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      As US warships prowl the Caribbean, our region must hold fast against Trump’s gaslighting

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      For decades, the Caribbean has been caught in the slipstream of other people’s wars – from cold war proxy battles to Washington’s “war on drugs” and “war on terror”. Our islands have too often been turned into the frontlines for policies scripted elsewhere but fought in our waters, our communities, and on the backs of our most vulnerable.The recent US naval strikes against alleged “drug boats” leaving Venezuela, and the decision of Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, to grant access to territorial waters without first consulting the Caribbean collective of developing countries, Caricom, risk dragging our islands into yet another manufactured storm.As US warships fire missiles at vessels they claim carry “narco-terrorists”, the Caribbean faces the prospect of being sacrificed in someone else’s theatre of war. The consequences could be catastrophic for livelihoods and fragile regional stability. Unless diplomacy and regional solidarity prevail, we could be destabilised in ways we are ill-equipped to endure.The US narrative rests on a familiar trope: that the Caribbean is nothing more than a trans-shipment hub for narcotics flowing north. Geography makes the accusation plausible. For decades, cocaine from Colombia has moved through Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and across the archipelago to Miami, New York, Madrid and London.But the narrative is dishonest. The true driver is demand. The US insatiable appetite for cocaine and opiates created the billion-dollar trade routes that snake through Trinidad, Jamaica, the Bahamas and Guyana. Rather than own its addiction, the US projects blame outward, painting the Caribbean as “narco-territory” while denying the role of its own citizens as consumers, financiers, and enablers.View image in fullscreenFishing communities have long paid the highest price. In Trinidad and Tobago, countless fishers have been harassed, detained or shot at by Venezuelan coastguards. Some have been killed. These people, eking out a precarious living in overfished waters, now fear being mistaken for traffickers by US drones and warships.When the US broadcasts videos of small boats exploding into fireballs, they endanger every fisher who dares cast a net in the Gulf of Paria, between Trinidad and Venezuela.Washington’s sudden military zeal is telling. After decades of indifference to Caribbean pleas for fair trade, reparations and climate justice, we are asked to believe US destroyers lurk offshore to protect us. But the reality is this is about squeezing the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, destabilising the country and preparing the ground for regime change.It would be naive to ignore the oil factor. Between Trinidad’s long-established energy base, Venezuela’s colossal reserves and Guyana’s massive discoveries, the southern Caribbean has become one of the most coveted hydrocarbon regions anywhere.Donald Trump’s fixation on “narco boats” cannot be separated from the desire to influence who controls this wealth. From Iraq to Libya, Washington has repeatedly intervened in oil states, toppling governments and installing pliable leaders. The Caribbean must recognise the danger of being drafted into the next act of this playbook.History shows the consequences; Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, Haiti through multiple interventions. Each was justified as defending democracy; each left behind wreckage. To believe these new strikes are purely about drugs is to ignore the US’s long habit of cloaking imperial ambition in moral language.In a statement, Persad-Bissessar endorsed US naval forces’ presence as a necessary step to tackle organised crime.View image in fullscreen“For two decades, our country has been overwhelmed by bloodshed and rising violence,” she said. Acknowledging remarks by the US vice-president, JD Vance, she added: “He was right to point to our alarming crime and murder rates. My government will not be deterred by partisan outbursts or anti-American rhetoric when it comes to accepting help in confronting the terrorist drug cartels.”In one stroke, she undermined the regional solidarity that has been the Caribbean’s only shield in international politics. Caricom exists precisely so that no island has to face down a superpower alone. Persad-Bissessar has inadvertently conceded a harsher truth: that her administration, like those before it, is clueless in curbing the crime and corruption that continues to bleed the nation.Her unilateral approval of US access was dangerous statecraft. It weakens our collective negotiating hand and leaves Trinidad exposed as the naive accomplice of a superpower with a history of gaslighting its allies. The US knows it can pick off states one by one, securing “basing rights” or “access agreements” without facing a unified Caricom.Venezuela’s response has been furious. Maduro branded the US strikes “extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral and absolutely criminal” and warned of “the biggest threat our continent has seen in 100 years”.His vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, told Trinidad and Guyana: “Don’t dare, don’t even think about it. You are lending yourselves