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      Trump invokes 18th-century wartime act to deport five Venezuelans

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      Donald Trump has invoked the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport five Venezuelan nationals from the US.In a presidential proclamation issued on Saturday, the White House said: “Tren de Aragua (TdA) is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization with thousands of members, many of whom have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”The invocation of the wartime act comes just hours after a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s administration from using the 1798 Act to carry out its intended deportations of the Venezuelans.On Saturday, US district judge James Boasberg of the federal district court in Washington DC agreed to issue temporary restraining order that prevents the Venezuelans’ deportation for 14 days.“Given the exigent circumstances that it [the court] has been made aware of this morning, it has determined that an immediate Order is warranted to maintain the status quo until a hearing can be set,” Boasberg wrote in his order.Boasberg’s decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed the same day by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward. The organizations charge that the Trump administration unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act.In the lawsuit, ACLU and Democracy Forward argue the act has been invoked only three times in the history of the US: the war of 1812, first world war and second world war.“It cannot be used here against nationals of a country – Venezuela – with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States and which has not launched a predatory incursion into the United States,” the lawsuit stated.“The government’s proclamation would allow agents to immediately put noncitizens on planes without any review of any aspect of the determination that they are alien enemies,” the lawsuit added.A remote hearing has been scheduled for today at 5pm before Boasberg. Both ACLU and Democracy Forward will ask that the temporary restraining order be broadened to everyone in danger of removal under the act, the civil liberties organizations said.The president had previously ordered his administration to designate Venezuela’s Tren De Aragua gang as a foreign terrorist organization.With Trump characterizing the gang as a foreign force that is invading the US, civil liberties organizations such as the ACLU fear that Trump may invoke the 1798 act “unlawfully during peacetime to accelerate mass deportations, sidestepping the limits of this wartime authority and the procedures and protections in immigration law.”The invocation is expected to face legal challenges almost immediately. The 227-year-old law is designed to primarily be used in wartime, and only Congress has the authority to declare a war. But the president does have the discretion to invoke the law to defend against a “threatened or ongoing invasion or predatory incursion”, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan authority on law and policy.“This law shouldn’t be invoked because migration is not an invasion, and we’re not in a war time,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, the deputy director of federal advocacy for United We Dream, an immigrant rights organization. “It’s extremely horrifying that we, as immigrants, are being labeled as terrorists, as invaders.”Those subject to the Alien Enemies Act could be deported without a court hearing or asylum interview, and their cases would be governed by wartime authority rather than by immigration law.The Alien Enemies Act specifically allows the president to detain, relocate, or deport immigrants based on their country of ancestry – and crucially covers not only citizens of hostile nations but also “natives”, which could include people who may have renounced their foreign citizenship and sought legal residency in the US.The centuries-old law was also used to arrest more than 31,000 people – mostly people of Japanese, German and Italian ancestry – as “alien enemies” during the second world war, and played a role in the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war.Trump has been building his case for invoking the act for years by characterizing the influx of migrants at the southern border as an “invasion”. He also previewed his invocation in an executive order on his inauguration day, directing the secretaries of state to plan by preparing facilities “necessary to expedite the removal” of those subject to the act.“By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to US soil, including our cities and inner cities,” he said in his inaugural address.Though anti-immigrant politicians and groups have long advocated for the use of the act in response to unlawful border crossings, Macedo do Nascimento said a number of executive orders and congressional policies have already broadened the federal government’s authorities to detain and deport immigrants.“There are already laws that allow for mass detention. There are already laws, like the Laiken Riley Act, that would broaden the dragnet of people who can be detained,” Macedo do Nascimento said. “So the idea of him invoking the Alien Enemies Act feels kind of needless. To me, it is really about building the narrative to label immigrants as terrorists.” More

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      Ukraine ceasefire plans moving to operational phase, Starmer says

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      Keir Starmer has called for the “guns to fall silent in Ukraine” and said military powers will meet next week as plans to secure a peace deal move to an “operational phase”.The UK prime minister said Vladimir Putin’s “yes, but” approach to a proposed ceasefire was not good enough, and the Russian president would have to negotiate “sooner or later”.He accused Putin of trying to delay peace, and said it must become a reality after more than three years of war.Starmer was speaking at a press conference in Downing Street after a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, including the European Commission, European nations, Nato, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand on Saturday morning.The meeting was addressed by Starmer, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte.Starmer told journalists: “Sooner or later Putin will have to come to the table. So this is the moment. Let the guns fall silent, let the barbaric attacks on Ukraine once and for all stop, and agree to a ceasefire now.”He added: “Now is the time to engage in discussion on a mechanism to manage and monitor a full ceasefire, and agree to serious negotiations towards not just a pause, but a lasting peace, backed by strong security arrangements through our coalition of the willing.”He said the meeting had led to “new commitments”, including on the wider defence and security of Europe.“We won’t sit back and wait for Putin to act,” he said. “Instead we will keep pushing forward, so the group I convened today is more important than ever.”He added: “We agreed we will keep increasing the pressure on Russia, keep the military aid flowing to Ukraine, and keep tightening the restrictions on Russia’s economy to weaken Putin’s war machine and bring him to the table.“And we agreed to accelerate our practical work to support a potential deal. So we will now move into an operational phase.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf the military meeting on Thursday, he said it would lead to “strong and robust plans … to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security”.Starmer had earlier called Ukraine and Zelenskyy the “party of peace”.He said Donald Trump was “absolutely committed to the lasting peace that is needed in Ukraine, and everything he’s doing is geared towards that end”.He told journalists Europe needed to improve its own defence and security, and said the UK was talking to the US on a daily basis about the war.Kyiv has already accepted plans for an immediate 30-day ceasefire but, on Thursday, Putin set out sweeping conditions that he wanted to be met before Russia would agree. They include a guarantee that Ukraine would not rearm or mobilise during the truce.Starmer said: “Volodymyr had committed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, but Putin is trying to delay, saying there must be a painstaking study before a ceasefire can take place. Well the world needs action, not a study, not empty words and conditions.”On Saturday, Zelenskyy posted on X that Russian forces were building up along the eastern border of Ukraine, which could signal an attack on the Sumy region.He said: “The buildup of Russian forces indicates that Moscow intends to keep ignoring diplomacy. It is clear that Russia is prolonging the war.”The Ukrainian president said his forces were still fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, and were not facing an encirclement, despite claims by his Russian and US counterparts.Starmer said: “President Trump has offered Putin the way forward to a lasting peace. Now we must make this a reality. So this is the moment to keep driving towards the outcome that we want to see, to end the killing, a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, and lasting security for all of us.” More

