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      Trump envoy praises new Syrian president for ‘counter-ISIS measures’

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      Donald Trump’s old friend Thomas Barrack, now serving as the US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, praised Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, after a meeting in Istanbul on Saturday.“I stressed the cessation of sanctions against Syria will preserve the integrity of our primary objective – the enduring defeat of ISIS – and will give the people of Syria a chance for a better future,” Barrack said in a statement, referring to actions taken on Friday by the Trump administration to temporarily suspend sanctions imposed on the government of the former president, Bashar al-Assad, who was deposed by rebel forces led by Sharaa late last year.Syria had been under US sanctions since 1979, which intensified after 2011’s deadly crackdown on peaceful protesters by Assad.“I also commended President al-Sharaa on taking meaningful steps towards enacting President Trump’s points on foreign terrorist fighters, counter-ISIS measures, relations with Israel, and camps and detention centers,” Barrack added.Those conditions put Sharaa in the position of cracking down on his former allies. Sharaa, an Islamist rebel, initially came to Syria from Iraq to fight Assad with the support of the Islamic State, but later broke with the group and pledged allegiance to al-Qaida. He broke with al-Qaida as well, in 2016.His militant group, the al-Nusra Front, rebranded twice, becoming Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, in 2017. HTS was designated a terrorist organization by the United States.“President al-Sharaa praised America’s fast action on lifting sanctions,” Trump’s envoy reported after the talks on Saturday.“This meeting was historic, putting the issue of sanctions – as President Trump has indicated – far behind us, and resulting in joint commitment of both our countries to drive forward, quickly, with investment, development, and worldwide branding of a new, welcoming Syria without sanctions.”Among the projects now possible is a Trump Tower Damascus, proposed as part of an effort to entice the US president into removing sanctions. Trump himself appears to have been impressed by a recent meeting with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia; the US president told reporters that the former commander of al-Qaida’s franchise in Syria was a “young, attractive guy, tough guy, you know. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”Barrack, who was indicted by the justice department in 2021 and charged with “unlawful efforts to advance the interests of the United Arab Emirates” during the first Trump administration, was acquitted of all charges after a federal trial in 2022. More

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      Remote Wyoming vacation lodge emerges as haven for US ‘dissident’ right