to the perverse plans of aggression against the Venezuelan people.” She ridiculed US claims of narco-trafficking: “How can there be a drug cartel if there’s no drugs here?”View image in fullscreenDiosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s interior minister, flatly rejected US allegations, saying: “They openly confessed to killing 11 people … none were drug traffickers.”Caracas has since mobilised its navy and air force, raising the risk of accidental clashes at sea. With Trinidad tethered to Washington, the danger of being pulled into the line of fire is very real.All of this plays out against the backdrop of our demographic reality: with more than 22,000 Venezuelan refugees officially registered in Trinidad, and estimates suggesting the true figure may be 45,000 — the country hosts the highest per capita population of Venezuelan migrants anywhere in the Caribbean. The human consequences of any escalation will therefore be borne not only at sea but also within our own communities.At the UN general assembly last week, regional leaders voiced their unease. Barbados’s Mia Mottley warned that militarisation of the Caribbean “could occasion an accident that put the southern Caribbean at disproportionate risk” and insisted that “full respect for the territorial integrity of each, and every state in the Caribbean must be respected.”St Vincent and the Grenadines’ prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, described US-Venezuela tensions as “most unhelpful”, reminding the world that the Caribbean had long declared itself to be a “zone of peace”.Their interventions reflected a deep regional anxiety about becoming collateral damage in a quarrel between larger powers. Yet in sharp contrast, Persad-Bissessar used her own UN platform to defend her embrace of Washington’s presence, dismissing the “zone of peace” as an “elusive promise”, while justifying security cooperation with the US as necessary to combat crime.The most chilling element of Washington’s narrative is the absence of any proof, though 11 people were killed in the first strike and three in the second. More, allegedly, were killed in subsequent strikes. Yet not a shred of credible evidence has been produced to show that these individuals were traffickers, much less members of the gang Tren de Aragua, as was claimed. Venezuelan officials insist their investigations found no gang affiliations.Are Caribbean citizens simply expected to accept Washington’s word? After Iraq’s phantom weapons of mass destruction and after decades of interventions elsewhere justified by doctored intelligence, we know better. If these were truly narco-traffickers’ boats, why were suspects not detained and questioned? Why was the norm of investigation abandoned in favour of summary execution at sea?The answer lies not in law but in politics. Trump thrives on chaos. His strategy is division, gaslighting and distraction. These strikes play directly to his Maga base – fiery video clips of boats blowing up, paraded as proof of “decisive action”. It is spectacle, not strategy.To believe these operations are genuine counternarcotics measures rather than campaign optics is to ignore everything Trump has shown us about his politics of manipulation. And it is the Caribbean that risks paying the price for his theatre.View image in fullscreenIf this trajectory continues, the consequences will be dire. Fishers may abandon their livelihoods if they fear being mistaken for traffickers, collapsing entire coastal communities. Tourism will falter in a militarised Caribbean where warships and drones haunt the waters. Trade through the Gulf of Paria and regional ports could be disrupted, raising costs for fragile economies already strained by debt and inflation. Diplomacy will fracture as Caricom’s delicate balance with Washington and Caracas collapses, leaving small states exposed.What is needed now is not more posturing but restraint. Talks between Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Caricom, and Colombia – the historic source of the cocaine pipeline – are essential. The international community must demand transparency and de-escalation. Small island states cannot afford to become battlegrounds.The Caribbean must also insist on restoring international norms: detain suspects, investigate, prosecute. To kill without evidence and bomb small vessels without warning or due process is a descent into lawlessness that endangers every fisher, trader and innocent seafarer.Trinidad and Tobago, and the wider Caribbean, cannot be reduced to staging grounds for US electioneering or Venezuelan brinkmanship. Without restraint – from Caricom, the UN and sober voices in the hemisphere – the region risks being dragged into a conflict that is not of its making.Our fishing industry, our tourism, our fragile economies all stand to suffer. And beyond this lies sovereignty over our most valuable assets: oil and gas. The southern Caribbean is a resource frontier of immense global importance. History shows that US interventions in oil-rich states rarely end in stability or prosperity for the people who live there.Caribbean leaders must rediscover the discipline of solidarity, the wisdom of diplomacy, and the courage to say no to superpowers who mistake small states for pawns.The price for silence will not be paid in Washington or Caracas, but in the lives, economies and futures of Caribbean people. More