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      US official heading Ukraine peace plan has history of empathizing with Russia

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      A retired US general charged with helping sell the Trump administration’s Ukraine peace plan wrote a string of op-eds and reports for a rightwing thinktank in which he repeatedly questioned whether Ukraine had a legitimate part to play in peace negotiations.Keith Kellogg also blamed the war on the machinations of a US “military-industrial complex” and “[Joe] Biden’s national security incompetence” rather than Russia’s 2022 invasion, which has been condemned across the globe and resulted in a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.Kellogg has been seen as a hawk on Russia, but he also wrote that “the US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia”. Earlier this month, after a disastrous Washington DC meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on 28 February, US aid to Ukraine was paused, as was intelligence sharing.Kellogg is also surrounded by some key staff who share a rightwing nationalist world view or have links to far-right populist figures.After spending the Biden years at the rightwing and Trumpist America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Kellogg took at least two young AFPI staffers with him to assist him as Trump’s presidential special envoy to Russia and Ukraine.One, Gloria McDonald, is a senior policy adviser to Kellogg after co-authoring several of his AFPI publications, according to her LinkedIn profile. McDonald’s résumé contains no foreign policy experience besides her AFPI policy analyst work and two short Trump-era internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, with her second four-month stint coming after Donald Trump fired then ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.Another ex-AFPI staffer, Zach Bauder, is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to a LinkedIn profile reviewed by the Guardian. He was also a field operative for the chaotic 2022 congressional campaign of the far-right Republican Joe Kent, now Trump’s pick for the National Counterterrorism Center chief.The Guardian sought to confirm their appointments with the state department. In response, a state department spokesperson wrote that they do not comment on personnel. Emails were also sent to Bauder and McDonald’s presumed state department email addresses requesting comment.Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) documents show that another Kent operative, Matt Braynard, approached Bauder while acting as a lobbyist for the Japanese rightwing populist party Sanseitō, whose leader’s “conspiracist, anti-globalist worldview” has included promoting antisemitic and pro-Russian positions.Braynard’s Fara declaration says that Bauder shared his “interest in meeting with organization leadership”.The revelations about the special envoy’s pro-Russia writings and the far-right connections of his staff come at a time when the Trump administration has been accused of seeking to hand Russia victory in its war at the expense of Ukraine and other European allies, and when the employment of young, ideological staffers across government agencies has drawn scrutiny.However, over the last week Russia has reportedly criticized Kellogg and he was recently excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after Moscow said it didn’t want him involved, NBC News reported. Kellogg was absent from two recent diplomatic summits about the war in Saudi Arabia even though the talks came under his remit.Kellogg’s op-edsKellogg retired from the US army in 2003 as a lieutenant general. He was a prominent figure in the national security hierarchy of the first Trump administration. In 2017 he was the acting national security adviser in the wake of the departure of Michael Flynn. He was chief of staff for the national security council from Trump’s inauguration until April 2018, and then replaced HR McMaster as the national security adviser, a position he held until the inauguration of Joe Biden.From 2021 until his recall into the second Trump administration, Kellogg became the chair of the Center for a New American Security at AFPI, a rightwing thinktank founded after Trump’s defeat by prominent figures in his first administration including the policy adviser Brooke Rollins and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.Described as a “White House in waiting” for Trump’s second term, AFPI has supplied at least 11 Trump cabinet secretaries and agency heads, reportedly more than any other organization.Senior Trump appointments with AFPI ties include the FBI director, Kash Patel, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, and the attorney general, Pam Bondi.At AFPI, Kellogg articulated what he called an “America first” foreign policy. Since 2022, that took the form of increasingly strident criticism of US efforts to assist in the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.Before the Russian invasion had even commenced, Kellogg wrote that “Ukraine is primarily a European issue to solve”, and empathized with Russia’s point of view: “To Russia, the issue of Ukraine is deeper and more personal. To Russia, it is about their security.”Before the invasion, he urged that Ukraine be “armed to the teeth” as a deterrent, but opposed “a no-fly zone and other ways to engage American military forces in the Ukraine conflict”.After the invasion, Kellogg increasingly reserved his criticisms for the Biden administration, Nato allies and Ukraine, with sympathy withheld from all except Putin and Russia.In June 2022, in a statement co-written with Fred Fleitz, Kellogg wrote of Biden’s announcement of $1.2bn in aid to Ukraine: “This newest call for additional aid is a nonstarter and is not in the best interest of the American people.”View image in fullscreenHis turn against the administration and US allies was most evident from late 2023, including in reports and opinion articles Kellogg wrote with McDonald, then a senior policy analyst at AFPI.McDonald was given the AFPI role with scant previous experience, according to her biography at AFPI’s website, her LinkedIn profile, and information from public records and data brokers.In 2018 and 2019, McDonald did summer internships at the US embassy in Kyiv, per her LinkedIn page. In 2017, she did another internship with a Republican congressman, Dave Brat. Her time at AFPI is the only full-time work experience she takes into her apparent appointment as Kellogg’s most senior adviser in his efforts to implement Trump’s mooted peace deal.In one co-written report, the pair argue that the best course of action for the US is to concede any possibility of Ukraine’s membership in Nato in advance of peace negotiations.