush also, when compared to Trump, had a more liberal immigration policy, including supporting providing undocumented immigrants the chance to become citizens, according to John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and the author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump.“Bush wasn’t willing to give them everything that they wanted to be elected,” Fea said. “Trump will do what evangelicals tell him to do for the most part, in order to maintain power.”In addition to appointing supreme court justices who ruled that there is no constitutional right to abortion, Trump also moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which previous presidents had said they supported but did not implement.“They all said it to get votes. They never did it. The president did it,” said Lahmeyer, who ran for Senate and lost in 2022.During this term, Trump has signed executive orders to establish a faith office and a taskforce to address “anti-Christian bias” in the federal government.To evangelical leaders, that emphasis on Christian values stands in contrast to how they perceive the Biden administration’s actions, including in 2024 declaring 31 March Transgender Day of Visibility, the date when it had been celebrated since its creation in 2009, but last year fell – entirely coincidentally – on Easter Sunday.But in a world where conspiracy theories and misinformation is rife, that sparked anger among rightwing Christians.“Easter was barely mentioned,” said Brad Sherman, an Iowa pastor and Republican now running for governor. “In fact, I think it was more about some kind of LGBTQ awareness day or something, if I remember correctly, so I just feel like President Trump is standing up for Christian values.”In actual fact, Biden continued the tradition of the annual White House Easter egg roll and in a statement said: “As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus’s sacrifice … with wars and conflict taking a toll on innocent lives around the world, we renew our commitment to work for peace, security, and dignity for all people.”This year, Trump held an Easter prayer service and dinner with Lahmeyer; prominent pastors such as Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress; and his personal pastor, Paula White-Cain, who now leads the White House faith office, among others.“[Trump] preached the gospel to us pastors, and I thought that was amazing,” Lahmeyer said.While most white evangelicals support Trump, there are Christian leaders, including evangelicals, who have criticized some of the president’s policy decisions, especially to eliminate 83% of US Agency for International Development (USAID) programs. Among the initiatives affected was the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), which has saved millions of lives from HIV/Aids and was popular with evangelicals.“We see it as really overarchingly a pro-life program in that it promotes the life-saving need for HIV treatment,” Emily Chambers Sharpe, the health director at World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, told the Guardian.But the person behind many of the federal government cuts, Elon Musk, head of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, called USAID a “criminal organization” and said that it was “time for it to die”.Adam Russell Taylor, the president of Sojourners, a Christian social justice group, said such remarks remind him of “the prophet Isaiah, who forewarned us that woe to you that call evil, good, and good, evil”.The administration is “making these allegations that aren’t backed up by evidence or proof. And they disparage this whole body of work that has created such goodwill around the world and is so aligned with our Christian values,” Russell Taylor said.But many American evangelicals continue to support Trump despite such cuts, because concern for the poor “always takes a back seat in evangelical politics to abortion [and] control of the supreme court, which will allow them to have the religious freedom that they want”, said Fea, the history professor.Tony Suárez, the founder of Revivalmakers Ministries, an evangelical group, said he supports Trump because he is trying to strengthen border security and is restoring “respect for conservative, Judeo-Christian values”.Once the country secures the border and removes “the criminal element”, Suárez, who is also executive vice-president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said he would like to see a pathway to at least legal permanent residency for undocumented immigrants. He thinks that based on some of his comments during his first term, Trump would support that too.But Trump also wants to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreign residents, a guarantee under the 14th amendment.Asked for his position on this, Suárez said that is “a little bit above me to understand what it is specifically that they are arguing”.And on cuts to foreign aid programs, Suárez said he views them “as difficult decisions that any organization, denomination, reformation, might have to take, and they will never be popular”.Suárez joked that the only thing he disagrees with Trump on is him saying that “you may even get tired of winning”.“I’m not tired,” Suárez said. “I’m looking for the next win.” More

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      Donald Trump, beware – this is what a global liberal fightback looks like | Timothy Garton Ash