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      A vacation lodge known as the Wagon Box Inn in the tiny town of Story, Wyoming, has emerged as an unlikely hub of rightwing ambitions to reorient US politics and culture.Events held there since it opened, and others planned for this spring, have brought together figures from the so-called “dissident right”, political figures backed by reactionary currents in Silicon Valley, and proponents of the “network state” movement.The dissident right is a term that describes rightwing intellectual currents that go beyond and even attack mainstream conservatives for their perceived concessions to liberals on issues like race, feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. Network state proponents envision a network of extra-national communities that exist beyond the control of nation-states.The Guardian contacted the Wagon Box founder and owner Paul McNiel for comment. He did not respond directly but instead posted a screenshot of the request to X appended with commentary.There, McNiel said he was driven by “good-faith curiosity” that events there had been “largely focused on a suspicion of ‘the machine’” and boasted of the “breadth of the politics represented”, citing appearances by the likes of Patrick Deneen and Seneca Scott.Deneen is a Notre Dame professor and conservative political theorist whose 2023 book Regime Change “offered a preview of the Trump administration’s intention to breathe fire on America’s cultural institutions” whose fans include JD Vance, the vice-president.Scott, who McNiel described as a “90s Democrat who wants a safe community for his family and goats”, is a former union organizer based in Oakland, California, whose activism, political campaigning and social media output have targeted transgender people, homeless encampments, local media organizations, progressive politicians and city employees.‘Liberalism is crumbling’Sheridan county property records indicate that Paul McNiel bought the property that includes the Wagon Box – formerly a holiday destination and RV park – in August 2022.Property records, satellite imagery, and media posted on social media platforms and on the Wagon Box website indicate a semi-rural location on the western fringes of Story.Since McNiel took control of the property, it has played host to a string of events, many of them featuring figures associated with overlapping rightwing movements.The project has drawn concerns in local media, but garnered a laudatory write-up in the Bari Weiss-founded Free Press. Free Press investors include rightwing tech figures like Marc Andreessen and Trump administration “crytpo czar” David Sacks.McNiel – billed as a millionaire in an appearance on a real estate investment podcast in 2021 – is the principal of a legion of LLCs, according to company records in Alaska, Wyoming, Montana and North Carolina.View image in fullscreenProperty records and data brokers indicate that McNiel or LLCs controlled by him have bought and sold dozens of properties – many of them trailer parks or similar sites for low-cost housing – in at least three states.According to founding documents on its website, Wagon Box is run as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), a term for organizations managed in part via decentralized technologies like blockchains and smart contracts.A 2021 Wyoming law allows DAOs to incorporate in the state, despite their often anonymous ownership structure. The sparsely populated state is notorious for a “cowboy cocktail” of loose financial regulations and opaque company ownership.“We’re not northern Idaho or even Montana. We’ve so far managed to not attract the crazy far right to our state,” said Elizabeth Storer, a Democratic state representative from Jackson who has spoken critically of Wyoming’s libertarian financial laws and opacity.“We’ve allowed just about anyone to come into Wyoming because of our low tax environment, our limited liability corporation laws and the use of registered agents all over the state – it allows people to offshore funds in Wyoming with a great deal of secrecy,” she added.The current version of a document explaining the DAO aligns the project with the network state movement, claiming that “the grand project of liberalism is crumbling, and that in its wake people are looking for new avenues of allegiance and interdependence”.The document continues “Balaji Srinivasan, among others, has identified this shift and suggested a process for uniting modern technologies with ancient human trends of association to createnetwork states”, providing a link to Srinivasan’s self-published 2022 book of the same name.Reverse diasporasSrinavisan is an entrepreneur and investor formerly associated with companies including Andreessen-Horowitz and Coinbase. (That company’s current CEO, Brian Armstrong, is another outspoken booster of network states).For more than a decade, Srinivasan has advocated a radical anarcho-capitalist vision in which like-minded people can “exit” and place themselves beyond the legal and economic reach of nation-states in parallel, networked special economic zones.His ideas are often couched in vituperative attacks on his perceived enemies, including academics, government employees and the media.As early as 2013, Srinavisan was advocating a “reverse diaspora” in which people enabled by technology could assemble in “cloud cities … outside the United States”. These “could be floating cities in international waters as put forth by Peter Thiel, or one of the more ambitious 80,000 person colonies on Mars desired by Elon Musk”.Soon after, in response to reporting linking Silicon Valley