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\n The nation’s garbage incinerators are largely failing to eliminate Pfas “forever chemicals” air pollution, and are putting people in largely low-income neighborhoods at risk, public health advocates and independent experts warn.
\nThe powerful waste management industry is increasingly pushing incinerators as a solution to virtually indestructible Pfas waste, and a new industry trade group report alleges Minnesota’s incinerators are reducing their forever chemical emissions by 99.6%. Other incinerator operators have made similar reduction claims.
\nThe report also comes amid fights to shut down incinerators in Miami, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and a lawsuit filed against the Environmental Protection Agency over what it characterizes as a weak update to its emissions standards for the facilities, which do not include Pfas. Nearly 100 municipal or hazardous waste incinerators operate nationally, including seven in Minnesota.
\nThe new Minnesota report is full of bad assumptions, incomplete data, misleading language, and fails to conduct proper testing, according to an analysis by the Zero Burn Coalition advocacy group and reviews by independent incineration experts.
\nInstead, advocates say, Minnesota’s facilities are probably poisoning the surrounding neighborhoods with Pfas and a cocktail of other dangerous pollutants that garbage incineration often emits.
\nThe report “deceives the public into thinking [incineration] is safe”, said Nazir Khan, executive director of the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table.
\n“This trash becomes the problem of the poor and marginalized to deal with in their bodies,” he added.
\nIn a statement, the Minnesota Resources Recovery Association (MRRA) industry trade group that authored the report said Zero Burn’s analysis raised some valid points, but “does not support the conclusion that Pfas emissions from [Minnesota incinerators] are likely to be unsafe”.
\nPfas are a class of at least 16,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.
\nPfas get concentrated in municipal landfills because they are so widely used across the economy and in consumer products. When waste is incinerated, the chemicals can be released into the air. The compounds are designed to resist heat and destruction and are extremely difficult to destroy on an industrial scale.
\n“I’m not aware of any industrial-scale commercial incinerator that solves this problem,” said Michael Youhana, an attorney with the non-profit Earthjustice, who has litigated on other incinerator issues.
\nRecent research has shown that exposure to the chemicals via the air is more of a risk than previously thought, though regulators are only beginning to establish health standards.
\nThe MRRA report was developed in response to state regulators’ request for information on their Pfas emissions. The authors wrote their findings suggest “little or no inhalation health risks are associated with the emitted six Pfas compounds” that are regulated in Minnesota.
\nBut opponents say people are exposed to more than just the six regulated compounds, and the report’s findings appear designed to head off new regulations. Denise Trabbic-Pointer, a former DuPont Pfas scientist who now consults on incineration issues, characterized the MRRA report as a “pretty poor study”.
\n“I don’t know how they can say ‘99% reduction’, because there is too much missing data to make that claim,” Trabbic-Pointer said.
\nThe industry report notes that the incinerators burn at or above 850C (1,562F), which is high enough to “initiate” or “promote degradation” of Pfas, but Trabbic-Pointer said there was scientific consensus that the chemicals require much higher temperatures to be destroyed. The use of language like “promote degradation” does not mean it fully destroys Pfas, she added.
\n“You can’t just ‘promote degradation’ of Pfas, you have to totally mineralize it and prove that you’ve done it,” Trabbic-Pointer said. “I’m sure the headline grabs people and they think ‘‘Well that’s cool’,” but there is still a health threat, she added.
\nIncineration often breaks Pfas compounds into smaller-but-still-toxic by-products that either were not measured in the testing, or cannot be measured by most tests. The MRRA only checked for about 50 Pfas compounds when at least 16,000 exist, and hundreds are regularly used commercially.
\nThis issue was illustrated in a 2023 Guardian testing of Pfas air emissions conducted with academic experts near a factory. It found tests like those utilized in Minnesota’s undercounted Pfas. The Guardian testing detected markers of Pfas in the air up to 76 times higher than the more limited tests used by industry.
\nZero Burn notes that the EPA in 2024 even called into question the use of incineration for Pfas: “Because there are insufficient data available, there is low confidence in the reliability of this technology to control Pfas releases,” the agency wrote.
\nZero Burn wrote that there was also “a large hole” in the toxicity assessment because of the dearth of health information for 16 of 22 Pfas found in the incinerators’ emissions.
\nThe advisory inhalation health standards that the state does have in place are too low, Zero Burn further alleges – far below EPA limits for drinking water when translated to air. When the EPA limits are applied in Minnesota, the levels in the air exceed standards by up to 17 times.