“In the case of granting Ukraine NATO membership,” they write, “the US eliminates the very incentive that would bring Russia to the negotiating table. By taking this issue off the table in the near term, however, the US offers an incentive for Russia to join peace talks and agree to an end-state.”They also specifically criticize the Biden administration’s guarantee that Ukraine would be involved in any negotiations.“The Biden Administration’s policy of ‘nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine’ and arming Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ has, therefore, only served to remove the urgency of reaching a negotiated end-state to the war.”They further recommend withholding arms from Ukraine in order to force it to the negotiating table: “The US should consider leveraging its military aid to Ukraine to make it contingent on Ukrainian officials agreeing to join peace talks with Russia to negotiate an end state to this conflict.”In a co-written opinion article for the rightwing Washington Times website in December 2023, the pair focused on a recent Zelenskyy visit to the US that included meetings with defense contractors.The pair claimed that this was evidence “our national security policy is being unduly influenced by the interests of the military-industrial complex.”In the piece, they elaborate on this conspiracy narrative about Ukraine and the military-industrial complex: “The US withdrawal from Afghanistan significantly reduced defense contractors’ profits,” they write, adding that “the proxy war in Ukraine, however, not only reignited these defense contracting revenue but also spurred global military spending, which was raised to a historic $2.24 trillion after Russia invaded.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an April 2024 AFPI report written with Fleitz, Kellogg placed the blame for the war largely on Biden, suggesting that his attitude towards Russia was provocative.“Biden’s hostile policy toward Russia not only needlessly made it an enemy of the United States,” they wrote, “but it also drove Russia into the arms of China and led to the development of a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis.”They wrote: “It was in America’s best interests to maintain peace with Putin and not provoke and alienate him with aggressive globalist human rights and pro-democracy campaigns or an effort to promote Ukrainian membership in NATO.”They also wrote that Putin’s sabre-rattling at the beginning of 2022 should have induced the US to make a deal, writing: “It was in America’s interest to make a deal with Putin on Ukraine joining NATO, especially by January 2022 when there were signs that a Russian invasion was imminent.”They describe ongoing support of the Ukraine war effort as “expensive virtue signaling and not a constructive policy to promote peace and global stability”.Kellogg and Fleitz appear to recommend that Russia be allowed to keep any territorial gains, arguing that the US should “continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement”.Again, Kellogg signs off on excluding Ukraine from EU membership, writing: “President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal”.Zach Bauder’s roleAlong with Kellogg and McDonald, the policy adviser, another staffer, Bauder, has come via the AFPI pipeline.And although Bauder has less apparent experience in foreign affairs than even McDonald, he does have international connections that appear related to his 2022 field work for a far-right candidate’s congressional campaign.Bauder – who only graduated from rightwing Hillsdale College last year – is employed as a special assistant to Kellogg, according to his LinkedIn page.Besides internships at AFPI and the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, Bauder’s only work experience besides working as an operations coordinator at AFPI in 2023 was field organizing for the failed 2022 congressional campaign of Kent.The Guardian has previously reported on Kent’s far-right political positions and unanswered questions about his campaign finances and employment.Daily Beast reporting in January 2024 implicated Braynard, a “former top aide” of Kent’s who had “white nationalist ties” in campaign finance issues. A significant proportion of 2022 campaign disbursements went to a company belonging to Braynard’s wife.After being connected with Bauder on Kent’s campaign, Braynard apparently tapped the relationship in his lobbying work for Sanseitō, the far-right populist party in Japan.Fara rules require lobbyists for foreign entities to lodge declarations that specify not only who they are working for, and how much they are paying, but who they make contact with in the course of pursuing their client’s aims.A September 2024 Fara filing from Braynard indicates that he had worked as a paid lobbyist for Sanseitō.Rob Fahey is an assistant professor in the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Shinjuku, Japan, who has written some of the scarce English language research on the far-right party.In a telephone conversation, he said the party had grown out of “the anti-vaccine, anti-masking social movement” touched off in Japan by the Covid-19 pandemic. He said that party members were “terminally online, and they are very, very deeply involved in the conspiracy framework that is a core part of the Maga movement as well”.Fahey said Sanseitō was part of the “new conspiratorial hard right in Japan” whose “media diet comes from the American conspiratorial ecosystem”.Fahey added that Sanseitō largely “see the war in Ukraine as through the same lens as American conspiracy theorists: it’s Nato’s fault, and Nato is part of the new world order”.Braynard’s filing says that the aim of his lobbying for the group is for them to “win Japanese elections”.On Braynard’s account in the Fara declaration, “the principal, party leader Sohei Kamiya, had planned a trip to the US”.He continues: “The principal was interested in appearing on Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson’s podcast, so I texted the producers of those shows. I also contacted Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Foundation, and America First Policy Center to ask if they would be interested in meeting with the principal to discuss common, populist conservative policies.”In his list of the people he contacted, along with producers for Carlson and Bannon and a Heritage Foundation staffer, Braynard lists Bauder.The filing said he texted Bauder, described as “formerly and then again more recently staff of America First Policy Institute, but not employed by them at the time I contacted him”.Following the Oval Office meltdown with Zelenskyy, it has seemed that Trump himself has been calling the shots on a cooling relationship with Ukraine and the other western allies. But he apparently still has the support of his special envoy.This week, the Guardian reported that Kellogg told a Council on Foreign Relations meeting of the suspension of intelligence sharing that “they brought it on themselves, the Ukrainians,” and that it was a punishment akin to “hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose”. More