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      Liberals of all countries, unite! Just as anti-liberal powers outside the west are becoming stronger than ever, the assault on everything we stand for has been joined by the United States. Against this massed onslaught of anti-liberal nationalists we need a determined fightback of liberal internationalists. Canada’s election this week can contribute a strong mounted brigade.A core insight of liberalism is that, if people are to live together well in conditions of freedom, power always needs to be dispersed, cross-examined and controlled. Faced with the raw, bullying assertion of might, whether from Washington, Moscow or Beijing, we now have to create countervailing concentrations of power. In the long history of liberalism, a free press, the law, labour unions, a business community kept separate from political power, NGOs, truth-seeking institutions such as universities, civil resistance, multilateral organisations and international alliances have all served – alongside multiparty politics and regular free and fair elections – to constrain the men who would be kings.In rallying everyone who believes in equal individual liberty to this fight, we liberals have a problem of our own making. Policies associated in many people’s minds with liberalism over the last 40 years have themselves fed the reservoirs of popular discontent from which nationalist populists continue to draw support. Neoliberalism, hypercharged through a globalised financialised capitalism, has led to levels of inequality not seen for a hundred years. An identity politics intended to remedy the historic disadvantages of selected minorities has left many other members of our societies – especially white, male, working and middle class – feeling themselves culturally as well as economically neglected. Both these approaches reneged on liberalism’s central promise, lucidly summarised by the philosopher Ronald Dworkin as “equal respect and concern” for all.Neoliberalism has also turned the world’s most powerful democracy into something very close to oligarchy. The separation of private wealth and public power – a precious and fragile innovation of modern liberal democracy – has been reversed. Insatiable plutocrats such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are now supporters of Donald Trump’s political power, while he promotes his own and his rich pals’ economic interests. With the help of the media and platforms the plutocrats control, Trump persuades many ordinary Americans that their suffering is entirely due to foreigners (immigrants, China), while in reality it is more likely to be the fault of people such as Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg.So we have to fight simultaneously on two fronts: with the enemies of liberalism and the problems created by liberalism itself. Unity will be strength. If we each try to negotiate separately with the bullies, be they in Washington, Moscow or Beijing, they will pick us off one by one.These coalitions of counter-power will be composed of states, but also of civil society actors and active citizens. At least half the population of the United States is with us. Electoral authoritarian states such as Turkey and Hungary also have lots of would-be-free citizens. The world’s largest example of applied liberal internationalism, the 27-country European Union, will be crucial to the fightback. So will major individual democracies including Britain, Canada, Japan and Australia.We need to do many things at once. Promoting free trade against Trumpian beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism is an obvious starting point. It’s also easier said than done, since mutually beneficial trading arrangements take time to craft. Yet there are some accessible immediate wins. A trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur group of Latin American states only awaits ratification by all relevant parties. Britain and the EU should be more ambitious at their upcoming summit on 19 May. The EU doesn’t need anyone else’s involvement for it to create a single digital space and unified capital markets, nor to build up European defence industries, which would also be a neo-Keynesian economic stimulus.The monopolistic platforms and mega-wealth of the American oligarchs are a danger to all other countries. If the EU were prepared to use its regulatory superpower, coordinated with the efforts of other liberal democracies, we could do more to curb them. But regulation and taxation alone are not enough.Whether in Europe, Canada, Australia or Japan, our entire digital infrastructure is effectively American. Imagine one day your iPhone and iPad stopped working, along with your cloud provider, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Twitter (AKA X-itter). What would be left? TikTok! “And Bluesky”, you may add, referencing the liberal social platform of choice. But that too is American. This is not only about infrastructure. It’s about how we create the digital public sphere essential for the future of liberal democracy.Civil society initiatives can also help. Why, for example, haven’t we already seen a major statement of solidarity with embattled US universities from universities across the liberal world?So can consumer protests. The impact of a largely spontaneous boycott of Tesla cars is pushing Musk to return to his business activity, cutting the leisure time he can spend on vandalising his country’s administrative state. Canadians now have the BuyBeaver app on their phones, so they can avoid US-made goods. (I hope they boycott Russian ones too.)It’s also a matter of fighting style. Anti-liberal nationalists use the bludgeon, we the rapier. When they go low, we go high. When they go ape, we stay cool. When they lie through their teeth, we stand by the facts.In foreign policy, the most urgent challenge is to save Ukraine, which Trump is throwing under the bus. The fact that he is pressing the Ukrainians to abandon even their legal claim to Crimea being part of Ukrainian sovereign territory shows how supporting Ukraine is now essential to defending fundamental principles of liberal international order.What emerges after this hurricane will not be the same as before. It will be transformed both by us learning from our own mistakes, so as to build back better, and by the revolutionary impact of Trump. A liberal democratic constellation that is not fundamentally secured by the US “liberal leviathan”, in the Princeton scholar John Ikenberry’s striking phrase, will be something very different from what we knew between 1945 and 2025.Even the geography will change. Canada, for example, which once seemed – in the nicest possible way – somewhat peripheral to world affairs, comfortably tucked up there between a friendly America and a frozen Arctic, now suddenly looks like a frontline state. One of the world’s most liberal countries is, beside Ukraine, one of the most directly threatened by Trump’s anti-liberal assault. And the thawing Arctic is a major new theatre of international competition. Fortunately, it looks as if Canada is going to have a government that is not just Liberal in name but also combatively liberal in nature.A quarter-century ago, when the United States was attacked by Islamist terrorists on 11 September 2001, the editor of Le Monde wrote a famous banner headline: “We are all Americans!” Today, friends of liberty the world over should say: “We are all Canadians!”

      Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist More

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      In Poland, we know all about fighting illiberal regimes. Here are our lessons for the Trump age | Jarosław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura

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      In 2016, one year after the rightwing populist Law and Justice party won an overall majority in Poland, there was a knock at a door. The mother of a young journalist opened it. To her astonishment, it was the security services looking for her son. No details were provided. Thus began an informal campaign by the authorities against the media and civil society in Poland, including our thinktank, Kultura Liberalna. After hearing the news about the journalist, we called Aleksander Smolar. The legendary anti-communist dissident, who ran his own NGO, told us that the security services were also trying to arrange “informal” meetings with his staff. And he comforted us: “Don’t worry, we’ve had a playbook for this kind of situation since the 1960s.”At that moment, we almost travelled back in time. We spoke about responding to this new regime as if we were once again under communism. What is striking in retrospect is that we all knew what to do. Our eastern European political culture, shaped by historical catastrophes, has developed some antibodies against oppressive power. Over the past centuries, the state has often been wiped off the map or occupied by foreign aggressors. Adversity sparks initiative.So, what advice did the former dissident give us? First, we started speaking publicly about what was happening. Second, we demanded that the security service officers present their actions in writing and with legal justification. As a result, the campaign disappeared as quickly as it appeared.But political harassment continued in other forms. The more emboldened the authorities became, the more elaborate (or crude) the stigmatisation of ideological opponents was. Soon, one thing became clear: as under communism, the political battlefield was everywhere. It touched every area of public life. Founding our thinktank in a democracy, we never imagined having to face political invigilation. That was naive.Our own struggle didn’t end with the Polish liberal opposition’s victory in 2023. What’s more, political attacks now take a transatlantic shape. As US Vice-President JD Vance made clear in his Munich speech in February, in which he attacked European leaders, American rightwing populism has global ambitions.So here is a handful of suggestions for Americans and others who seem disoriented and overwhelmed.First: go beyond digital activism. A wave of anti-Trump street demonstrations recently swept across the US. In the age of social media, that might seem like an outdated or secondary tactic. But it’s not. In a time of effortless communication and online petitions, physical work matters twice as much. It sends a nonverbal message of urgency and sacrifice, and – more importantly – signals an invitation to fellow citizens to join. These protests should be regular and designed for the long haul. They should be citizen-led. Initially, flexible horizontal structures, ready for quick response, turned out to be more effective in practice in our experience.Second: no ageism, please. As our own history shows, opposing populism in power is possible only if intergenerational solidarity takes place. We heard a reporter sneer that the New York, anti-Trump protest crowd skewed old. So did ours in Poland! Yet over time, younger people joined in as the burdens of populism became more personal. Again – diversity matters most. Not just in communication tools, but in the social makeup of the protest movement.Third: it’s always the constitution, stupid. One hallmark of authoritarianism is the erosion of constitutional law. It’s not about abstract legal theories – it’s about changing the rules of the state without formal approval. Donald Trump’s musings about a potential third term are a prime example. The US constitution clearly forbids it. But the very mention signals a willingness to operate outside the legal order. Polish populists broke the constitution almost immediately after taking power. The consequences are still with us. What helped was keeping a detailed record of key legal violations.View image in fullscreenJust as important was documenting the repression of civil society – like the example this article opened with. In an age of short attention spans, civil society must archive the illegality of populism – for rapid and effective accountability afterwards. The constitution is the terrain of the battlefield.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFourth: don’t leave. Populists in power try to persuade neutral officials, such as public prosecutors, to resign from their government positions. Ideally, they want to rid their political opponents from the country. But don’t let them force you into exile, if you can help it; resistance on the ground will be crucial, just as it was for figures in the anti-communist opposition in eastern Europe before 1989.Fifth: plan ahead. Perhaps the most psychologically difficult task is extending a hand to those with whom you have political disagreements. The facts are hard to ignore: in democracies, populists win through elections. Hardliners won’t change, but the 10-20% of swing voters in the centre can be decisive.Regaining power is possible but requires a dual-track approach. Use social media to shape political narratives. But also, unplug. Switch on to political aeroplane mode. Think long-term. Don’t get caught in the news cycle or buried under the “flood the zone” avalanche of absurdities populists use to wear down their critics.Plan for the next presidential election. It’s not enough to promise justice and institutional repair. You also need a compelling vision – a positive, practical alternative to the populist programme. Without it, the fuel runs out – even if you win an election. And have patience. Ultimately, the fight for democracy is never about just one election. Populism existed even in Periclean Athens. Which is why the struggle for liberal democracy requires a warm heart and a cool head. This is the core of the anti-authoritarian playbook.