\nThe industry science also fails to take into account the health risk in simultaneous exposure to multiple Pfas along with a litany of other dangerous chemicals released at staggering levels by incinerators, Zero Burn stated.
\nThe MRRA said Zero Burn conversely could not conclude that the levels were unsafe and questioned advocates’ math. “[Zero Burn’s] analysis, extrapolating risks from proposed drinking water standards, is also not a risk assessment,” it said. The MRRA added that the levels it measured in the stack are not higher than the levels in the fence-line neighborhood where people are exposed.
\nStill, people living around the facilities are exposed to the dangerous chemicals, advocates say. Minnesota and local governments have not committed to addressing the issue, or closing down the facilities. The report will almost certainly be wielded in that ongoing fight, advocates added.
\n“This is part of a broader history of deception and attempts to mislead public and elected officials,” said Doug Gurian-Sherman, the lead author of the Zero Burn analysis and a former EPA official. “This is a clear example of environmental injustice.”
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\nThe US Environmental Protection Agency last week announced it is moving to kill strong Biden-era drinking water limits around four Pfas compounds, and delaying implementation for two more. It represented a blow to public health – advocates say strong limits and a dramatic cut in the production of the dangerous chemicals are imperative.
\nStill, the press conference was billed as a “Pfas destruction event”, and administration leaders largely spent their time touting an “explosion in destruction technology”, and EPA investment in industry efforts to protect public health by eliminating the chemicals.
\nThey were, in effect, suggesting they had a solution to a crisis that did not require the drinking water regulations. The problem with the Trump plan: technology that fully destroys Pfas does not exist, and while progress is being made in its development, it is unclear when – if ever – it may be deployed on an industrial scale.
\n\nThe idea that the administration is going to destroy its way out of the Pfas problem is “nonsensical”, said Kyla Bennett, a former EPA scientist. It parallels fossil fuel industry attempts to use unreliable carbon capture technology as a solution – both offer the appearance of meaningful action while allowing industry to continue to profit and pollute at the expense of public health.
\n“No one has said they can destroy Pfas on a large scale,” said Bennett, who is now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit. “From what we know about Pfas, this is not going to work, and to say ‘We’re going to destroy it so we don’t need to regulate it’ is bullshit.”
\nPfas are a class of at least 16,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they can persist for thousands of years in the environment, and are designed to be indestructible.
\nPfas are thoroughly contaminating the planet – they have been found in virtually every recent rainwater sample, even in remote areas. They are in an estimated 200 million Americans’ drinking water, polar bears’ blood and every soil sample taken across New Hampshire in 2023. They are increasingly detected in food. The planet is filling up with these chemicals like a bathtub, public health advocates warn, and the solution is to “turn off the tap”.
\nInstead, the Trump administration is angling to keep the tap on. Society needs to figure out how to destroy Pfas, just as it needs to figure out how to capture carbon, if it is to survive. However, industry in both cases is wielding these still unreliable technologies as a solution in lieu of reducing pollution and production, advocates say.
\nAt last week’s event, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, trotted out industry leaders to tout their advances in destruction technology. Kennedy claimed their destruction plan was built on “honest science”.
\nYet advocates say there is a ruse. Current technologies used to destroy Pfas, from incineration to thermal oxidization, often fail to fully destroy a Pfas compound, instead essentially breaking it into smaller bits, or byproducts. But the smaller Pfas “bits” may be just as dangerous as their parent chemical. Most regulators’ tests cannot detect many of these byproducts, but that does not mean they do not exist or harm people.
\n\nA 2023 Guardian sample of air around a Chemours Pfas plant illustrated this issue. The company and regulators claimed a thermal oxidizer was destroying “99.999%-plus” of Pfas. But when the Guardian, working with independent Pfas experts, measured the air with a method that looks for evidence of all Pfas, it found evidence of chemicals that regulators missed. The Pfas were not fully destroyed, our testing suggested.
\nThe same problem also plays out in the more than 200 garbage, hazardous waste and sewage sludge incinerators spitting Pfas into the nation’s air at alarming levels, despite claims to the contrary. If the Trump administration gets its way, these facilities will proliferate.
\nLaura Orlando, a waste management systems engineer with Boston University, said one can explain the Trump administration’s moves by “following the money”. Pfas contaminate sewage sludge, the byproduct of water treatment, at high levels. Sludge is either put in hazardous waste landfills, or used as fertilizer on cropland, which poisons food. Instead of reducing chemicals or waste, industry is proposing unproven new methods of destroying sludge and Pfas.