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      Republican Russophilia: how Trump Putin-ised a party of cold war hawks

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      In speech that ran for 100 minutes there was one moment when Donald Trump drew more applause from Democrats than Republicans. As the president told Congress last week how the US had sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, his political opponents clapped and unfurled a Ukrainian flag – while his own party sat in stony silence.It was a telling insight into Republicans’ transformation, in the space of a generation, from a party of cold war hawks to one of “America first” isolationists. Where Trump has led, many Republicans have obediently followed, all the way into the embrace of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – with huge implications for the global democratic order.“The reversal is dramatic and the willingness of the Republican party to go along with it continues to be breathtaking,” said Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind. “At least for a while it appeared that Republicans were still going to be supportive of Ukraine. But now that Trump has completely reversed our foreign policy there seems to be very little pushback.”Last month, Trump set up a peace process that began with the US and Russia’s top diplomats meeting in Saudi Arabia – with no seat at the table for Ukrainian officials. He branded Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a “dictator”, a term he has never applied to the authoritarian Putin.Along with Vice-President JD Vance, he berated Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, a spectacle that prompted the Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin to observe that Ronald Reagan, a Republican president who was an inveterate foe of Soviet aggression, “must be rolling over in his grave”. Trump suspended offensive cyber operations against Russia and paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine until it agreed to a 30-day ceasefire.The Oval Office shakedown shocked the world but there was strikingly little criticism from Republicans. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, sank into a couch and said nothing as the shouting raged around him. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had previously been supportive of Zelenskyy, even suggested that the Ukrainian president should resign.Speaking at a Center for American Progress thinktank event in Washington this week, Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama administration official, said: “What you fundamentally believe matters little if you’re acting against those beliefs.“It was astonishing to see Republican leaders who on a Monday were praising Zelenskyy and by the Tuesday were removing any reference to him from their websites. It’s an extraordinary thing to see people who used to be pretty serious on this issue, like Lindsey Graham, suddenly saying the things.”Meanwhile, other Russia hawks such as the former vice-president Mike Pence, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have been sidelined. Republicans who were not shy about countering Trump’s foreign policy ideas during his first term are now standing by him – in public at least.Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank and author of Reagan: His Life and Legend, said: “Absent Trump, I don’t think you would see this reorientation of the Republican party. Even with Trump a lot of Republicans, especially on Capitol Hill, are very uneasy about it and don’t like what Trump is doing but they’re afraid to speak out.”View image in fullscreenOthers suggest that loyalty to or fear of Trump may not be the only explanation. Younger Republicans are questioning the legitimacy of institutions such as Nato and the United Nations and following far-right influencers such as Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Putin in Russia last year and claimed that Moscow was “so much nicer than any city in my country”.Critics say Trump, Carlson and the “Make America great again” movement see in Russia an idealised version of white Christian nationalism, in contrast to the “woke” values of western Europe. Putin has mocked the US embassy for flying a rainbow flag and suggested that transgenderism is “on the verge of a crime against humanity”.From this perspective, the struggle is no longer capitalism against communism but rather woke against unwoke. In various speeches Putin has railed against the west’s “obsessive emphasis on race”, “modern cancel culture” and “reverse racism”. He said of the west: “They invented five or six genders: transformers, trans – you see, I do not even understand what it is.”All are familiar talking points from the Maga playbook. Indeed, last year, on the rightwing strategist Steven Bannon’s War Room podcast, the Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “Let’s talk about what this really is, Steve: this is a war against Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians; the Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that; they’re not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.”Bannon has made no secret of his desire to bring down the European Union and “globalist” forces. Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state under Barack Obama, draws a comparison with conservative “red” states and liberal “blue” states within the US. “Let’s make it real American tangible,” he said. “Russia is a red state and France and England and Nato – they’re blue states.”During the cold war, it was hardline anti-communism that was core to the Republican brand. Reagan branded the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and stepped up US military spending. But when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, relations improved.Reagan and Gorbachev held several summits that led to key arms control agreements. Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush, worked closely with Gorbachev and, later, Boris Yeltsin as the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, encouraging a transition to democracy and capitalism.View image in fullscreenEarly in Republican George W Bush’s presidency, he had a relatively positive relationship with Putin, memorably saying he had “looked into Putin’s soul” and found him trustworthy. The two cooperated on counter-terrorism following the 9/11 attacks but tensions grew over the Iraq war and US support for Georgia and Ukraine.By 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, relations had significantly deteriorated. Obama, a Democrat, initially pursued a “reset” policy with Russia, aiming to improve relations, but tensions resurfaced after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine. In response, Obama imposed sanctions on Russia and expelled diplomats.Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf, according to a later Senate intelligence committee report, which found extensive evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin officials and other Russians.Trump vehemently denied collusion even as his administration imposed sanctions on Russia. At a joint press conference in Helsinki in 2018, Trump sided with the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies. He has remained unwilling to criticise Putin, even after Russia invaded Ukraine and after the opposition activist Alexei Navalny died in prison.The Putin-isation of the Republican party should perhaps not be overstated. Older senators such as Mitch McConnell, who is retiring at the next election, Thom Tillis and Roger Wicker remain staunchly supportive of Ukraine.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “I push back against the idea that Republicans have become entranced with Putin because there’s not evidence for that. There is evidence that Republicans have become tired of the fight in Ukraine. These things are not the same.”However, the balance appears to be shifting as the cold war fades into memory. About 41% of Republicans view Russia as either “friendly” or an “ally”, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released earlier this month. And just 27% of Republicans agree with the statement that Trump is too close to Moscow, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.View image in fullscreenAdam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ armed services committee, told the Guardian of the “Make American great again” movement: “They have definitely shown a sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s autocratic, ‘traditional’ values, which are very troubling if you care about the problems of bigotry and discrimination. There is growing sympathy and the wing of the Republican party that’s against that is getting weaker while the other wing is getting stronger.”He added: “They believe that they’re going to promote ‘traditional values’ and they see Putin as an ideological ally in that. I still think it is a minority within the Republican party but Trump’s the president. He’s the leader of that party and they’re adhering to him. Trump has an enormous amount of sympathy for that worldview and more and more of them are drifting in that direction.”Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, said: “The Republican party during the cold war was anti-communist and from their standpoint, once communism disappeared, their major motive for opposing Russia did as well.“The fact that Russia is a rightwing autocracy doesn’t particularly trouble them. To the extent that Putin has refashioned himself as a traditionalist culture warrior, he’s actually making an affirmative appeal to what the Republican party has become.” More