figures to the anti-democratic neo-reactionary movement and its leading light, Curtis Yarvin, Srinavasan reportedly emailed Yarvin with the suggestion that “it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out”.He later cited Yarvin in The Network State, writing: “As Yarvin in particular has documented at length, the most important left-authoritarians are not formally part of the elected state at all. They are the professors, activists, bureaucrats, and journalists.”He describes people in these fields as constituting “the control circuitry for the US government”.Last September, he opened a residential network school for would-be builders of network nations, reportedly located in Malaysia’s Forest City, whose “requirements include an admiration of ‘western values’, seeing Bitcoin as the successor to the US Federal Reserve, and trusting AI over human courts and judges”.View image in fullscreenThe network state vision has already inspired an attempt to build a city, California Forever, in rural Solano county, with investors including Andreessen and the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Network state advocates also reportedly want to construct a similar “charter city” in Greenland if it is annexed by the United States.Donald Trump has floated the idea of creating 10 such “freedom cities” on federal land, including San Francisco’s Presidio.The movement also overlaps with efforts to mount a rightwing takeover of city governments in San Francisco and Oakland, with the likes of the Y Combinator CEO, Garry Tan, backing both projects.Srinivasan has offered lurid fantasies of what a tech-controlled San Francisco might look like. In an October 2023 podcast interview, he envisioned a city controlled by tech-aligned “grays” enjoying privileged access to large parts of the city, bribing a pliant police department, and with “blues” – San Francisco’s liberals – subject to exclusion and hostile propaganda.Devin Burghart, the executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Righs and a longtime observer of far-right organizing in the mountain west, told the Guardian in an interview that the Wagon Box was significant for being one of the first real-world attempts at constructing a “network state” hub beyond California.“They’ve tipped their hand a bit with the constant references to [accelerationist theorist] Nick Land and Italian futurism. This is a different veneer of the apocalyptic, post-democratic world view that is also quite common with militia and prepper types.”The Wagon Box reportedly attracted immediate scepticism from residents of tiny unincorporated Story in the months following its establishment.Attenders at a 2023 public meeting reportedly expressed concerns both about the draft DAO document’s vision of “‘capital seed for a nascent network state’ and … a place for either gatherings or apocalyptic retreat”, and McNiel’s association with the notorious anti-government activist Ryan Payne.In 2018, Payne was sentenced to federal prison on conspiracy charges after playing the role of, according to a federal judge, “an architect” of the 2016 Malheur national wildlife refuge occupation, in which he participated alongside the likes of the current fugitive Ammon Bundy.‘A criminal regime’Wagon Box has hosted a series of events since McNiel’s acquisition, many with guests and themes associated with the far right.The 27 April event, Dawn in the West: A Futurist Serata (DitW) was subtitled “An UncleTed Talk”, a reference both to Ted talks and a nickname for the so-called Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski.Advertising materials highlighted themes including the work of Land, who, alongside Yarvin, is one of the progenitors of the neo-reactionary movement, whose anti-democratic ideas have been cited as an inspiration for the Trump administration’s gutting of the federal government.Another advertised speaker at that event was Jonathan Keeperman. The Guardian identified Keeperman in 2024 as the man behind the L0m3z X account and rightwing publisher Passage Press.Keeperman-founded Passage Press is also listed as a participant in Wagon Box’s 31 May roundtable Coalition for Cultural Renewal (CCR).The schedule for a Wagon Box event last August promised a conversation between Keeperman and the journalist James Pogue on “the failure of liberalism and globalization”.Pogue has written extensively about the new right for media outlets including the New York Times and Vanity Fair.In a post at the Wagon Box’s Substack newsletter, Pogue and McNiel are pictured together in a photograph purportedly taken inside the Passage-Press-sponsored Coronation Ball in Washington this January, and described in a caption as “Wagon Box brothers”.Keeperman is one of the overlaps between Wagon Box and a broader far-right milieu.Keeperman, for example, spoke last month at a pro-natalist conference in Austin, Texas, whose speaker roster included self-described eugenicists and promoters of race science.At the event, in response to a small protest on site, Keeperman took to X, posting: “NATALISM IS NAZISM Say it loud say it proud.”Balaji Srinivasan spoke at the same conference in 2023.The Natalism conference founder, Kevin Dolan, is listed in Texas company records as the principal of a natalism.org non-profit; a newly incorporated Eternal Capital Texas Inc; and Exit, a men-only organization which he characterized in a Substack newsletter as a rightwing business network which is “not just about making life in the regime more tolerable … setting ourselves up to succeed as it declines”.He founded that organization following Guardian reporting in 2021 that identified him