      Jarosław Kuisz is editor-in-chief of the Polish weekly Kultura Liberalna and the author of The New Politics of Poland: A Case of Post-Traumatic Sovereignty

      Karolina Wigura is a Polish historian and co-author of Post-Traumatic Sovereignty: An Essay (Why the Eastern European Mentality is Different) More

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      Trump says he thinks Zelenskyy is ready to give up Crimea despite previous comments

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      US President Donald Trump has said he thinks Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ready to give up Crimea, despite his Ukrainian counterpart’s previous assertions on the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.Speaking to reporters at an airport in New Jersey on Sunday a day after meeting with Zelenskyy at the Vatican, Trump said “Oh, I think so,” in response to a question on whether he thought Zelenskyy was ready to “give up” the territory.Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine could not accept US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, after Trump accused him of intransigence on the issue. Zelenskyy on Friday insisted the territory was the “property of the Ukrainian people”. He did not immediately respond to Trump’s latest comments.Two sets of peace plans published by Reuters on Friday showed that the US is proposing Moscow retain the territory it has captured, including the strategic Crimean peninsula.German defence minister Boris Pistorius on Sunday said the US proposal for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia was “akin to a capitulation”.In an interview with the broadcaster ARD, he said that Kyiv knew that a peace agreement may involve territorial concessions.“But these will certainly not go … as far as they do in the latest proposal from the US president,” Pistorius said. “Ukraine on its own could have got a year ago what was included in that [Trump] proposal, it is akin to a capitulation. I cannot discern any added value.”Despite the comments on Crimea, the US president expressed newfound sympathy for his Ukrainian counterpart on Sunday, saying he “wants to do something good for his country” and “is working hard”.Reflecting on his conversation with the Ukrainian president, the US president also said that he was “surprised and disappointed, very disappointed” that Russia had bombed Ukraine after discussions between Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s peace envoy, Steve Witkoff. “I was very disappointed that missiles were flying, by Russia,” the US president said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump said that Zelenskyy “told me that he needs more weapons, but he’s been saying that for three years”.Asked what he wants Putin to do, Trump replied: “Well, I want him to stop shooting. Sit down and sign the deal. We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it and be done with it.”“Do you trust President Putin?” Trump was asked.“I’ll let you know in about two weeks,” Trump said. Pressed to elaborate on what he expects to happen in two weeks, Trump evaded the question. “Two weeks or less,” he said, vaguely, “but you know they’re losing a lot of people. We have 3, 4,000 people dying every week.”Trump also said that his relationship with Zelenskyy was improved by the face-to-face at the Vatican: “Look, it was never bad. We had a little dispute, because I disagreed with something he said, and the cameras were rolling and that was OK with me.”“Look, he’s in a tough situation, a very tough situation. He’s fighting a much bigger force, much bigger,” Trump added. The president then repeated his frequent false claim that the United States had given Ukraine $350bn to aid its defense from the Russian invasion.“I see him as calmer,” Trump said, comparing the Zelenskyy he met at the Vatican with the one he confronted in the Oval Office in February. “I think he understands the picture, and I think he wants to make a deal.”The president also claimed that there had been “a little bit” of progress in trade talks with China, talks that Chinese officials have said are not taking place. “They want to make a deal, obviously,” Trump said. “Now, they’re not doing any business with us, you know, because, not because of them, because of me. Because at 145%, you can’t do business,” he said, in reference to the import tariff rate he imposed this month. “But something’s going to happen, that’s going to be possible.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: President says he wants Putin ‘to stop shooting’ after talks with Zelenskyy