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      ‘I think we’re headed to a shutdown,’ says JD Vance as Mike Johnson calls for more time for negotiations – live

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      More reactions from Congressional leaders’ meeting with Trump on the government shutdown.House speaker Mike Johnson said he wants to allow more time for negotiations, Reuters reports.Meanwhile, vice-president JD Vance is blaming Democrats, saying Congress is heading towards a shutdown because Democrats “won’t do” the right thing, per Reuters.“I think we’re headed to a shutdown,” Vance said, Semafor reports.The impending shutdown will be different from past government closures because the Trump administration has threatened mass firings of federal staff, adding that it could use the lapse in funding to downsize the federal government, Reuters reports.The Office of Personnel Management in a Monday memo said while training and onboarding of new federal employees is not allowed under the law dictating the parameters of a shutdown, the employees who oversee any firings are to continue their work. Unlike in past shutdowns, furloughed federal employees will also be allowed to use their government-issued computers to check for layoff notices in their email, according to OPM.“This outrageous plan threatens to cause lasting damage to the country and the safety of the American people by mass firing nonpartisan, expert civil servants and potentially even eliminating government agencies,” Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees shutdown operations, said in a letter to the administration.British prime minister Keir Starmer on Monday welcomed Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Gaza with a new plan, Reuters reports.“We call on all sides to come together and to work with the US administration to finalise this agreement and bring it into reality,” Starmer said. “Hamas should now agree to the plan and end the misery, by laying down their arms and releasing all remaining hostages.”Vice president JD Vance just argued that it was “preposterous” that Democrats were continuing to demand an extension of healthcare funding subsidies during negotiations over a looming government shutdown.“Now they come in here and say: ‘if you don’t give us everything we want we’re going to shut down the government.’ It’s preposterous,” Vance said after a White House meeting with Democratic congressional leaders, Semafor reported.But Vance himself previously campaigned on exactly this kind of “preposterous” negotiating tactic, Semafor’s congressional bureau chief noted.At today’s meeting on the government shutdown, Trump was more interested in negotiating than Republican leaders, PunchbowlNews reports:Meanwhile, this was Democratic leaders’ message to reporters:Democratic advocacy groups are not keen on the idea of a one-week continuing resolution to temporarily keep the government open for more negotiations, HuffPost reports:A group representing major US airlines warned on Monday that a partial federal government shutdown could strain American aviation and slow flights, as air traffic controllers and security officers would be forced to work without pay and other functions would be halted, Reuters reports.Airline trade group Airlines for America, which represents United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and others, warned that if funding lapses “the system may need to slow down, reducing efficiency” and impacting travelers.Nicolás Maduro is ready to declare a state of emergency in the event of a US military attack on Venezuela, the country’s vice-president has said, warning of “catastrophic” consequences if such an onslaught materializes.Washington claims its attacks are part of an offensive against Latin American drug cartels who are smuggling cocaine and fentanyl into the US. But many suspect they could be a prelude to a broader military intervention designed to end Maduro’s 12-year rule.Read the full story here:More reactions from Congressional leaders’ meeting with Trump on the government shutdown.House speaker Mike Johnson said he wants to allow more time for negotiations, Reuters reports.Meanwhile, vice-president JD Vance is blaming Democrats, saying Congress is heading towards a shutdown because Democrats “won’t do” the right thing, per Reuters.“I think we’re headed to a shutdown,” Vance said, Semafor reports.The upshot of Schumer’s meeting with Trump over the government shutdown, the senate minority leaders said: “We have very large differences,” the Huffington Post reports.My colleague David Smith has a recap of Trump and Netanyahu’s peace proposal “press conference,” at which the leaders did not answer questions from the press:
      Donald Trump and the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have delivered an ultimatum to Hamas, warning the militant group to accept their 20-point peace plan for Gaza or face the consequences.
      The two leaders met at the White House in Washington on Monday then held a joint press briefing in which they hailed their proposal as a historic breakthrough and new chapter for the Middle East.
      But it was clear that Hamas had not been consulted and its position on the terms remained uncertain.
      Both Trump and Netanyahu made clear that they were not offering Hamas a choice in the matter. If the group refused, Trump told reporters, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.
      Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s intelligence chief presented Trump’s proposal to Hamas negotiators, who are now reviewing it in “good faith,” according to a person familiar with the matter, the Associated Press reports. The person was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.Two attorneys in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) anti-discrimination division said they were fired on Monday, a week after going public with a whistleblower report alleging that the Trump administration had dismantled efforts to combat residential segregation, my colleague Chris Stein reports.As Trump heads to a meeting with Congressional leaders over the looming government shutdown, Axios has reported on one potential deal under discussion:How does Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza stands out from previous ceasefire proposals? For the first time, it tries to outline the key question of how the territory will be ruled after the war, the Associated Press explains:

      The proposal would effectively put the territory and its more than 2 million people under international control. It calls for deploying an international security force and installing a “Board of Peace” headed by Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to oversee Gaza’s administration and reconstruction.Hamas faces a bitter tradeoff — the proposal demands it effectively surrender in return for uncertain gains. The militant group would have to disarm in return for an end to fighting, humanitarian aid for Palestinians, and the promise of reconstruction in Gaza – all desperately hoped for by its population.But the proposal has only a vague promise that some day, perhaps, Palestinian statehood might be possible. For the foreseeable future, Gaza would stay under a sort of international tutelage and would remain surrounded by Israeli troops.
      Senate majority leader John Thune told reporters before heading to the White House that he believes “there will be multiple opportunities to vote on keeping the government open” if they can’t do so tomorrow.“I would expect additional opportunities,” he said. More

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      US whistleblowers say they were fired for raising fair housing concerns

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      Two attorneys in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) anti-discrimination division said they were fired on Monday, a week after going public with a whistleblower report alleging that the Trump administration had dismantled efforts to combat residential segregation.Paul Osadebe and Palmer Heenan worked in Hud’s Office of Fair Housing (OFH), which is tasked with bringing cases against parties accused of discriminating against tenants and homebuyers under a landmark civil rights law. In a report sent last month to Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, Heenan, Osadebe and two anonymous colleagues wrote that fighting discrimination under the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was “not a priority” for the administration, and that their office had been targeted for downsizing because it presented an “optics problem”.On Monday, Osadebe was called into a meeting with HUD managers, who informed him he was being placed on leave in anticipation of firing. A document he was given cited interviews he had given to the New York Times and Washington Post as violating department policy.“This was purely for whistleblowing activity. There was nothing about conduct, performance, any of that,” Osadebe said in an interview. “They said, this is why we’re firing you, because you spoke out. They are as blatant as can be about it.”Heenan, who was in the probationary phase of his employment, was fired in a similar meeting for “the disclosure of non-public information”, according to a letter he was given by HUD.The department’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs, said in a statement following the firings: “Donald Trump doesn’t want Americans to know that his administration is engaged in a systemic attack on their rights.“So the Trump administration is silencing those who are speaking out about how Donald Trump and Scott Turner [the HUD secretary] are turning their backs on the American people, including women experiencing domestic violence, families being denied mortgages because of the color of their skin, and older folks who need extra help getting down the stairs.”Heenan and Osadebe were recently told they would be moved out of the OFH, which had already lost several staff members and was poised to shrink further through a series of reassignments. Last week, they and three other colleagues sued Turner to prevent the transfers, arguing they were part of the effort to undermine enforcement of the law.“Although we knew we were taking a risk, I am still surprised that this administration would violate the whistleblower statute so blatantly,” Heenan said, referring to federal law intended to protect employees who make reports like theirs.“I’m not going to stop speaking out. I’m not going to stop fighting because these rights are just too damn important.” More

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      West Africans deported from US to Ghana ‘dumped without documents in Togo’