as the man behind an influential “DezNat” account, “@extradeadjcb”.Exit is billed as a participant in Wagon Box’s CCR event, which will include other far-right publishers , along with Murphy’s Other Life and hard-right online magazine IM-1776.The Guardian previously reported on IM-1776’s support of authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele; its enthusiasm for extremist political figures such as Gabriele D’Annunzio and Kaczynski; and its close links with contemporary hard-right activists like the culture warrior Christopher Rufo, Erik Prince and would-be “warlord” Charles Haywood.IM-1776’s literary editor, Daniel Miller, is a speaker at DitW, and in YouTube videos posted to Wagon Box’s channel he is characterized as a writer-in-residence.In a January article for IM-1776, Miller called for Donald Trump to overthrow the government of the UK led by Keir Starmer and “liberate” the country, saying it was run by “a criminal regime” dominated by “a mafia-like organization of pathological personalities”, a necessity “as clear as the imperative of the Vietnamese to invade Cambodia and remove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979”.Miller did not respond to a request for comment.The Oakland connectionEvents this spring also bill speakers associated with a tech-backed hard-right political movement in California’s Bay Area.Scott – who has run both for city council and mayor in Oakland – is set to appear at the Doomer Optimism Campout in June.Scott’s political activities in Oakland – including the candidacies and his advocacy for the recall of former mayor Sheng Thao last year – have been punctuated by scandals.During his 2022 campaign media reports revealed a 2021 arrest on charges of brandishing a firearm, in an incident that took place not far from the community garden he founded in West Oakland. Those charges were later dismissed.Last December, the city of Oakland applied for a restraining order against Scott over his alleged harassment of a city worker during the recall campaign. Among other things, Scott reportedly claimed that the employee was a pedophile on social media and posted their address publicly. In a February settlement, Scott agreed to stop posting personal information about the employee online.View image in fullscreenScott has received backing from rightwing tech figures including Tan, who, like Scott, has agitated against progressive approaches to homelessness and law and order, and employed bareknuckle social-media posting to promote his views.“If you want Oakland to be great then you will follow and support Seneca,” Tan wrote on X last year.In Oakland, Scott has drawn scrutiny for anti-transgender commentary and attacks on progressive voices in politics and media.Scott appeared at another Wagon Box event in summer 2024 in conversation about “Cities: urban agriculture, crime, and criminal justice reform”.Pogue also appeared alongside Scott at his community garden in a 2023 event hosted by a Scott-run non-profit, Neighbors Together Oakland, that was last year shuttered by California’s attorney general last year for conducting fundraising without a non-profit license.In an interview with Free Press in 2023, Scott had said he planned to use that non-profit as a platform to support “100 nontraditional candidates” for city councils, school boards, and potentially higher offices across the US.Another Doomer Optimism Campout speaker is Andrew Hock, a Tennessee political consultant who was reportedly involved with an alleged attempt to facilitate anonymous donations in support of the recall of Mayor Thao.Questions about Foundational Oakland Unite’s fundraising came amid a flood of campaign money into pro-recall groups, much of it from big-money donors. As previously reported in the Guardian, deep-pocketed tech figures have been involved in attempts to drag politics to the right in Oakland and San Francisco.In April, 2024 the Thao recall campaign sent an email to prospective donors offering “options for donors to remain private if you prefer”. Oakland city law forbids anonymous donations to political candidates. The message included an email address for Andrew Hock at Foundational Oakland Unites, a political action committee founded by Scott, as the main point of contact for donations.According to 2024 reporting by the Oaklandside, Scott previously employed Hock as a paid campaign consultant during his 2022 mayoral campaign.Scott claims to be a part-owner of Hock’s campaign consultant group, Laschian Consulting. In an April 17 post to X, Scott claimed that Laschian Consulting “has planted its flag and is already in talks to help other major US cities fight back against the soggies and their anti-human agenda”, using a self-coined derogatory term to refer to social democrats.“If your city is spiraling due to failed progressive policies and a coordinated NGO + public sector union takeover, give us a call. Maybe we can help you save your city too.”In January, Thao, the recalled mayor, was herself federally indicted over allegations including that she solicited political donations in violation of campaign finance laws.The alleged straw donor campaign for Thao was uncovered by Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission in an investigation that began half a decade ago. Though the PEC did not make a criminal referral, FBI white-collar crime investigators in Oakland picked up the thread and built their own criminal case independently.The PEC’s budget was slashed earlier this year amid a citywide fiscal crisis, severely impacting its ability to complete ongoing investigations.Hock did not respond to requests for comment. More