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      Democrats help advance Republican funding bill to avoid US shutdown

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      A handful of Senate Democrats on Friday helped pave the way to approve a Republican-drafted bill that would fund the government and avert a shutdown ahead of the midnight deadline.In a 62-38 vote, 10 Senate Democrats joined nearly all Republicans to break the filibuster and move the seven-month funding bill to a final vote. As part of a deal to secure the Democratic votes, the parties agreed to allow a series of amendments on the measure.The result will deeply disappoint Democratic activists and House Democrats who had urged their Senate counterparts to block the bill that they fear would embolden Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s overhaul of the US government.The California Democratic representative and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi came out against the continuing resolution (CR) on Friday after the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, announced on Thursday he would urge Senate Democrats to advance the bill. Schumer argued that allowing a government shutdown would be “a far worse option” than passing the “deeply partisan” Republican legislation, but Pelosi called the bill a “devastating assault on the wellbeing of working-class families”.“Democratic senators should listen to the women,” she said in a statement. “Appropriations leaders Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray have eloquently presented the case that we must have a better choice: a four-week funding extension to keep government open and negotiate a bipartisan agreement. America has experienced a Trump shutdown before – but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also condemned Schumer for caving to Republican demands on a government funding bill, saying the move had created a “deep sense of outrage and betrayal” among Democrats.Speaking to reporters in Leesburg, Virginia, where House Democrats were gathered for their annual policy retreat, Ocasio-Cortez said she was mobilizing Democratic supporters to push Schumer to oppose what she characterized as an “acquiesce” to the GOP bill.“We have time to correct course on this decision. Senate Democrats can vote no,” the New York Democrat said.The rift has reportedly sparked such anger among House Democrats that some are encouraging Ocasio-Cortez to challenge Schumer in a primary election, according to CNN. When asked about these suggestions, she declined to comment.On Thursday, Schumer said on the Senate floor: “The Republican bill is a terrible option. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”Trump praised Schumer on Truth Social, writing: “Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing – Took ‘guts’ and courage!”Schumer reiterated his support for the spending bill on the Senate floor on Friday, warning that a government shutdown would mean that Trump, Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) would be free to make even more disruptive cuts to federal agencies.“If government were to shut down, Doge has a plan in place to exploit the crisis for maximum destruction,” Schumer said. “A shutdown will allow Doge to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and Doge the keys to the city, state and country. Donald Trump and Elon Musk would be free to destroy vital government services at a much faster rate than they can right now and over a much broader field of destruction that they would render.”But the Federal Unionists Network, a group of federal employees that opposes the administration’s campaign to dramatically downsize government, disagreed, saying the funding bill under consideration would make the situation worse.“Once again, Congress is failing in its responsibility to the American people,” spokesperson Chris Dols said in a statement. “If passed, this CR will give Trump and Musk the power to complete their assault on federal workers.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Senate majority leader, John Thune, a Republican, told reporters on Friday that he may allow some amendment votes on the spending bill, which could potentially offer a way to assuage Democrats’ concerns.The funding bill represents the first major leverage point in Trump’s second term, with House Democrats urging the Senate to instead consider a 30-day funding stopgap to allow more time for negotiations.Unlike the House vote, where all but one Democrat voted against the government funding bill, the response in the Senate is fractured. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, and the Kentucky senator Rand Paul is expected to vote against the bill. If that is the case, eight Democratic votes will be needed to send the bill to Trump’s desk.While facing intense pressure from within their party to resist Trump and his billionaire ally Musk, the Senate Democrats who are leaning yes are worried about the impacts of a government shutdown, and what bill they could get passed from their minority position anyway.The yes crowd includes the Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, who told MSNBC on Tuesday: “We don’t agree with what’s been sent to us but, you know, if we withhold our votes, that is going to shut the government down.”Still, Ocasio-Cortez particularly criticized Senate Democrats for even considering withdrawing support from a vote that nearly all battleground House Democrats were willing to take.“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people,” she said. “Just to see Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk, I think, is a huge slap in the face.” More