\nThe processes are extremely expensive. One study found Pfas can be bought for $50-$1,000 per pound, but it costs as much as $18m a pound to remove from water. Taxpayers shoulder most of the cost, and the powerful waste management industry gets paid.
\nUltimately Pfas destruction has all the same problems as carbon capture – it is inefficient, expensive, unreliable, prone to technical failures and clearly not an alternative to regulations.
\n“We need to continue to research Pfas ‘destruction’ by funding entities without a profit motive, who work in a transparent environment, with the public’s health front and center,” Orlando said. “Right now the fox is guarding the hen house, and it’s not looking good for the hens.”
\n• This article was amended on 26 and 28 May 2026. An earlier version said a study found it would cost up to $18 a pound to remove Pfas from water; the figure was $18m. Also, this sum includes destruction after removal; we said this cost was not included.
","atomsCSS":[],"shouldHideReaderRevenue":false,"discussionId":"/p/x554mm","section":"Environment","id":"us-news/2026/may/26/trump-administration-pfas-drinking-water-regulation","displayImages":[{"urlTemplate":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/62213567fbc4d99e40fd58689b01e5a158690e3e/0_0_6000_4000/master/6000.jpg?w=#{width}&h=#{height}&q=#{quality}&fit=bounds&sig-ignores-params=true&s=c313d47fb254043b0b76c1478126ea6d","height":4000,"width":6000,"orientation":"landscape","caption":"US EPA last week announced it is moving to kill strong Biden-era drinking water limits around four Pfas compounds Photograph: Photograph: d3sign/Getty Images","credit":"d3sign/Getty Images","altText":"Close up of a woman's hand filling a glass of filtered water right from the tap in the kitchen sink at home","cleanCaption":"US EPA last week announced it is moving to kill strong Biden-era drinking water limits around four Pfas compounds","cleanCredit":"Photograph: d3sign/Getty Images"}],"shouldHideAdverts":false,"standFirst":"The EPA said it was cutting Biden-era regulations on Pfas in drinking water, but advocates say the move will harm public health and benefit industry
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A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
\nThe Democratic National Party belatedly released a copy of a report about why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election, written by a Democratic strategist. The report focuses on key demographics that Harris lost – including Latinos, men and rural voters in many states – and compares her performance to other Democrats in key state races, such as North Carolina governor Josh Stein.
\nTrump insists White House ballroom security costs would be a ‘very good expenditure’ despite GOP backlash. Asked about Republican backlash over plans to provide $1bn in security funds for his White House ballroom project, Trump drew distinctions between the ballroom and proposed security improvements.
\nTrump postponed a signing ceremony for an executive order on artificial intelligence because he didn’t like some aspects of the text. He announced this just a few hours before the ceremony with top CEOs at the White House was due to take place.
\nTrump says ‘it looks like I’ll be the one’ to intervene in Cuba after Castro indictment. Asked about the US aircraft carrier that arrived in the Caribbean yesterday and whether it was meant to intimidate the Cuban government, Trump said: “No, not at all.”
\nThis concludes our live chronicle of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
\nThe three top House Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, called the Republican leadership “cowardly” for cancelling a scheduled vote on a war powers resolution to end US hostilities in Iran that would likely have passed.
\nProgressive House Democrats Ro Khanna and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said they were stunned that a draft 192-page autopsy of the Democratic party’s 2024 election loss did not mention Gaza once.
\nRepublican congressman Tom Kean Jr, who represents New Jersey but has not been seen for more than two months, spoke by phone on Thursday to David Wildstein, a former aide to New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
\nDan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama who is now a host of the Pod Save America podcast, called on Thursday for the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, to resign or be fired over the botched autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss.
\nThe Senate refuses to vote on funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement as up to 25 Republican seantors objected to a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Trump’s White House ballroom and his $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
\nSenator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called for the Department of Transportation’s independent inspector general to open an official investigation into transport secretary Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman, Fox News host and and reality TV star, over his involvement in the Great American Road Trip, a reality TV show starring his family that was paid for by the many of the corporations his agency regulates.
\n“The Secretary of Transportation spent 24 days over several months recording a ridiculous promotional TV show about himself—an all-expense paid vacation—sponsored by the very corporations he is tasked with regulating,” Murray said in a statement. “The companies he regulates—Shell, United, Toyota, Boeing, Royal Caribbean, among others—paid for his family’s vacation.”