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      Record number of Americans seeking UK residency, says Home Office

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      During the 12 months leading up to March, more than 6,000 US citizens have applied to either become British subjects or to live and work in the country indefinitely – the highest number since comparable records began in 2004, according to data released on Thursday by the UK’s Home Office.Over the period, 6,618 Americans applied for British citizenship – with more than 1,900 of the applications received between January and March, most of which has been during the beginning of Donald Trump’s second US presidency.The surge in applications at the start of 2025 made that the highest number for any quarter on record.The figures come as British authorities under a Labour government are trying to reduce immigration to the UK, with Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, vowing to take “back control of our borders” and warning that uncontrolled immigration could result in the country “becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together”.UK figures show net migration dropped by almost half in 2024 – to 431,000 – compared with 2023.The surge in US applications for UK residency comes as American immigration lawyers say they are receiving an increasing number of inquiries. Some are pointing to the polarized political climate in the Trump-led country, which itself is mounting an aggressive immigration-related crackdown.Muhunthan Paramesvaran, an immigration lawyer at Wilsons Solicitors in London, told the New York Times that inquiries had risen “in the immediate aftermath of the election and the various pronouncements that were made”.“There’s definitely been an uptick in inquiries from US nationals,” Paramesvaran told the outlet. “People who were already here may have been thinking: ‘I want the option of dual citizenship in the event that I don’t want to go back to the US.’”Zeena Luchowa, a partner at Laura Devine Immigration, which specializes in US migration to the UK, was more explicit in pointing to the “political landscape” amid Trump’s government. Luchowa told the outlet that the rise was not limited to US nationals – but also other nationalities living there.“The queries we’re seeing are not necessarily about British citizenship – it’s more about seeking to relocate,” Luchowa said to the Times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, the increase in US applications to the UK may not necessarily reflect political conditions in either country. Of the 5,521 settlement applications from US citizens last year, most were from people who were eligible via spousal or family links.Paramesvaran said such applications were likely to climb because the UK government had extended the qualification period from five years to 10 before they could apply for settlement. But Labour government politicians have hinted that some applicants may be able to skirt those requirements.That echoes one aspect of Trump’s thinking in the US, where he has floated the idea of an immigration “gold card” – in essence, an extension of the EB-5 program that extends green cards to foreign investors and their families.The UK home secretary, Yvette Cooper, told parliament earlier in May that “there will be provisions to qualify more swiftly that take account of the contribution people have made” and said the British government “will introduce new, higher language requirements” because “the ability to speak English is integral to everyone’s ability to contribute and integrate”. More