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      US rebuts Hamas’s ‘entirely impractical’ ceasefire demands

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      The Trump administration has accused Hamas of making “entirely impractical” demands and stalling on a deal to release a US-Israeli hostage in exchange for an extension of the Gaza ceasefire.“Hamas is making a very bad bet that time is on its side. It is not,” the office of Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and the US national security council said in a statement. “Hamas is well aware of the deadline, and should know that we will respond accordingly if that deadline passes,” it said, adding that Trump had already vowed Hamas would “pay a severe price” for not freeing hostages.A week ago Trump repeated a threat to destroy Hamas in a “last warning” to release the hostages, but it is unclear exactly to which of several potential deadlines the new statement referred.The US appears to have brushed aside an offer made earlier on Friday by the militant Islamist organisation to free Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American hostage who was abducted while serving as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces during Hamas’s surprise raid into Israel in October 2023, and the remains of four other Israeli-Americans who have died in captivity in Gaza.“Unfortunately, Hamas has chosen to respond by publicly claiming flexibility while privately making demands that are entirely impractical without a permanent ceasefire,” the statement added.The reaction from the US dashed any hopes of sudden progress in continuing indirect negotiations in Qatar over the fragile ceasefire in Gaza but will comes as a relief to the Israeli government.The initial phase of the ceasefire in the devastated territory came into effect in January but lapsed almost two weeks ago. In recent statements, Hamas has said it wants Israel to implement the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to definitively end the conflict.Israel has so far refused to move to the second phase, and is calling for an extension of several weeks to the first phase instead, leaving open the possibility of a new offensive in the months to come.Witkoff has presented a “bridge” proposal in Qatar to extend the first phase of the truce to mid-April if Hamas releases living hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.“Hamas was told in no uncertain terms that this ‘bridge’ would have to be implemented soon – and that dual US-Israeli citizen Edan Alexander would have to be released immediately,” the statement said.After the Hamas statement, Netanyahu’s office said Israel had “accepted the Witkoff outline and showed flexibility”, but said “Hamas is refusing and will not budge from its positions”.“At the same time, it continues to use manipulation and psychological warfare – the reports about Hamas’s willingness to release American hostages are intended to sabotage the negotiations,” the prime minister’s office said.It added that Netanyahu would convene his ministerial team on Saturday night to receive a detailed report from the negotiation team and “decide on the next steps for the release of hostages”.Netanyahu has consistently opposed any permanent end to the war in Gaza, in part due to domestic political considerations. However, the Israeli leader has made it clear that maintaining good relations with the White House is a priority.After more than 16 months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt, Washington recently opened a direct channel of talks with Hamas with the aim of freeing US citizens abducted by the organisation during its raid into Israel.Hamas abducted 251 hostages during its attack and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.In a social media post earlier this month, Donald Trump said there would be “hell to pay” if all the 58 hostages still in Gaza were not released. Fewer than half are thought to be still alive.In an attempt to pressure Hamas, Israel has cut off all supplies of goods to Gaza and on Sunday stopped any remaining electricity supplies from Israel to the territory.Almost the entire population of Gaza was displaced by Israel’s military offensive, which killed 48,500 people, mostly civilians, and reduced swaths of the territory to rubble.The six-week first phase of the ceasefire led to the exchange of 25 living Israeli hostages and the remains of eight others, in return for the release of about 1,800 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. It also allowed much-needed food, shelter and medical assistance to re-enter Gaza.Official reaction from the Israeli government to the news last week of direct talks between the US and Hamas was limited to a single terse statement by the office of Netanyahu acknowledging the negotiations, but the mass-market newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said Israel had been “stunned to discover that, behind its back, Trump’s envoy had flirted for weeks in Doha” with a senior Hamas official. More

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      Why is Donald Trump crashing the US economy? Because he’s high on his own supply of fake news | Jonathan Freedland