\nAlthough the filming of the show was conducted in secret, earlier this month the Department of Transportation released this trailer for the program, which includes a scene in which Duffy takes his children to the location of a home he lived in 1997 as a cast member of MTV’s Real World: Boston. A year later, as a cast member of Road Rules: All Stars, Duffy met his future wife, Rachel Campos, a star of another Real World show.
\nBoth went on to host Fox News shows. In 2024, Rachel Campos Duffy was the Fox & Friends host who asked then presidential candidate Donald Trump if he would pledge to release the Epstein files.
\n“Yeah, I would,” Trump answered, before equivocating. “I guess I would. I think that, less so, because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”
\nThe Fox co-host sitting next to Campos Duffy during that awkward interview, Pete Hegseth, is now the US defense secretary.
","cleanBody":"Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called for the Department of Transportation’s independent inspector general to open an official investigation into transport secretary Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman, Fox News host and and reality TV star, over his involvement in the Great American Road Trip, a reality TV show starring his family that was paid for by the many of the corporations his agency regulates. “The Secretary of Transportation spent 24 days over several months recording a ridiculous promotional TV show about himself—an all-expense paid vacation—sponsored by the very corporations he is tasked with regulating,” Murray said in a statement. “The companies he regulates—Shell, United, Toyota, Boeing, Royal Caribbean, among others—paid for his family’s vacation.” Although the filming of the show was conducted in secret, earlier this month the Department of Transportation released this trailer for the program, which includes a scene in which Duffy takes his children to the location of a home he lived in 1997 as a cast member of MTV’s Real World: Boston. A year later, as a cast member of Road Rules: All Stars, Duffy met his future wife, Rachel Campos, a star of another Real World show.\nBoth went on to host Fox News shows. In 2024, Rachel Campos Duffy was the Fox & Friends host who asked then presidential candidate Donald Trump if he would pledge to release the Epstein files. “Yeah, I would,” Trump answered, before equivocating. “I guess I would. I think that, less so, because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.” The Fox co-host sitting next to Campos Duffy during that awkward interview, Pete Hegseth, is now the US defense secretary.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0faf7f8f08c1daf13f2b79","title":"Missing Republican congressman speaks","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:40:45Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:40:45Z","body":"Republican congressman Tom Kean Jr, who represents New Jersey but has not been seen for more than two months, spoke by phone on Thursday to David Wildstein, a former aide to New Jersey governor Chris Christie who now edits the politics website the New Jersey Globe.
\n“My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” Kean told Wildstein. “I understand the need for public transparency, and I appreciate the support of my constituents.”
\nKean, however, was less than transparent about what condition he is suffering from, merely saying his prognosis is positive, and expects it to have no long-term impact on his physical or cognitive health.
\n“I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll return to voting and to the campaign trail,” said the congressman, who has been quietly running for reelection without being seen or heard for over two months.
\nWildstein came to political journalism late in his career, after a career in politics which ended when he pleaded guilty in 2015 to masterminding the so-called Bridgegate scandal.
\nAccording to Wildstein, he came up with a scheme to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey for refusing to endorse Christie, a Republican, for governor, in which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey blocked lanes of traffic near the George Washington Bridge to flood Fort Lee with traffic.
\nThe Christie administration and the authority said the lanes were closed to study traffic patterns, but an email later made public showed that Christie’s deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, Bridget Anne Kelly, had written to Wildstein the month before the lanes were closed: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”
","cleanBody":"Republican congressman Tom Kean Jr, who represents New Jersey but has not been seen for more than two months, spoke by phone on Thursday to David Wildstein, a former aide to New Jersey governor Chris Christie who now edits the politics website the New Jersey Globe. “My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” Kean told Wildstein. “I understand the need for public transparency, and I appreciate the support of my constituents.” Kean, however, was less than transparent about what condition he is suffering from, merely saying his prognosis is positive, and expects it to have no long-term impact on his physical or cognitive health. “I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll return to voting and to the campaign trail,” said the congressman, who has been quietly running for reelection without being seen or heard for over two months. Wildstein came to political journalism late in his career, after a career in politics which ended when he pleaded guilty in 2015 to masterminding the so-called Bridgegate scandal. According to Wildstein, he came up with a scheme to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey for refusing to endorse Christie, a Republican, for governor, in which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey blocked lanes of traffic near the George Washington Bridge to flood Fort Lee with traffic. The Christie administration and the authority said the lanes were closed to study traffic patterns, but an email later made public showed that Christie’s deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, Bridget Anne Kelly, had written to Wildstein the month before the lanes were closed: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0fa1228f089865cf41a8fc","title":"Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer says DNC chair Ken Martin 'has to go'","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:19:17Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:20:29Z","body":"Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama who is now a host of the Pod Save America podcast, called on Thursday for the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, to resign or be fired over the botched autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss.