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      Donald Trump appears to have warmed to Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the two presidents met at the Vatican, with the US leader emerging from talks with a plea for Vladimir Putin: “stop shooting”.Trump on Sunday said Zelenskyy “wants to do something good” for Ukraine and is “working hard”, adding he was also “surprised and disappointed” that Russia continued to strike Ukraine after discussions between his peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Putin.Asked what he wants Putin to do, Trump replied: “Well, I want him to stop shooting,” he told reporters. “Sit down and sign the deal. We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it and be done with it.”Trump hints at two-week goal to progress on Ukraine peace dealWhile speaking to reporters, Trump hinted at a two-week deadline to strike or at least make progress on a peace deal. Trump has previously threatened to walk away from negotiations if a swift agreement is not reached.When asked if he trusted Putin, Trump replied, “I’ll let you know in about two weeks.” Pressed to elaborate on what he expects to happen in two weeks, he evaded the question. “Two weeks or less,” he said, vaguely, “but you know they’re losing a lot of people. We have 3, 4,000 people dying every week.”Read the full storyMore than 100 people detained after federal raid in Colorado SpringsMore than 300 law enforcement officers from at least 10 federal agencies raided an illegal after-hours nightclub in Colorado Springs early on Sunday, arresting more than 100 people authorities said were undocumented immigrants and seizing guns, cocaine, meth and pink cocaine. More than a dozen active-duty military members were detained as well, authorities said.The federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) posted a video on X of the post-raid scene, with dozens of partygoers holding their hands up. Another video showed dozens of people fleeing the building through its entrance after federal agents smashed a window.Read the full storyUS treasury secretary says ‘there is a path’ with China over tariff negotiationsThe US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said “there is a path” to an agreement with China over tariffs after he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week in Washington, but he continued to defend Trump’s trade plan as “strategic uncertainty” amid accusations the White House was sending mixed signals over its policy.Read the full storyTrump golf club to host speaker who markets bleach as health treatmentTrump’s private golf resort in South Florida will next week host one of the world’s leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.Andreas Kalcker is among 50 listed speakers at the “Truth Seekers Conference”, a two-day event opening on Thursday at the US president’s resort, Trump National Doral Miami. The event features several anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists who have been brought together by the far-right commentator Charlie Ward.Read the full storyHakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker livestream sit-in against GOP funding planHouse minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and New Jersey senator Cory Booker were holding a sit-in protest and discussion on Sunday on the steps of the US Capitol in opposition to the Republicans’ proposed budget plan. Billed as an “Urgent Conversation with the American People”, the livestreamed discussion comes before Congress’s return to session on Monday, where Democrats hope to stall Republicans’ economic legislative agenda.Read the full storyTwo suspects arrested for theft of Kristi Noem’s purse, Secret Service saysTwo suspects have been arrested in connection with the theft last week of the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse as she ate at a Washington DC restaurant, officials said on Sunday.Noem’s purse was nabbed on Easter Sunday and reportedly contained about $3,000 in cash and her keys, driver’s license, passport and homeland security badge. The homeland security department said Noem had cash in her purse to pay for gifts, dinner and other activities for her family on Easter.Read the full storyBehind the Trump protest movement that launched on RedditAnti-Trump “hands off” protests grew from tens of thousands of people on 5 February to millions around the country by April. Demonstrations on 19 April were also well attended nationwide. “It’s gone from a trickle to a tidal wave really quickly,” said Hunter Dunn, national press coordinator for the movement 50501, short for 50 protests, 50 states, one day.Here’s how the movement grew.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Trump said he would restore Columbus Day in full and shirk Joe Biden’s practice of celebrating an Indigenous People’s Day in parallel to the public holiday. “I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes,” he wrote on social media, accusing Democrats of trying to “destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much.”

      Americans anxious about their country’s slide into authoritarianism found some solace in the past week over what appears to be growing pushback by American universities against Trump’s assault on higher education.