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      West Africans deported by the US to Ghana are now fending for themselves in Togo after being dumped in the country without documents, according to lawyers and deportees.The latest chapter in Donald Trump’s deportation programme, their saga became public earlier this month when the Ghanaian president, John Mahama, disclosed that his country had struck a deal to accept deportees from the region.Eight to 10 west African nationals have since been forcibly sent by Ghana to Togo, bypassing a formal border crossing, and then left on the street without passports.“The situation is terrible,” said Benjamin, a Nigerian national, who said over the weekend he was staying in a hotel room with three other deportees and only one bed, living on money sent from their families in the US.Benjamin – who is using a pseudonym to protect his identity, as he fears persecution from the Nigerian government – said an immigration judge had ruled in June that he couldn’t be deported to Nigeria, citing risks to his life because of his past involvement in politics. He had expected to be released to his wife and children, who are US citizens.He said he was beaten by immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) agents when he refused to board a US military plane headed to an unspecified location, which turned out to be Ghana.Ice did not respond to a request for comment.View image in fullscreenUp to 28 people have arrived in the west African nation from the US so far in the deportation programme.Accra disclosed an initial batch of 14, and Meredyth Yoon, a US-based lawyer, said a second plane that could carry the same amount had since landed, though it was unclear how many people were on it.The initial 14 deportees had won protections in US immigration courts preventing their removal to their home countries for fear of persecution, their lawyers said.But Washington was sending them to Ghana as a loophole, Yoon said – with Accra making it clear people would be forwarded on to their home countries.One deportee, a bisexual man from the Gambia, was immediately sent home by Ghanaian authorities and is living in hiding because same-sex relations are criminalised in the socially conservative country, according to court filings.Two Togolese nationals were deported to the Togo border with Benjamin. They were crying and repeating “It’s over, it’s over”, he said, adding that they had since gone into hiding.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBenjamin and another deportee, Emmanuel – also a pseudonym – said they had spent more than two weeks under military guard in Ghana’s Dema camp, a detention facility in Bundase, 70km (43 miles) outside Accra, with nine other deportees who suffered from exposure to heat, mosquitoes and unsanitary water.The Ghanaian military eventually told them they were taking them to a hotel. Instead, they were driven to the Aflao border crossing on the outskirts of the Togolese capital, Lomé. With the cooperation of Togolese border officials, they were taken “through the back door” of the facility and left on the other side.“We are in hiding right now because we have no type of documents, ID, whatsoever,” said Emmanuel, a Liberian national who arrived in the US in the 1990s during the first Liberian civil war and was granted asylum.Emmanuel and Benjamin had been green card holders, and are married to US citizens. Both were sent to Ice detention after serving prison sentences for separate fraud charges.Emmanuel was fighting his removal in court when he was deported, Yoon said.The UN human rights office has called on Ghana to stop deporting those sent by the US “to Nigeria, the Gambia, Togo, Mali, Liberia or any other third country where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture”.The US state department said: “We will pursue all appropriate options to remove aliens who should not be in the United States.” More

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      Kamala Harris’s election memoir shows just how deluded the Democrats still are | Nesrine Malik