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      Not content with shattering the post-1945 international order, which delivered prosperity and power to his country for eight long decades, Donald Trump is seemingly set on destroying the US economy. And he’s doing it because he, and the American right, have lost their ability to grasp reality.Start with the economic vandalism, unfolding in real time and mesmerising to watch. For weeks, you could see the US stock market falling and falling until on Thursday the S&P index passed an unwanted milestone: it stood more than 10% down from the peak it had reached less than a month earlier, a fall that meets the Wall Street definition of a “correction”. In other words, even if the market eventually rallies, this is no blip.The talk now is of a recession and you can tell that Trump himself suspects it’s coming. “I hate to predict things like that,” he said this week. “There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America … It takes a little time.” Did you catch that? The great booster, who campaigned on a promise to turn things around “on day one”, is now adopting the lotus position, talking of “transition” and urging patience.The source of the trouble is not mysterious. It is Trump himself. His actions since taking office less than two months ago have spooked investors. They crave stability but see a president who governs by whim. Those whims can change hourly – imposing a tariff after breakfast only to drop it before lunch. One minute it’s a 50% levy on Canadian aluminium, the next it’s 200% on European wine, only for one or the other to be binned within hours. It keeps Trump in the news, which he loves, but plays havoc with companies that have to plan for the long term. Confronted by chaos, they prefer to wait to see where things settle. That means orders on hold, workers without work, less money in everyone’s pocket.Add in a wild-eyed guy with a chainsaw taking chunks out of a federal bureaucracy that provides services that, for all their Ayn Rand talk of a minimal state, business leaders rely on – whether it’s schools, roads or air traffic controllers to keep planes in the sky – and you can see why the only surging number on Wall Street right now is the one that measures pessimism.To be clear, it’s not just the manic style of Trump and Elon Musk that’s causing alarm. Even if imposed calmly, tariffs are a prosperity killer. Trump may be their biggest advocate, but it’s clear he doesn’t understand how they work. He speaks as if the people paying them will be hated foreigners, the likes of China or Canada forced to pay billions into US coffers. When, in fact, tariffs are a sales tax levied on US consumers who have to pay extra for imported goods. A tariff on foreign cars, say, is not paid by Germany but by an American who buys a BMW. It drives prices up for Americans. When other countries hit back with tariffs of their own, making US products harder to sell, you’re in a trade war that only makes everything worse.Hence the current dread of stagflation, the grim combination of zero growth and rising inflation. The word was born in the Jimmy Carter era, but the Trumpcession will have bonus features all its own. When I spoke to Heather Boushey, who served as an economic adviser to the Biden administration, for the latest Politics Weekly America podcast, she told me that Musk’s supremacy over so much of the federal government, even as he continues to run his own mega-businesses, is having one particular chilling effect. “Companies are looking at this and saying: ‘I can’t compete with an Elon Musk that’s in charge of the regulatory agencies, that’s going to do things only for himself.’ That’s going to stymie investment, it’s going to stymie innovation, and ultimately be terrible for the US economy.”View image in fullscreenBoushey adds that Trump’s US will be less able to weather a recession, because the Trump-Musk cuts are stripping away so much of the infrastructure of support, cutting a combined total of more than $1tn from the Medicaid and food stamps programmes alone. When the storm hits, families will go hungry.It’s bad for the country and bad for Trump politically: the people most dependent on soon-to-be gutted government help such as Medicare or Medicaid are Trump voters. As the impact of the cuts kicks in – national parks closed during the summer, delayed benefits for veterans, a deadly accident, for example, in an area previously safeguarded – many Americans could sour on the president who promised to make their lives better. Especially when they see him go ahead with his signature policy: a $4.5tn tax cut that will massively benefit the very richest.Why, then, is Trump pursuing a course of action that can only damage the country and dent his own standing? The explanation lies in the way Trump sees the world. Which is through a lens clouded by the very phenomenon he once did so much to identify: fake news.For most of the past decade, the focus has been on the likes of Trump and Musk as peddlers of falsehoods. There has been less attention paid to their role as consumers of lies. And yet it’s long been clear that Musk is spending too much time on X and is getting extremely high on his own supply. Witness his credulous swallowing of all kinds of far-right rubbish about Britain.Trump is scarcely any better, believing provable nonsense about Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s poll ratings being in the single digits, when in fact the Ukrainian leader’s numbers are much better than his, to pick just one instance of Trump putting aside the briefings he could have from the world’s best-resourced intelligence agencies and preferring to gobble up internet slop instead.It’s a function of Trump not shifting his core views in decades – he was banging on about tariffs in the 1980s – and being, as Zelenskyy memorably put it, “trapped” in a “disinformation bubble”. It consists of the team of sycophants that now envelops him – the “adults in the room” of the first term are long gone – and whose message is reinforced when he meets the press: note how many of the supposed reporters whom Trump encounters are, in fact, representatives from pro-Trump outlets so slavish they make Fox News look like Edward R Murrow.The result, says one longtime Trump watcher, is that “he’s more sheltered from outside information than he ever has been before”. Like Saddam Hussein in his bunker as US forces approach the palace, he is being told that tariffs made the US rich in the 19th century and will do so again, that Elon Musk is popular and that the people are grateful to their leader, even when the economy is nosediving. Inside the info-bubble, any contrary voice can be dismissed, even if it requires acrobatics to do it. Trump’s latest target is the Murdoch-owned, conservative Wall Street Journal, which dared point out the dangers of a trade war: Trump countered that the “globalist” WSJ was “owned by the polluted thinking of the European Union”. Inside the bubble, there is no room for truth: it must be kept out by lies.For now, and armed with the loudest megaphone on the planet, the US president can keep reality at bay. But eventually, Americans will be able to see with their own eyes and in their own lives what Trump has done to the US and the wider world. Their daily experience will expose him for what he is: a confidence trickster who has made them poorer and less safe. The only question is when.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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