\nIn a post for Message Box, his Substack newsletter, Pfeiffer noted that Martin was forced to release the incomplete report after “an incredibly viral interview on Pod Save America” in April in which the DNC chair argued to Jon Favreau, a former Obama speechwriter, that the report was useful but releasing it would distract from the upcoming midterm elections.
\nThen, after CNN obtained and published portions of the report, Martin relented and admitted that while he had “commissioned a comprehensive review of the 2024 election”, when he received the report late last year, he discovered that it was poorly done and decided to shelve it rather than start the process over.
\n“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it,” Martin said in a preface to the draft report he finally released on Thursday.
\nPfeiffer’s response to Martin’s admission was scathing:
\n\n\nIn other words, the autopsy wasn’t released because the political crony that Martin hired to do the job didn’t really do the job. He failed to speak to many of the top decision makers and never really wrestled with the tough questions like Biden’s decision to run for reelection, his age, or the impact of his Gaza policy.
\nThe final product was a joke. Not good enough to be released, so Ken Martin just lied about it until he got caught.
\nThis is the final straw.
\nKen Martin is not up to the job, and his continued presence is going to make the DNC woefully ineffective heading into the midterms and then the critical 2028 primaries, where the DNC plays a major role.
\nHe should step down for the good of the party, and if he won’t, the DNC should fire him.
\n
On the Pod Save America YouTube channel on Thursday, Pfeiffer’s podmates, Favreau and Tommy Vietor, a former national security spokesperson for Obama, suggested that Martin had to go for not just lying about his reasons for not releasing the report, but “gaslighting” critics.
\nVietor pointed out that the 192-page autopsy included “zero mentions of the word Israel, Palestine or Gaza; not even examining the impact of that issue on the results is crazy.”
\nThe former Obama aides suggested that the party could replace Martin with a transitional figure, should he resign before the midterms, and also discussed the odd fact that Martin only came on the podcast to discuss the report after heatedly confronting the hosts in person at a Grindr-sponsored party ahead of this year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner.
\nAmong the names they suggested as possible interim leaders of the committee were Roger Lau, a former Elizabeth Warren campaign manager, Addisu Demissie, who has run campaigns for Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker, and Faiz Shakir, a Bernie Sanders advisor who founded More Perfect Union, a progressive nonprofit newsroom.
\nOne name they did not put forward was that of Ben Wikler, who ran the Wisconsin Democratic Party from 2019 to 2025 and finished second to Martin in the 2025 election for DNC chair despite the backing of the Pod Save America hosts.
\nWikler (who, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say I worked with briefly at Air America in 2004) has a new book out in July, titled, “This is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy”.