      Environmental conservation groups are expressing major concerns over Trump’s recent proclamation to reverse fishing regulations across the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine national monument, a federally protected area in the central Pacific Ocean spanning nearly 500,000 sq miles.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 26 April 2025. More

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      US treasury secretary says ‘there is a path’ with China over tariff negotiations

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      The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said “there is a path” to an agreement with China over tariffs after he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week in Washington.“I had interaction with my Chinese counterparts, but it was more on the traditional things like financial stability, global economic early warnings,” Bessent told ABC News’s This Week on Sunday, explaining that he had spoken to the Chinese during International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. “I don’t know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi,” he added.On Friday, Donald Trump asserted in an interview that tariff negotiations were under way with China, comments he repeated on his way to Rome to attend the funeral of Pope Francis, but were later denied by China’s foreign ministry, which said the US “should stop creating confusion”.A day later, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said Beijing abides by international rules on US-imposed tariffs and would seek solidarity with other countries.“Certain countries adhere to their own priorities, engage in bullying pressure and coercive transactions, and provoke trade wars for no reason, exposing their extreme egoism,” Wang said on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Kazakhstan.On Sunday, Bessent attempted to weave through the conflicting signals over what progress was being made to de-escalate a trade war threatening to sap global growth.“The Chinese will see this high tariff level is unsustainable for their business,” he said. He added that Beijing’s denial that negotiations are ongoing was for a Chinese audience.“I think they’re playing to a different audience,” Bessent said. “We have a process in place and, again, I just believe these Chinese tariffs are unsustainable.“The first path will be, again, a de-escalation, which I think the Chinese are going to have to have. Then I think there can be an agreement in principle, these 17 or 18 important trade deals that we’re negotiating.”But Bessent warned that “a trade deal can take months” and said negotiations with other significant US trading partners were progressing. “Some of those are moving along very well, especially the – with the Asian countries,” he said, praising Trump’s negotiating strategy.“In game theory it’s called strategic uncertainty,” he said. “So, you’re not going to tell the person on the other side of the negotiation where you’re going to end up. And nobody’s better at creating this leverage than President Trump.”The treasury secretary’s comments come as top US retailers have reportedly warned the White House that tariffs will cause empty store shelves and price hikes within weeks.Bloomberg reported that Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein raised US prices of its products from dresses to kitchenware on Friday ahead of imminent tariffs on small parcels. The average price for the top 100 products in the beauty and health category increased by 51%, and more than 30% for home and kitchen products and toys, including a 377% increase in the price of a 10-piece set of kitchen towels.Trump predicted on Sunday that tariffs would ultimately benefit US taxpayers and boost employment. “When Tariffs cut in, many people’s Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.“Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year. Also, massive numbers of jobs are already being created, with new plants and factories currently being built or planned.” He called it a “bonanza” for Americans and said “the external service is happening”.Separately on Sunday, US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said the US was holding daily conversations with China over tariffs. “Every day we are in conversation with China, along with those other 99, 100 countries that have come to the table,” Rollins said on CNN’s State of the Union.Rollins said the president was prepared to bail out American farmers if the trade war continues squeezing commodity exports, particularly soybean and pork sales to China.“First of all, the prayer is that that doesn’t need to happen – but secondly, if it does, for the short term, just as in Trump 1, we are preparing for that,” Rollins said.Rollins said it could take months before it is known whether a bail-out is needed.“I don’t think we’re going to need it, but if we do, it will be there,” Rollins said. More

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      ‘A trickle to a tidal wave’: behind the Trump protest movement that launched on Reddit