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      Watching the Kamala Harris presidential campaign unfold last year, I remember thinking, and writing, about how striking it was that she had been rehabilitated almost overnight into a political titan. Authoritative accounts of her before that moment portrayed a lo-fi vice-president, who, even according to people who had worked to get her there, had “not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country”. Another striking feature of her campaign was how it leaned into vibes and spectacle rather than substance, or building faith in Harris as a clean break from an unpopular and visibly deteriorating Joe Biden. Her new book, 107 Days, a memoir of the exact number of days she had to win the presidency, goes a long way in explaining why that was. In short, Harris – and those around her, including supportive media parties – got high on their own supply.This was not the intention, but 107 Days is a hilarious book. The kind of “you have to laugh or else you’ll cry” type of hilarity. As the second Trump administration unfolds in ever-more disastrous ways, Harris and the other timeline that was possible had she won take on a calamitous, mythical quality. Here she comes, alerting us to the fact that her defeat was no fateful tragedy, but a farce. There was no hidden, better version of Harris that was muzzled and limited by circumstance. There was only a woman with a formidable lack of self-awareness and a propensity to self-valorise.The book reveals a politician who is all about the machinery of politics, rather than one with conviction spurred by a sense of duty, or a coherent and specific set of values that differentiate her. The “not a thing that comes to mind” answer she gave when asked during the campaign if there was anything she would have done differently to Biden was not caution, but the truth. There is no sign here that she would have liked to meaningfully diverge on Gaza, for example, other than to introduce more parity in the rhetoric of compassion. Or any indication that she would have liked to grasp the nettle on economic policy and make more of her accusation that Donald Trump’s economic agenda “works best if it works for those who own the big skyscrapers”.This dearth of a unique Harris agenda explains why she often seemed so vague, skittish and rambling. How does she receive the news she will be the candidate? By reminding herself (and us) that she had the best “contact book” and “name recognition”, as well as the “strongest case”. She tries to cloak her ambition, saying “knew she could” be president, but only because she “wanted to do the work. I have always been a protector.” It’s fine to have ambition to be the president of the United States! Every cardinal dreams of becoming pope, as Cardinal Bellini of Conclave said. Even he did himself, to his shame, when he lamented upon the discovery of his ambition: “To be this age and still not know yourself.”My abiding feeling reading was: oh God, this was all just as bad as it looked. The celebrity-packed campaign roster was not, in fact, panicked desperation, but the preference of the candidate and her team. They thought that such a range of characters would show that Harris was “welcoming everyone into the campaign” – as if the power of celebrity could do the unifying work of coalition-building, rather than her own programme and politicking. The immersion in the filmic, the celluloid of US politics is so complete that there is a line about Jon Bon Jovi performing for her and it being a good omen, because he performed for a candidate who won in The West Wing. The media loved her. “And behold,” Harris quotes a Washington Post writer, praising her approach to Gaza, “she had her boat through the impossible strait.” Jon Favreau said Harris was “a sight to behold” at the Democratic convention.I lost count of the number of descriptions of crowds exploding, roaring, on fire. The audience applause to Harris’s Saturday Night Live appearance was some of the loudest ever heard. She replays her greatest hits, revealing a politician captured by the reverie of rapturous self-selecting crowds and buzzy studios, fatally unable to connect to the voters outside the bubble, who had soured on the Democrats and were checking out, or voting for Trump.View image in fullscreenBiden pops up often, a self-involved and petty figure, snapping at her heels and distracting her. But she is loyal, she tells us – often. So loyal that she couldn’t disparage him in the way that people needed her to (“People hate Joe Biden!” she is told by a senior adviser). But not so loyal that she doesn’t more artfully disguise that she wants you to know the man was a real drag who mentioned her too late in his speeches, and then called her before her big debate with Trump to unsubtly threaten her if she bad-mouthed him. But what is most telling, and alarming, is what she reveals about the Democratic establishment, and therefore what hope there is of an awakening among its ranks. One that could pose a meaningful challenge to Trump now, and Trumpism in the future. The 107 days were short, but they were a concentration of a process in which the party and its candidate had to dig deep quickly to unearth the most compelling and defining vision for the American people. The result was to take no risks, offer continuity and scold dissenters as Trump enablers, but with style. It wasn’t enough, and will never be.The answer to the question “what went wrong” isn’t “we didn’t have enough time” to establish Harris. It was that Harris, even now, with all the time to reflect and be honest with herself, is a politician who invests too much in presentation, and entirely exculpates herself of failures because she was dealt a bad political hand. What can you say besides, “to be this age and still not know yourself”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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      Why Trump is backing Argentina’s Thatcherite economics | Heather Stewart

