European papers express deep alarm at declaration of an ‘ideological war’, while the NYT says Putin may soon ‘realise his dream’
This year’s Munich security conference exposed the chasm in core values separating the Trump administration from most Europeans and sparked deep alarm at US efforts to control the Ukraine peace process and exclude European governments from it.
Here is what some of the main European and US newspapers had to say about it.
Continue reading...Demonstrations across the US against tycoon’s ties to Trump highlight potential risks to firm’s reputation and sales
Protesters gathered outside Tesla dealerships across the US on Saturday in response to Elon Musk’s efforts to shred government spending under the president, Donald Trump.
Groups of demonstrators up to 100-strong gathered outside the electric carmaker’s showrooms in cities including New York, Seattle, Kansas City and across California. Organisers said the protests took place in dozens of locations.
Continue reading...Republican Bill Cassidy calls state surgeon general’s halt to promotion of mass vaccination a disservice to parents
Bill Cassidy, the Republican US senator, has said his home state of Louisiana’s recent decision to cancel the promotion of mass vaccination against preventable diseases is a disservice to parents who want to keep their children healthy.
Nonetheless, before those remarks, the medical doctor-turned-politician who has clashed with Donald Trump joined 51 of his fellow Republicans in voting to confirm anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of the US’s health and human services department. Cassidy had also previously voted to advance Trump’s nomination of Kennedy as national health secretary from the committee level to the full Senate.
Continue reading...President has begun slashing federal workforce while hobbling labor watchdogs NLRB and EEOC
As a presidential candidate last fall, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to battle for US workers, but ever since he returned to the White House, he has taken a surprisingly large number of anti-worker actions, labor experts say. Some of those moves, among them hobbling the National Labor Relations Board, will help Trump’s billionaire business friends, most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
In his first few weeks back in office, Trump fired the acting chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), leaving the US’s top labor watchdog without a quorum to enforce laws that protect workers’ right to unionize. Trump has designated Musk, a vehemently anti-union billionaire, to launch an all-out war against the federal bureaucracy and workforce, and Trump and Musk have essentially treated the country’s 2 million-plus federal employees as if they were disposable.
Continue reading...Defense and tech firms – including Musk’s own – await potential contracts as Doge decimates US agencies
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has vowed to oversee a radical hollowing out of government agencies, asserting this week that some should be “deleted entirely” as he defunds public programs and lays off federal workers. While the immense cuts are framed as a means of removing waste, they may also become a boon to private companies – including Musk’s own businesses – that the government increasingly relies on for many of its key initiatives.
Musk and his allies in the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), the unofficial committee acting as the operations arm of his cost-cutting efforts, have targeted a range of major government departments. They have moved to close the United States Agency for International Development, slashed the Department of Education and taken over the General Services Administration that controls federal IT structures. Doge staffers have also gained access to the treasury department, as well as set their sights on the Department of Defense, energy department, Environmental Protection Agency and at least a dozen others.
Continue reading...As Donald Trump and his officials rip up three years of US rhetoric on supporting Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is walking an unenviable diplomatic tightrope
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had some tough weeks in the past three years, but this past one may be up there with the worst of them.
Back on Monday, in an hour-long interview with the Guardian at his Kyiv offices, the Ukrainian president was in a cautiously optimistic frame of mind. He said he had received “positive signals from the Americans” over upcoming negotiations. His team was working to fix a date for a meeting with Donald Trump, he said, and he was sure that the US president understood the importance of coordinating his position with Kyiv before talking to Russia.
Continue reading...Courts are currently backlogged with 3.7m cases as US president demands more deportations
The Trump administration fired 20 immigration judges without explanation, a union official said on Saturday amid sweeping moves to shrink the size of the federal government.
On Friday, 13 judges who had yet to be sworn in and five assistant chief immigration judges were dismissed without notice, said Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents federal workers. Two other judges were fired under similar circumstances in the last week.
Continue reading...Cuts to nuclear security workforce were made on Thursday – but agency can’t find workers to offer them their jobs back
The US agency charged with overseeing nuclear weapons is looking to contact workers who were fired on Thursday as part of the Trump administration’s federal cost-cutting measures, but are now needed back.
Officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) attempted to notify some probationary employees who had been let go that they are due to be reinstated – but they struggled to find them because their contact information was missing.
Continue reading...Agencies say Trump’s latest push to trim government could impede firefighting efforts and create crises at national parks
The US Forest Service is firing about 3,400 recent hires while the National Park Service is terminating about 1,000 workers under Donald Trump’s push to cut federal spending and bureaucracy, according to a report on Friday.
The terminations target employees who are in their probationary employment periods, which includes anyone hired less than a year ago, according to Reuters, and will affect sites such as the Appalachian trail, Yellowstone, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr and the Sequoia national forest.
Continue reading...US vice-president’s speech and meeting with Germany’s AfD chief signal administration’s wider plans for continent
The Trump administration is making a big bet on Europe’s hard right.