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      Schumer decision to vote for Republican funding bill a ‘huge slap in the face’, says AOC – US politics live

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      The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has warned Congress has a funding shortfall of $2bn for this fiscal year, Axios reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter.The European Union has the resources to respond to president Donald Trump’s threats to levy more tariffs on the European Union, French central bank governor and European Central Bank (ECB) board member François Villeroy de Galhau said on Friday.According to Reuters, he added that he wanted to see the escalations in a possible spiraling trade war cease. Villeroy de Galhau added that Trump’s view of the economy is a “losing” view.The Trump administration has called on the Pentagon to provide military options to ensure the country has full access to the Panama canal, two US officials told Reuters on Thursday.Donald Trump has said repeatedly he wants to “take back” the Panama canal, which is located at the narrowest part of the isthmus between North and South America and is considered one of the world’s most strategically important waterways, but he has not offered specifics about how he would do so, or if military action might be required.One US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said a document, described as interim national security guidance by the new administration, asked the military to look at options to ensure “unfettered” access to the Panama canal.A second official said the US military had a wide array of potential options to guarantee access, including ensuring a close partnership with Panama’s military.The Pentagon last published a national defense strategy in 2022, laying out the priorities for the military. An interim document sets out broad policy guidance, much like Trump’s executive orders and public remarks, before a more considered policy document like a formal NDS.The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.BMW said it does not expect newly imposed US tariffs to remain in place until the end of the year, adding that if the situation changed, so would its outlook, reports Reuters.BMW forecast a 5-7% earnings margin for its automotive segment in 2025, but that calculation was based on the assumption that the tariffs imposed so far would remain in place until the end of the year, which the carmaker does not expect to be the case, executives Oliver Zipse and Walter Mertl said. “If the situation changes, we will need to adjust the outlook,” chief financial officer Mertl added.This week on the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Heather Boushey, an economist and former adviser to Joe Biden, about what Donald Trump’s long game is with his trade war, and how voters will view his handling of the economy should there be a “Trumpcession”. You can listen to the podcast at the link below:Here’s a little more on the comments to reporters by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. According to a post on X by Kadia Goba, political reporter at Semafor, Ocasio-Cortez said:
      There are members of Congress who have won Trump held districts in some of the most difficult territories in the United States; who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people … just to see some Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk. I think it is a huge slap in the face, and I think that there’s a wide sense of betrayal.”
      The Senate finds itself on Friday in a familiar position, working to avoid a partial government shutdown with just hours to spare as Democrats confront two painful options: allowing passage of a bill they believe gives president Donald Trump vast discretion on spending decisions or voting no and letting a funding lapse ensue.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gave members of his caucus days to vent their frustration about the options before them, but late on Thursday made clear he will not allow a government shutdown. His move gives Democrats room to side with Republicans and allow the continuing resolution, often described as a CR, to come up for a vote as soon as Friday, reports the Associated Press. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that Senator Chuck Schumer’s statement was “a huge slap in the face, and I think that there’s a wide sense of betrayal.”A procedural vote on Friday will provide a first test of whether the package has the 60 votes needed to advance, before final voting likely later in the day. At least eight Democrats will need to join with Republicans to move the funding package forward.“While the CR still is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer said.Senate majority leader John Thune and others used their floor time on Thursday to make the case that any blame for a shutdown would fall squarely on Democrats.Schumer said Trump would seize more power during a shutdown, because it would give the administration the ability to deem whole agencies, programmess and personnel non-essential, furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired.“A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country,” Schumer said.More on that in a moment, but first, here are some other key developments:

      Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, said that he will vote to allow the deeply partisan Republican spending bill become law because a government shutdown would do more harm.

      Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that Senator Chuck Schumer’s statement was “a huge slap in the face, and I think that there’s a wide sense of betrayal.”

      Stocks plunged again after Trump’s threat to impose a 200% tariff “on all wines, Champagnes, and alcoholic products” from European Union countries if the trading bloc makes good on its threat to retaliate for steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the US president by adding a 50% tariff on American products, including Kentucky bourbon.

      In a letter sent to the president of Columbia University and the co-chairs of its board of trustees on Thursday, the Trump administration’s antisemitism taskforce demanded nine specific changes to university policies and structures before negotiations over federal funding would begin.

      Columbia announced the same day it received the letter that it had complied with item one on the list of demands: expelling and suspending pro-Palestinian student protesters who occupied a campus building last year or took part in a Gaza Solidarity encampment.

      Representative Raúl Grijalva died after a long battle with cancer, his office announced on Thursday. His seat will remain vacant until at least September.

      In 1996 a federal judge found the legal provision now being used to target Mahmoud Khalil unconstitutional. She was Donald Trump’s sister.

      The Trump administration has appealed to the supreme court to uphold the president’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship.

      The US Postal Service will reduce its staff by 10,000 through early retirements, and has signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge) to streamline its operations, postmaster general Louis DeJoy announced. More