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      “We’re backing him 100%. We think he’s done a fantastic job. Like us, he inherited a mess.” Donald Trump gave his enthusiastic endorsement to Javier Milei’s radical economic experiment when the pair met in New York last week.The US has declared itself ready to offer more than rhetorical support to the chainsaw-wielding Argentinian president in the coming days, as Buenos Aires stands on the brink of a fresh financial crisis.The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the US was “ready to do what is needed”. He suggested the Federal Reserve could offer Buenos Aires a $20bn (£15bn) dollar swap line – a crucial crisis-fighting tool – or the US could even buy the country’s bonds directly.US administrations have rallied support for Argentinian governments in the past – Bill Clinton was a fan of Carlos Menem’s 1990s reforms, for example. But Trump’s readiness to wade in directly is the latest example of his determination to use economic tools for political ends: in this case, propping up an ideological ally.Milei swept into power two years ago, on a wave of frustration and discontent with the economic status quo.Like Trump and Boris Johnson, he eschewed the usual conventions of politics and promised to smash up the establishment and remake the state on behalf of the people.But while Milei’s political playbook may echo Trump’s, with its embrace of chaos and showbiz, his economic policies owe something to another radical with big hair – Margaret Thatcher, whom the Argentinian president has called “brilliant”.Like the Thatcher governments in the UK, Milei sees slaying the dragon of inflation as an overriding priority. The challenge in Argentina is on a completely different scale to 1980s Britain, however: the inflation rate peaked at more than 25% a month soon after Milei came to power.But aspects of his approach, including a systematic onslaught on trade union rights, public spending cuts and a wave of privatisations, have echoes of Thatcherism.Despite lacking a parliamentary power base, Milei has succeeded in cutting deep into pensions and public sector wages – and more than 48,000 public sector workers have lost their jobs.He travelled to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, in the US, to pose on stage next to a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) was partly inspired by Milei’s aggressive style.Argentina’s tough policies have won plaudits from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which granted a new $20bn lifeline to Argentina in April.On stage at the IMF’s meetings in Washington that month, its managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, proudly pinned on to her green jacket a tiny silver chainsaw badge, handed to her by Argentina’s minister for deregulation, Federico Sturzenegger.But while Milei’s “shock therapy” may have met with approval in Washington – and indeed in financial markets – the Argentinian economist and campaigner Lucía Cirmi Obón highlights its human impact.“The macroeconomic changes implemented by Milei have not shown – nor do I believe they will show – any positive impact on people’s quality of life. In practice, what we are seeing is an economic recession,” she told the Guardian.“The main reasons are that real wages fell, and the opening of imports also dismantled a large part of national industry. On top of that, there were cuts to the number of people receiving a pension, support for childcare, for people with disabilities who used to receive pensions. All of the policies the population used to receive from the state have been reduced.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnemployment has risen by two percentage points, but she argues that there is also significant hidden unemployment – with former factory workers crowding into poorly paid gig-economy jobs such as Uber driving, for example. Household debt is rising, and because many of the occupations targeted by cuts are female-dominated, the gender pay gap has widened, undoing six years’ worth of progress.Obón adds that while Milei’s approach was meant to unleash the corporate sector, to open the way for surging economic growth, investment as a share of GDP has actually fallen.Meanwhile, determined to squash inflation, Milei has maintained the peso’s link to the dollar – a trigger for so many crises in Argentina over the years.For several decades, the peso has been pegged – within limits – to the greenback, which circulates within Argentina as an alternative currency, in which many citizens like to hold their savings, especially in times of trouble.Milei had advocated full dollarisation during the election campaign – a policy that would leave Argentina without the right to set its own interest rates. When he came to power and allies rejected that plan, he instead devalued the peso by more than half, willing to wear the resulting inflation in the hope of stimulating exports.But the currency has nevertheless come under continued selling pressure – exacerbated by the political uncertainty unleashed when Milei suffered a disastrous showing in local legislative elections in Buenos Aires province, which he had himself called a “life or death battle”.Since those local elections, and amid a mounting clamour of corruption claims against Milei’s powerful sister, Karina, the peso sell-off has accelerated. The central bank burned through more than $1bn of reserves in a week trying to prop up the currency, before Bessent announced Washington was ready to step in.As well as political fellow feeling, some experts suggest geopolitics may have been another motivation for Washington’s intervention, with China becoming increasingly influential in Latin America.The peso rallied and the markets calmed after Bessent’s comments, but as the costs of “shock therapy” bite and Milei looks to crucial midterm elections in October, the Argentinian public face a volatile period ahead. More

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      Trump fires US attorney who told border agents to follow law on immigration raids