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      Trump administration trying to dismiss MS-13 leader’s charges to deport him

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      Donald Trump’s administration is attempting to dismiss criminal charges against a top MS-13 leader in order to deport him to El Salvador, according to newly unsealed court records – igniting accusations from critics and the defendant’s legal team that the US president is trying to do a favor for his Salvadorian counterpart, who struck a deal with the gang in 2019.According to justice department records, the MS-13 figure in question, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, has intimate knowledge of that secretive pact, which – before eventually falling apart – involved Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s government ceding money and territory to the gang, who in return promised to reduce violence from its side and provide Bukele’s party with electoral support.Attempts by the Trump administration to expel Arevalo-Chavez are part of its own deal with Bukele to allow for the US to incarcerate immigrants in a maximum security Salvadoran prison. CNN reported in April that Bukele’s government had specifically asked for nine top MS-13 leaders to be brought back to El Salvador from the US.Critics of Trump who are defending Arevalo-Chavez’s rights see the move to deport him as a way to prevent him from testifying in a US court, or becoming a federal government cooperator, to limit disclosures about Bukele’s past ties to the gang as much as possible.Arevalo-Chavez is a member of the “Ranfla Nacional”, which is considered to be a directors’ board of sorts for the MS-13 gang. Federal charges pending against him in New York include racketeering, terrorism and conspiring to commit narco-terrorism.A filing from the US justice department – dated 1 April but not unsealed until Thursday – said federal prosecutors want to dismiss charges against Arevalo-Chavez for “sensitive and important foreign policy considerations”.Prosecutors added that “geopolitical and national security concerns of the United States” and said permitting “the prosecution of the defendant to proceed in the first instance in El Salvador” was also a factor.Arevalo-Chavez is still in the US, with his attorneys requesting more information about the reasons behind the dismissal of charges and the intended deportation.The judge ruled in April to not relocate him anywhere, preventing his being placed into the custody of the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), which would lead to his deportation.“The ‘geopolitical and national security concerns’ appear to be an effort by the government to support a ‘deal’ with El Salvador to assist Bukele in suppressing the truth about a secret negotiation he had with MS-13 leaders in return for our government using El Salvador prisons,” Arevalo-Chavez’s attorneys said in a separate filing also unsealed on Thursday. That filing in particular mentioned the notorious Cecot prison built to house alleged gang members.The US attorney’s office for New York’s eastern federal district, where Arevalo-Chavez is being prosecuted, declined to comment Friday when asked by the Guardian. Arevalo-Chavez’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In mid-March, the US justice department quietly dismissed charges against another top Ranfla Nacional member and expelled him to El Salvador to be detained at Cecot, an acronym whose full name in Spanish means “the terrorism confinement center”. That other Ranfla leader, Cesar Humberto López-Larios, was facing similar charges in New York and also reportedly had insight about the deal Bukele previously struck with the gang.“This is collusion between two governments, the US and El Salvador, to cover up a gang pact by dropping charges on known gangsters in order to disappear them before they can testify,” said political science professor Michael Ahn Paarlberg at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s a criminal conspiracy between the Trump and Bukele administrations.“The irony is both of them claim to be tough on crime.”According to a justice department indictment, in 2019, the MS-13 leadership forged a pact with top Bukele administration officials. El Faro, a Salvadoran news organization, first reported on secretive meetings during which Bukele officials would enter prisons in El Salvador to negotiate directly with the Ranfla leaders.As part of the deal, MS-13 would receive certain money- and land-related concessions while agreeing to reduce the amount of violence they inflicted in El Salvador. Additionally, some top MS-13 leaders were released from prison – and the gang promised to leverage its networks to support Bukele’s political party in the 2021 legislative elections, according to prosecutors.The pact purportedly collapsed in 2022, leading Bukele to engage in a massive offensive against gangs in the country. Critics say that so-called state of exception crackdown led to a trampling of due process and human rights in the Central American nation – while also allowing Bukele to further consolidate power there.For years, Bukele has attempted to suppress any evidence of his ties to MS-13 by either attempting to recapture Ranfla leaders or by ignoring US extradition requests.US federal law enforcement agencies have long pursued MS-13’s criminal networks. In 2020 and in 2022, two separate federal indictments in New York charging 27 leaders of the gang were handed up and unsealed.In 2021, the US treasury department sanctioned two top Bukele officials for their alleged “corruption”, saying they engaged in “covert negotiations between government officials and the criminal organization” in order to secure the secret pact with MS-13. The treasury department also alleged that Bukele’s administration in 2020 provided financial incentives to MS-13 to reduce gang violence in exchange for “political support”.Arevalo-Chavez, one of the co-defendants in the 2022 indictment, had “participated in negotiations with the government of El Salvador on behalf of MS-13”, said the justice department, then controlled by Joe Biden’s presidential administration. Arevalo-Chavez left El Salvador and went to Mexico, where he helped run the gang’s operations there.The Mexican government arrested Arevalo-Chavez in February 2023 and quickly transferred him to the US, where the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) took custody. He is in custody in a federal detention facility while his case proceeds.Relations between El Salvador and the US have improved since Trump took office. In 2021, tensions between Biden officials and the Bukele government flared when, despite an international arrest warrant and extradition request, Salvadoran officials quietly released Ranfla Nacional leader Elmer Canales-Rivera from prison. US prosecutors alleged in a 2023 letter that he was personally escorted out of prison by a high-level Bukele official, given a firearm and driven to the Guatemalan border for his escape.The Bukele administration then attempted to recapture Canales-Rivera. According to reporting from El Faro, Bukele’s government discussed a plan to pay a Mexican cartel to find Canales-Rivera and return him to El Salvador. The Mexican government found him first, arrested him, and expelled him to the US in November 2023.Eight Ranfla Nacional leaders remained in US custody after López-Larios one was expelled in March. Two of them pleaded guilty earlier this year. More