","cleanBody":"Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama who is now a host of the Pod Save America podcast, called on Thursday for the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, to resign or be fired over the botched autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss. In a post for Message Box, his Substack newsletter, Pfeiffer noted that Martin was forced to release the incomplete report after “an incredibly viral interview on Pod Save America” in April in which the DNC chair argued to Jon Favreau, a former Obama speechwriter, that the report was useful but releasing it would distract from the upcoming midterm elections. Then, after CNN obtained and published portions of the report, Martin relented and admitted that while he had “commissioned a comprehensive review of the 2024 election”, when he received the report late last year, he discovered that it was poorly done and decided to shelve it rather than start the process over. “I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it,” Martin said in a preface to the draft report he finally released on Thursday. Pfeiffer’s response to Martin’s admission was scathing: In other words, the autopsy wasn’t released because the political crony that Martin hired to do the job didn’t really do the job. He failed to speak to many of the top decision makers and never really wrestled with the tough questions like Biden’s decision to run for reelection, his age, or the impact of his Gaza policy. The final product was a joke. Not good enough to be released, so Ken Martin just lied about it until he got caught. This is the final straw. Ken Martin is not up to the job, and his continued presence is going to make the DNC woefully ineffective heading into the midterms and then the critical 2028 primaries, where the DNC plays a major role. He should step down for the good of the party, and if he won’t, the DNC should fire him. On the Pod Save America YouTube channel on Thursday, Pfeiffer’s podmates, Favreau and Tommy Vietor, a former national security spokesperson for Obama, suggested that Martin had to go for not just lying about his reasons for not releasing the report, but “gaslighting” critics. Vietor pointed out that the 192-page autopsy included “zero mentions of the word Israel, Palestine or Gaza; not even examining the impact of that issue on the results is crazy.”\nThe former Obama aides suggested that the party could replace Martin with a transitional figure, should he resign before the midterms, and also discussed the odd fact that Martin only came on the podcast to discuss the report after heatedly confronting the hosts in person at a Grindr-sponsored party ahead of this year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner. Among the names they suggested as possible interim leaders of the committee were Roger Lau, a former Elizabeth Warren campaign manager, Addisu Demissie, who has run campaigns for Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker, and Faiz Shakir, a Bernie Sanders advisor who founded More Perfect Union, a progressive nonprofit newsroom. One name they did not put forward was that of Ben Wikler, who ran the Wisconsin Democratic Party from 2019 to 2025 and finished second to Martin in the 2025 election for DNC chair despite the backing of the Pod Save America hosts. Wikler (who, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say I worked with briefly at Air America in 2004) has a new book out in July, titled, “This is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy”.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0f96788f080414a3d98b31","title":"House Democrats call Republicans 'cowardly' for cancelling scheduled vote on war powers resolution to check Trump on Iran","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-22T00:03:00Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-22T00:03:00Z","body":"The three top House Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, called the Republican leadership “cowardly” for cancelling a scheduled vote on a war powers resolution to end US hostilities in Iran that would likely have passed.
\n“For nearly three months, Donald Trump has forced America and our men and women in uniform into a reckless and costly war of choice in Iran. Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth took us to war without clear objectives, an exit strategy, public support or the authorization required by the United States Congress,” the Democrats said.\n
\n
\n ”The Republican-controlled House continues to behave like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump administration. Republicans cowardly pulled a scheduled vote on a War Powers Resolution—legislation that would have passed with bipartisan support and required the President to end the conflict in the Middle East,” they added.
The vote has been postponed until lawmakers return from a recess in June, but it appears likely that the resolution could pass then.
\nAccording to Politico, Brian Fitzpatrick, a Philadelphia-area Republican congressman who broke with his party last week to vote for the last Iran war powers resolution, and was attacked by Donald Trump on Wednesday, said the delay would not stop the resolution from passing soon. “The next time they bring it, it’s passing,” he said.
\nAmong the Republican House members absent on Thursday but expected to be present when the resolution is put to a vote in June was Thomas Massie, the Kentucky congressman who has been a critic of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran. Massie lost a primary election this week to a Trump-backed candidate who was encouraged to run after the president was angered by Massie’s role in forcing the Department of Justice to release investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.
","cleanBody":"The three top House Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, called the Republican leadership “cowardly” for cancelling a scheduled vote on a war powers resolution to end US hostilities in Iran that would likely have passed. “For nearly three months, Donald Trump has forced America and our men and women in uniform into a reckless and costly war of choice in Iran. Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth took us to war without clear objectives, an exit strategy, public support or the authorization required by the United States Congress,” the Democrats said. ”The Republican-controlled House continues to behave like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump administration. Republicans cowardly pulled a scheduled vote on a War Powers Resolution—legislation that would have passed with bipartisan support and required the President to end the conflict in the Middle East,” they added. The vote has been postponed until lawmakers return from a recess in June, but it appears likely that the resolution could pass then. According to Politico, Brian Fitzpatrick, a Philadelphia-area Republican congressman who broke with his party last week to vote for the last Iran war powers resolution, and was attacked by Donald Trump on Wednesday, said the delay would not stop the resolution from passing soon. “The next time they bring it, it’s passing,” he said. Among the Republican House members absent on Thursday but expected to be present when the resolution is put to a vote in June was Thomas Massie, the Kentucky congressman who has been a critic of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran. Massie lost a primary election this week to a Trump-backed candidate who was encouraged to run after the president was angered by Massie’s role in forcing the Department of Justice to release investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0f90c88f080414a3d98b0d","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-21T23:17:43Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-21T23:17:42Z","body":"Donald Trump announced on Thursday he would deploy an “additional” 5,000 US troops to Poland, just days after the Pentagon controversially halted a long-planned rotation of forces to the largest country on the eastern flank of Nato.\n
\n
\n “Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” Trump said on his social media platform.\n
\n
\n It was not immediately clear whether the deployment would be rotational or permanent, or if there was any link to Trump’s previous decision to pull 5,000 troops out from Germany. There are some 10,000 US troops in Poland, but most of them serve on a rotational basis.