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      It started with a Reddit post.“50 PROTESTS – 50 STATES – 1 DAY,” the user who goes by Evolved Fungi wrote, kicking off a movement that has since drawn hundreds of thousands to the streets in protests against Donald Trump across the country.The movement – pronounced “fifty-fifty-one”, meaning 50 protests, 50 states, one movement – first called for a day of action on 5 February, a date chosen seemingly at random. Local organizers would lead protests in their cities and towns, but the movement would not have a leader, and it would not be centralized.As Trump moved quickly to dismantle agencies, policies and norms, slashing through the federal government, people wanted to express their dismay – and they weren’t seeing it from their elected leaders.“Trump and his cronies are actively trying to take over our country and destroy our democracy, and the Democratic party is not doing enough to stop them, so people are going to step in,” said Hunter Dunn, the national press coordinator for the movement. “That was the basic idea.”The 5 February protest drew tens of thousands across the country. A subsequent February protest got more people into the streets. Come 5 April, a large coalition that included 50501 resulted in millions of people around the country rallying in their cities and towns in a “hands off” demonstration. And on 19 April, was another big showing nationwide Some communities also held mutual aid events such as food and supply drives and potlucks, Dunn said.The movement is one of many coming together to rally in the streets, organize events, contact lawmakers and build a resistance to Trump’s second term.“It’s gone from a trickle to a tidal wave really quickly,” Dunn said.A 50501 subreddit remains an active organizing space, where people discuss ideas for local protests, messages they should put on posters, strategies for getting more people involved. The movement is active on nearly all social media channels, and local offshoots have their own pages as well.The group is planning its next day of mass protest on 1 May, which will be focused on workers’ rights and immigrant rights. 50501 is far from the only group organizing around May Day, a frequent day of action for labor groups around the world.There are now thousands of volunteers across all 50 states and in DC who help with 50501 in their communities, Dunn said. People come together to organize an event, like a protest or demonstration, and form small teams. Those small teams can then become part of state-level 50501 groups. The state-level groups help inform a national group. Local organizers vote on dates for national days of protest, he said.“50501 is not an organization,” the movement’s handbook, posted on its website, says. “It is not a company. It’s not a brand, club, or influencer. It is an agreed-upon idea to end the executive overreach of the Trump administration. Do not look to 50501 for leadership or permission to hold your own government accountable. The time has come for you to get involved. You are 50501. Together our voices cannot be ignored.”Seasoned activists were initially skeptical – they didn’t know the group behind the protest, and they feared it could be a set-up from the other side, designed to make the opposition look weak, or worse, to draw people into a trap. Now, though, established and centralized groups have partnered with 50501 on protests after their fears weren’t realized.In response to some of the early skepticism, Evolved Fungi responded on Reddit that he was “not a foreign agent, or bad actor, or whatever people seem to want to think” but “just a regular guy”. In fact, he has said on Reddit that he started organizing protests in opposition to infant circumcision. He did not respond to a request for an interview and has not yet been named publicly.“People didn’t need to find each other and then plan a date and a place – they needed a date and a place to find each other,” he wrote of the concept. “And at the core, that’s what 50501 is – a date and a place to find each other and stand together.”He later reflected on the first few actions and how the movement had grown from his concept: “You aren’t led by me, you’re led by that spirit in EVERY ONE OF US that sees a wrong and needs to do something to make it right! The same spirit that made me first write about 50501, as a normal guy who saw something wrong and did something about it to try to make it right. Just like you are doing.”The movement lists four groups as partners: Political Revolution, Voices of Florida, NoVoiceUnheard and Build the Resistance. Dunn said Political Revolution has helped build out its website and other places to coordinate events and provided technical support. Voices of Florida has helped train new organizers on how to speak to the press and keep people safe at protests, he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSarah Parker, the executive director of Voices of Florida, told Rolling Stone: “We’re building the airplane while flying it. It’s amazing to see new people building this amazing infrastructure. It’s bottom-up, not top-down.”Many of those involved in the movement are new to political organizing and action, but others have been parts of previous movements, such as Black Lives Matter, or, for some older activists, as far back as anti-Vietnam war protests, Dunn said.Dunn got involved after he saw an Instagram post about 50501. He had previously organized in his local school district as a high schooler to help pass diversity initiatives and worked on some local political campaigns. He helped organize a 50501 protest in Los Angeles on 5 February.Another organizer, Sydney, told the Guardian in February that she hadn’t organized protests before, but didn’t see anyone in her part of Pennsylvania planning a 5 February action. “I decided to pick the ball up and do it myself. And I learned a lot extremely quickly. It’s probably one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done,” she said.Sydney, who asked to use only her first name, said the Pittsburgh protests have grown from a couple hundred people to more than 1,000 at the 19 April event. “It feels amazing. I mean that in the best way possible. But there are some days where I’m like, is this actually happening? Is this real? It’s been amazing to watch.”Each day of action has had more people than the one before it, she said.“I’m seeing more and more parts of Pennsylvania actually take up their own mantle and start their own actions, because, for whatever reason, they can’t get to Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Philadelphia,” she said. “I hope that that momentum results in our elected officials hearing our voice and hearing that we are not happy with the way things are going, and listening to us.”Dunn expects the protests to continue to grow as more of Trump’s agenda takes hold.“I always like to tell people, when they ask how they can join, there’s four things you need to do: you need to be pro-democracy. You need to be trying to protect the constitution. You need to be against executive overreach. You have to be non-violent. If you’re those four things, you’re 50501 if you say you are.” More