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      Judge blocks Trump executive order targeting law firm linked to Robert Mueller – US politics live

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      A US judge on Friday overturned a Trump executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a big law firm that employed a lawyer who investigated him.Trump’s executive order, called Addressing Risks from Jenner & Block, suspended security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and restricted their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.Trump accused the law firm of engaging in activities that “undermine justice and the interests of the United States”, claiming that it participated in politically driven legal actions. In the executive order, Trump specifically criticized the firm for hiring Andrew Weissmann, an attorney who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations of Russian influence in Trump’s 2016 campaign.The firm sued to block Trump’s order, arguing it violated the constitution’s first and fifth amendments.A US district judge ruled on Friday that Trump’s directive violated core rights under the US constitution, mirroring a 2 May ruling that struck down a similar executive order against law firm Perkins Coie.Apart from Jenner and Perkins Coie, two other firms – WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey – have sued the Trump administration to permanently block executive orders he issued against them.The US departments of state and treasury acted on Friday to lift sanctions on Syria, following Donald Trump’s meeting with the new Syrian leader, the former Islamist rebel Ahmad al-Sharaa, last week in Saudi Arabia.A statement from the treasury explained that the Office of Foreign Assets Control had issued a license “to provide immediate sanctions relief for Syria” which “ authorizes transactions prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations, effectively lifting sanctions on Syria”.The state department also issued a waiver required by the 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act to suspend sanctions. “This is just one part of a broader U.S. government effort to remove the full architecture of sanctions imposed on Syria due to the abuses of the Bashar al-Assad regime”, the treasury said.The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the authorizations would “encourage new investment into Syria. Syria must also continue to work towards becoming a stable country that is at peace”.The administration did not say how long it would waive the congressional sanctions, but the law limits any presidential waiver to six months.For more permanent relief, administration officials are debating the extent to which Syria’s transitional government should be required to meet tough conditions.After meeting Sharaa, Trump told reporters that he was impressed with the former commander of al Qaeda’s franchise in the Syrian civil war. Sharaa, he said, was a “young, attractive guy; tough guy, you know. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”A US federal judge did not mince words when calling a Trump executive order unconstitutional, which sought to target Jenner & Block, a big law firm.According to the judge, the Trump administration went after the law firm because of the causes it champions, the clients it represents and a lawyer the firm once employed.“Going after law firms in this way is doubly violative of the Constitution,” US District Judge John D Bates said in a ruling on Friday.Trump signed an executive order in March, targeting Jenner & Block by suspending security clearances and restricting their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work. This was, Trump claimed, because of politically motivated “lawfare” the firm engaged in.By attempting to push forward this executive order, Trump attempted to “chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the Executive Branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers”.Bates added that the Trump executive orders against law firms “follow the same recipe: other than personalized touches in their first sections, they generally direct the same adverse actions towards each firm and decry the threat each firm poses to national security and the national interest.”Bates was appointed to the District of Columbia in 2001 by President George W Bush. He blocked Trump’s executive order completely.A US judge on Friday overturned a Trump executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a big law firm that employed a lawyer who investigated him.Trump’s executive order, called Addressing Risks from Jenner & Block, suspended security clearances for the firm’s lawyers and restricted their access to government buildings, officials and federal contracting work.Trump accused the law firm of engaging in activities that “undermine justice and the interests of the United States”, claiming that it participated in politically driven legal actions. In the executive order, Trump specifically criticized the firm for hiring Andrew Weissmann, an attorney who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations of Russian influence in Trump’s 2016 campaign.The firm sued to block Trump’s order, arguing it violated the constitution’s first and fifth amendments.A US district judge ruled on Friday that Trump’s directive violated core rights under the US constitution, mirroring a 2 May ruling that struck down a similar executive order against law firm Perkins Coie.Apart from Jenner and Perkins Coie, two other firms – WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey – have sued the Trump administration to permanently block executive orders he issued against them.Cases of measles, a viral infection that was considered eliminated from the US since 2000, have climbed slightly to 1,046.There have been 22 new cases in the past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, a small increase that signals outbreaks are slowing down.Ten of those cases came from Texas. Other states with active measles outbreaks include Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Indiana said its state’s outbreak was over.Two young children and an adult have died from measles-related illnesses this year, the AP reports. The virus that causes measles is airborne and highly contagious, although preventable through vaccines.Here are the key takeaways from Harvard’s legal battle over the Trump administration’s international student ban, from my colleague Anna Betts.Some of Harvard’s sports teams would be virtually wiped out by the Trump administration’s move to make the Ivy League school with the nation’s largest athletic program ineligible for international student visas.Harvard’s 42 varsity sports teams are the most in the nation, and Sportico reported last month that 21% of the players on the school’s rosters for the 2024-25 seasons – or 196 out of 919 athletes – had international home towns. The site noted that some could be US citizens or green card holders who wouldn’t need one of the international visas at issue in the Trump administration’s escalating fight with the university.Seven of the eight rowers on the men’s heavyweight crew team that just won the Eastern Sprints title – and is headed to the national championships – list international home towns on the school’s website. Mick Thompson, the leading scorer last season, and Jack Bar, who was a captain, are among a handful of Canadians on the men’s hockey roster; 10 of the 13 members of the men’s squash team and more than half of the women’s soccer and golf rosters also list foreign home towns.The supreme court temporarily paused judicial orders requiring the so-called “department of government efficiency”, established by Donald Trump and spearheaded by his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, to turn over records and answer questions in the coming days and weeks concerning its operations.The court put on hold Washington-based US district judge Christopher Cooper’s orders for Doge to respond to a government watchdog group’s requests for information after finding that Doge is probably a government agency covered by the federal Freedom of Information Act.The supreme court’s action, called an administrative stay, gives it additional time to consider the justice department’s formal request to block Cooper’s order while litigation proceeds in a lower court.This morning a federal judge in Boston swiftly blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to revoke Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, mere hours after the university sued the DHS. In its lawsuit Harvard condemned the administration for unconstitutional retaliation over its refusal to surrender to the White House’s political demands. It said the government’s move would “erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body”, force it to retract admissions for thousands of people, and has already thrown “countless” academic programs, clinics, courses and research laboratories into disarray. “Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the university wrote in its legal complaint.Harvard’s president Alan Garber wrote in a letter to the university’s community:
      The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body.
      We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action. It imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities across the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.
      US district judge Allison Burroughs granted the university’s request for an immediate temporary restraining order, which she said was necessary because Harvard had “made a sufficient showing … that, unless its motion for a temporary restraining order … is granted, it will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties”. She has set a hearing for 29 May to consider the administration’s actions.Trump doubled down earlier, telling reporters that “Harvard’s going to have to change its ways” and said he was also “looking at a lot of things” when asked if his administration was looking at stopping other universities besides from taking in foreign students. Before Burroughs’s ruling, a White House spokesperson had also earlier dismissed Harvard’s lawsuit as “frivolous”.While there are now two weeks of reprieve, there were reports of Chinese students at Harvard cancelling flights home today and seeking legal advice on staying in the United States as the Trump administration continues to wage war on the Ivy League university – and others – and amid years of tensions between the two countries. Per the New York Times (paywall), Trump’s attacks on elite institutions like Harvard have the potential to “reshape the broader relationship between [the US and China] by cutting off one of the few remaining reasons that people in China still admire the United States”.

      The Trump administration accused Columbia University of violating the civil rights of Jewish students by “acting with deliberate indifference” toward what it described as a “hostile environment” for Jewish students on campus.

      Trump ordered the nation’s independent nuclear regulatory commission to narrow regulations and expedite new licenses for reactors and power plants, seeking to shrink a multi-year process down to 18 months. The requirement was part of a batch of executive orders signed by Trump earlier today aiming to boost US nuclear energy production amid a boom in demand from data centers and AI.