The announcement seems to mark a rare U-turn after the Pentagon said last week it would delay a rotation of 4,000 US troops from the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division to Poland as part of a broader review of the US force posture in Europe.\n
\n
\n Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, defended the decision as recently as Wednesday, telling a Polish reporter that the US wanted Europe to take more responsibility for its defence and security, and adding “Poland is capable of defending itself with a lot of support from the United States.” He criticised the media for “overreacting” over what he said was “a very minor thing” and “a standard delay.”\n
\n
\n But the original decision – which appeared to catch Warsaw by surprise – prompted anxious reactions from top Polish leaders worried about the assertive Russian stance in the region amid continuing war in Ukraine, and drew criticism in the US Congress.\n
\n
\n Over the years, Poland has sought to position itself as a top US ally in Europe, with its troops serving alongside the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the country’s successive government leading the defence spending charts among Nato’s European members.
Announcing the move, Trump pointedly praised his relationship with Poland’s conservative president, Karol Nawrocki, who unexpectedly won last year’s presidential election after being hosted by Trump at the White House in the final weeks of the campaign. The pair has had a close relationship ever since, with Trump regularly referencing the importance of his endorsement for Nawrocki’s election.
\n\n Despite the announcement being made late in the evening in Europe, the Polish president immediately thanked Trump “for his friendship towards Poland and for the decisions, the practical dimension of which we see very clearly today.”\n
\n
\n “I stand and will continue to stand guard over the Polish-American alliance – a vital pillar of security for every Polish home and for all of Europe,” Nawrocki said.\n
\n
\n “Good alliances are based on cooperation, mutual respect, and a commitment to our shared security,” he added.
Poland’s defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz also said Trump’s decision “confirms the Polish-American relations are very strong, and that Poland is a model and ironclad ally.”\n
\n
\n Earlier this week, Kosiniak-Kamysz sought urgent talks with US defence secretary Pete Hegseth to get clarity on the original decision, telling reporters that he hoped to see “all misunderstandings, or media noise, will be explained in the coming days.”\n
\n
\n Hours before Trump’s announcement, US undersecretary of defense Elbridge Colby held talks with a senior Polish official in Washington DC. After the meeting, he said on X that “Poland stands out as a model ally and a leader among our allies,” and said the US would work closely with Warsaw “ensure our presence in Poland remains strong and robust.”\n
\n
\n Congressman Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska and a retired Air Force Brigadier General, responded to the news saying “this is good news for Poland and our Baltic allies.”
“I’m glad the President reversed the SecDef decision to withdraw the Brigade from Poland. Poland walks the talk and deserves our close partnership,” he added.
\nThe announcement comes just hours before the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is due to take part in a Nato ministerial meeting in Sweden after weeks of tense relations between the US administration and its European allies caused by their refusal to get involved in the Iran war.