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      Donald Trump fired a top federal prosecutor in Sacramento just hours after she warned immigration agents they could not indiscriminately detain people in her district, according to documents reviewed by the New York Times.Michele Beckwith, who became the acting US attorney in Sacramento in January, received an email at 4.31pm on 15 July notifying her that the president had ordered her termination.The day before, Beckwith had received a phone call from Gregory Bovino, who leads the Border Patrol’s unit in El Centro, a border city 600 miles south of Sacramento. Bovino was planning an immigration raid in Sacramento and asked Beckwith who in her office to contact if his officers were assaulted, the Times reported, citing Beckwith.She informed Bovino that agents were not allowed to indiscriminately stop people in her district, north of Bakersfield, per a federal court order issued in April that prevents the agency from detaining people without reasonable suspicion. The US supreme court overturned a similar court order issued in Los Angeles earlier this month.In a 10.57am email on 15 July, Beckwith repeated her message, telling Bovino she expected “compliance with court orders and the constitution”. Less than six hours later, her work computer and cellphone no longer functioning, she received a letter to her personal email account notifying her that she had been terminated.Two days later, Bovino proceeded with his immigration raid at a Sacramento Home Depot.“Folks, there is no such thing as a sanctuary city,” he said in a video he shared from the California state capitol building.“The former acting US attorney’s email suggesting that the United States Border Patrol does not ALWAYS abide by the constitution revealed a bias against law enforcement,” Bovino said in a statement to the New York Times. “The supreme court’s decision is evidence of the fact Border Patrol follows the constitution and the fourth amendment.”On 8 September, the supreme court ruled that federal immigration agents can stop people solely based on their race, language or job, overturning the decision of a Los Angeles judge who had ordered immigration agents to halt sweeping raids there.Beckwith’s firing is one of a series of federal firings, including of prosecutors who did not abide by the president’s agenda. Last week, US attorney Erik Siebert resigned under intense pressure and Trump replaced him with his special assistant Lindsey Halligan just hours after ordering his attorney general Pam Bondi to do so in a since deleted social media post.Siebert had been overseeing investigations into Letitia James and James Comey. Beckwith has appealed against her termination, according to the Times.“I’m an American who cares about her country,” she told the paper. “We have to stand up and insist the laws be followed.” More

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      Trump says he expects charges for other adversaries after Comey indictment

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      Donald Trump said on Friday that he expected more people whom he considers his political enemies to face criminal charges, a day after the justice department indicted former FBI director James Comey and faced a torrent of criticism for enacting the president’s campaign of retribution.“It’s not a list, but I think there’ll be others,” Trump said as he departed the White House to travel to the Ryder Cup golf tournament. “I mean, they’re corrupt. They were corrupt radical left Democrats.”Trump’s blunt remarks underscored the perilous moment for his political adversaries, given that the justice department pressed ahead with criminal charges against Comey, even though it was widely seen – inside and outside the administration – to be a weak case.The indictment against Comey, filed in federal district court on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, alleged that he misled lawmakers in September 2020 when he stood by his previous testimony to Congress claiming he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak to reporters.Prosecutors alleged that statement was not true and that Comey had authorized his friend and Columbia law school professor Dan Richman to leak to reporters about an investigation into Hilary Clinton, when Richman worked for a short time as a special government employee at the FBI.But the underlying evidence against Comey, which remains unclear from the two-page indictment, was considered to be insufficient for a conviction. The issues were laid out in a memo and Erik Siebert, the then interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, declined to bring charges.Trump fired Siebert within days and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, most recently a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience. Halligan was briefed on the problems with the case but pressed forward with charges anyway, presenting the case herself to the grand jury.The grand jury returned an indictment on two counts but declined to approve a third. Even then, only 14 out of 23 grand jurors voted to bring the false statement charge, barely more than the 12-person threshold, court documents show.The fraught nature of the Comey indictment raised fresh fears that Trump’s political appointees at justice department headquarters in Washington and at its field offices elsewhere will feel emboldened to pursue criminal cases against the president’s other adversaries.Among other people, Trump has fixated in recent weeks on criminal investigations against the New York attorney general Letitia James and Democratic senator Adam Schiff over mortgage fraud allegations. James brought a civil fraud case against Trump last year and Schiff led the first impeachment trial.Last weekend, before Comey’s indictment, Trump called on his attorney general Pam Bondi to pursue Comey, James and Schiff. “They impeached me twice and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!” Trump posted on Truth Social.The administration also launched a criminal investigation into former CIA director John Brennan, who Trump despises for his role in the US intelligence community’s assessment in 2016 about Russian malign influence operations aimed at helping the Trump campaign.Last month, the FBI also searched the home and office of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, over allegations he mishandled classified documents. The FBI recovered documents with classification markings but Bolton’s lawyer claimed they had been declassified. More