      Vice-president JD Vance said that the US under Trump will choose carefully when to use military force and will avoid involvement in open-ended conflicts in a speech that signalled a huge shift in 21st-century US foreign policy.

      Trump said that a 25% tariff he said he will impose on Apple will also apply to Samsung and other smartphone makers who don’t make their products in the United States. “When they build their plant here, there’s no tariffs,” he said.

      Trump said he’s not looking for a trade deal with the EU – which he announced earlier today will be slapped with 50% tariffs from 1 June – but said he’d be open to talking about a delay if companies were willing to build their plants in the US.

      US special envoy Steve Witkoff held more than two hours of talks with an Iranian delegation in Rome today about Tehran’s nuclear program and agreed to meet again in the near future, a senior US official said.
      US special envoy Steve Witkoff held more than two hours of talks with an Iranian delegation in Rome today about Tehran’s nuclear program and agreed to meet again in the near future, a senior US official said.“The talks continue to be constructive – we made further progress, but there is still work to be done. Both sides agreed to meet again in the near future. We are grateful to our Omani partners for their continued facilitation,” the official said.Trump says he’s not looking for a trade deal with the EU – who he announced earlier today will be slapped with 50% tariffs from 1 June.He says the EU is “too slow-moving” and “if they build their plants [in the US] then they have no tariff at all”.
      I’m not looking for a deal. We’ve set the deal, it’s at 50%. But there’s no tariff if they build their plant here … If somebody wants to build a plant here I can talk to them about a little bit of a delay, while they’re building their plant, which is something that might be appropriate, maybe.
      Trump says that a 25% tariff he said he will impose on Apple will also apply to Samsung and other smartphone makers.“Or it would not be fair,” he says, adding that the White House will “appropriately have that done by the end of June”.“When they build their plant here, there’s no tariffs. So they’re going to be building plants here,” he says.When Trump first announced the tariff Friday morning, he targeted Apple CEO Tim Cook, who said recently that the company was shoring up manufacturing in India.“I said that’s okay to go to India, but not going to sell into here without tariffs,” Trump says.Trump says his administration “will do something very soon” to make it possible for people to come to the US and “have a road towards” citizenship.Following the signing of those executive orderes, Trump has been taking questions from the media.Asked by a reporter if his administration was looking at stopping other universities besides Harvard from taking in foreign students, Trump said:
      We’re taking a look at a lot of things.
      Citing the “billions of dollars” Harvard receives, Trump adds:
      Harvard’s going to have to change its ways.
      Here’s the clip of JD Vance saying the Trump administration has “reversed course” on US foreign policy, affirming that there will be “no more undefined missions, no more open-ended conflicts”.Donald Trump has ordered the nation’s independent nuclear regulatory commission to narrow regulations and expedite new licenses for reactors and power plants, seeking to shrink a multi-year process down to 18 months, Reuters reports.The requirement was part of a batch of executive orders signed by Trump just now aiming to boost US nuclear energy production amid a boom in demand from data centers and AI.Licensing for reactors in the US can take over a decade at times, a process designed to prioritize nuclear safety but which has discouraged new projects.“With these actions, President Trump is telling the world that America will build again, and the American nuclear renaissance can begin,” said Michael Kratsios, director of the White House office of science and technology policy.The moves include a substantial overhaul of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that includes looking at staffing levels and directing the energy and defense departments to work together to build nuclear plants on federal lands, a senior White House official said.The administration envisions the Department of Defense taking a prominent role in ordering reactors and installing them on military bases.The orders also seek to reinvigorate uranium production and enrichment in the United States, the senior White House official said.Trump declared a national energy emergency in January as one of his first acts in office, saying the US had inadequate supplies of electricity to meet the country’s growing needs, particularly for data centers that run artificial intelligence systems.Most of Trump’s actions have focused on boosting fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, but administration officials also support nuclear power, which in recent years has attracted growing bipartisan support.I spoke too soon. Reuters is reporting that Donald Trump is making the nuclear announcement now and signing his executive orders.His secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, said there will be four orders signed.Executive orders were on Donald Trump’s schedule for 1pm ET today. It’s obviously now way past that time but, as you may know, Trump often runs a tad late to these things. He has also been unusually quiet on Truth Social for the past six hours … so I’ll bring you the latest on what’s happening with the orders when we know more.Earlier, Reuters reported that as early as today Trump was due to sign executive orders meant to accelerate nuclear energy development. Trump is expected to streamline the regulatory process for new reactor approvals and enhance fuel supply chains, the news agency reported citing four sources familiar with the matter. The report saw shares of nuclear power companies surge. More

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

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

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

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

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

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