Speaking at a conference of Europe’s leaders in Munich on Friday, the US vice-president JD Vance stunned the room by delivering what amounted to a campaign speech against Germany’s sitting government just one week before an election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim AfD is set to take second place.
Continue reading...Worker groups condemn moves to fire thousands of probationary employees as CDC and housing department also announce staff cuts
Donald Trump’s campaign to dismantle USAid faced a setback in court last night, after a judge blocked efforts to freeze funding to the agency and gave his administration five days to comply. Here’s more on the development, from the Associated Press:
A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily lift a funding freeze that has shut down US humanitarian aid and development work around the world, and he has set a five-day deadline for the administration to prove it is complying.
The audit will also review the past two years of the system’s transactions as it relates to Musk’s assertion of ‘alleged fraudulent payments’, according to a letter from Loren J Sciurba, treasury’s deputy inspector general, that was obtained by the Associated Press.
The audit marks part of the broader effort led by Democratic lawmakers and federal employee unions to provide transparency and accountability about Doge’s activities under President Donald Trump’s Republican administration. The Musk team has pushed for access to the government’s computer systems and sought to remove tens of thousands of federal workers.
Continue reading...People from Afghanistan, Iran, China and other countries flown out as Trump’s deportation effort intensifies
The US has sent undocumented immigrants from several Asian countries whose governments have refused to accept them to Panama, in a move signalling an intensification of the Trump administration’s deportation effort.
A military plane carrying 119 immigrants from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Pakistan flew from California to Panama City on Wednesday in what was expected to be the first of three migrants flights to the country.
Continue reading...As many as 200,000 US workers slated to be affected by mass terminations as Musk leads crusade to slash spending
Some federal employees who have been laid off under the Trump administration’s unprecedented plan to slash the federal workforce were reportedly given only 30 minutes to pack their belongings and vacate federal offices.
Federal agencies were ordered by Donald Trump to fire mostly probationary staff, with as many as 200,000 workers set to be affected and some made to rush off the premises, the Washington Post reported. More layoffs are expected on Friday, Reuters reported, as thousands of employees have already been terminated and the purge is widening.
Continue reading...Experts’ concern grows as communication breaks down among federal agencies responsible for tackling epidemic
The Trump administration has disrupted the US response to bird flu as the outbreak worsens, leading to confusion and concern among federal staff, state officials, veterinarians and health experts, 11 sources told Reuters.
Since Donald Trump took office on 20 January, two federal agencies responsible for monitoring and responding to the epidemic have withheld bird flu reports and canceled congressional briefings and meetings with state health officials, the sources said.
Continue reading...Republican senator Lisa Murakowski introduces bill to require peak’s name kept on US maps, laws and regulations
The Alaska Republican US senator Lisa Murkowski has introduced legislation to officially rename North America’s tallest mountain as Denali, a counter to Donald Trump’s executive order to revert the peak’s name to Mount McKinley.
Murkowski’s bill, which was co-sponsored by her fellow Republican senator for Alaska, Dan Sullivan, would require the peak to be referred to as Denali on any US maps, laws and regulations.
Continue reading...Trump’s threat to take over Gaza is galvanizing two of the most dangerous and organized extremist movements
As Donald Trump continues to threaten to take control over the Gaza Strip, an unlikely consensus has emerged across hardcore jihadist and far-right circles: both strongly oppose any new US military actions in the territory.
Now experts are warning that Trump’s plan is galvanizing two of the most dangerous and organized extremist movements with track records of domestic terrorist attacks.
Continue reading...The US president does not care who controls east Ukraine, so long as he can access the rare earth minerals underneath
In Donald Trump’s world, everything has its price.
There is no place for sentiment in his politics. Common values cannot secure loans for military aid. And the US president does not care who controls the blood-soaked soils of east Ukraine, so long as he can access the rare earth minerals that lie beneath.
Continue reading...Issa Rae, Ben Folds and Shonda Rhimes among those who chose not to associate with the institution and president
Donald Trump’s takeover of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington has generated outcry from performers and members, with several stars pulling out of engagements or associations.
Trump purged the board of the arts foundation last week, clearing the group of appointees by Joe Biden. Stacked with Trump loyalists, the new board terminated the center’s president, Deborah Rutter, and installed Trump as chair. The board then named Richard Grenell, who served as ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, as interim president.
Continue reading...‘We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things,’ the US president said
Donald Trump said that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the US adversaries to cut their own spending.
Continue reading...Jewish creatives and activists also sign New York Times ad after US president’s proposal to ‘take over Gaza’
More than 350 rabbis, alongside additional signatories including Jewish creatives and activists, have signed an ad in the New York Times in which they condemn Donald Trump’s proposal for the effective ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
The ad, which was signed by rabbis including Sharon Brous, Roly Matalon and Alissa Wise, as well as Jewish creatives and activists including Tony Kushner, Ilana Glazer, Naomi Klein and Joaquin Phoenix, says: “Trump has called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza. Jewish people say no to ethnic cleansing!”
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