","cleanBody":"Donald Trump announced on Thursday he would deploy an “additional” 5,000 US troops to Poland, just days after the Pentagon controversially halted a long-planned rotation of forces to the largest country on the eastern flank of Nato. “Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” Trump said on his social media platform. It was not immediately clear whether the deployment would be rotational or permanent, or if there was any link to Trump’s previous decision to pull 5,000 troops out from Germany. There are some 10,000 US troops in Poland, but most of them serve on a rotational basis. The announcement seems to mark a rare U-turn after the Pentagon said last week it would delay a rotation of 4,000 US troops from the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division to Poland as part of a broader review of the US force posture in Europe. Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, defended the decision as recently as Wednesday, telling a Polish reporter that the US wanted Europe to take more responsibility for its defence and security, and adding “Poland is capable of defending itself with a lot of support from the United States.” He criticised the media for “overreacting” over what he said was “a very minor thing” and “a standard delay.” But the original decision – which appeared to catch Warsaw by surprise – prompted anxious reactions from top Polish leaders worried about the assertive Russian stance in the region amid continuing war in Ukraine, and drew criticism in the US Congress. Over the years, Poland has sought to position itself as a top US ally in Europe, with its troops serving alongside the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the country’s successive government leading the defence spending charts among Nato’s European members. Announcing the move, Trump pointedly praised his relationship with Poland’s conservative president, Karol Nawrocki, who unexpectedly won last year’s presidential election after being hosted by Trump at the White House in the final weeks of the campaign. The pair has had a close relationship ever since, with Trump regularly referencing the importance of his endorsement for Nawrocki’s election.\nDespite the announcement being made late in the evening in Europe, the Polish president immediately thanked Trump “for his friendship towards Poland and for the decisions, the practical dimension of which we see very clearly today.” “I stand and will continue to stand guard over the Polish-American alliance – a vital pillar of security for every Polish home and for all of Europe,” Nawrocki said. “Good alliances are based on cooperation, mutual respect, and a commitment to our shared security,” he added. Poland’s defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz also said Trump’s decision “confirms the Polish-American relations are very strong, and that Poland is a model and ironclad ally.” Earlier this week, Kosiniak-Kamysz sought urgent talks with US defence secretary Pete Hegseth to get clarity on the original decision, telling reporters that he hoped to see “all misunderstandings, or media noise, will be explained in the coming days.” Hours before Trump’s announcement, US undersecretary of defense Elbridge Colby held talks with a senior Polish official in Washington DC. After the meeting, he said on X that “Poland stands out as a model ally and a leader among our allies,” and said the US would work closely with Warsaw “ensure our presence in Poland remains strong and robust.” Congressman Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska and a retired Air Force Brigadier General, responded to the news saying “this is good news for Poland and our Baltic allies.” “I’m glad the President reversed the SecDef decision to withdraw the Brigade from Poland. Poland walks the talk and deserves our close partnership,” he added. The announcement comes just hours before the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is due to take part in a Nato ministerial meeting in Sweden after weeks of tense relations between the US administration and its European allies caused by their refusal to get involved in the Iran war.","postType":"blog","contributors":["jakub-krupa"]},{"id":"block-6a0f8aef8f080414a3d98af1","title":"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says 'it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once' in DNC 2024 autopsy report","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-21T22:57:17Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-21T23:33:40Z","body":"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York many progressives want to run for the presidency in 2028, told reporters on Thursday that it was stunning that there was no mention of Gaza, Israel or the Uncommitted movement in the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss.
\n“I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” the congresswoman said. “I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major thread that was happening in 2024. Regardless of how one feels about that issue, the fact that it’s not even addressed, I think, is a major oversight.”
\n“I think that for young people it was a huge part of the environment”, she continued. “I can tell you, for myself as a candidate during that cycle, there’s no way that it was an ignorable issue, or totally immaterial. So I think that it’s a real disservice to not speak to that or include or assess that.”
\nIn February, Ocasio-Cortez said during a Munich security conference panel that the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee should reconsider the country’s military aid to Israel.
\nShe was responding to a question from Hagar Shezaf of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who asked the US congresswoman if “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel”.
\n“To me this isn’t just about a presidential election,” Ocasio-Cortez replied, “personally, I think that the United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy laws.
\n“I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense,” she added. “I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza, and I think that we have thousands of women and children dead … that was completely avoidable.”
\n![\"Congresswoman](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/532012e5600b6336ae2641a2691fbcc2b36e47c7/0_0_5500_3667/1000.jpg\")
\n “So I believe that enforcement of our own laws, through the Leahy laws, which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance when you see gross human rights violations is appropriate,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded.
\nThe Leahy laws are two statutory provisions, named for the former senator Patrick Leahy who introduced them in the 1990s, which prohibit the US defense department and state department from providing funds to “units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights”.
","cleanBody":"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York many progressives want to run for the presidency in 2028, told reporters on Thursday that it was stunning that there was no mention of Gaza, Israel or the Uncommitted movement in the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss. “I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” the congresswoman said. “I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major thread that was happening in 2024. Regardless of how one feels about that issue, the fact that it’s not even addressed, I think, is a major oversight.” “I think that for young people it was a huge part of the environment”, she continued. “I can tell you, for myself as a candidate during that cycle, there’s no way that it was an ignorable issue, or totally immaterial. So I think that it’s a real disservice to not speak to that or include or assess that.” In February, Ocasio-Cortez said during a Munich security conference panel that the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee should reconsider the country’s military aid to Israel. She was responding to a question from Hagar Shezaf of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who asked the US congresswoman if “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel”. “To me this isn’t just about a presidential election,” Ocasio-Cortez replied, “personally, I think that the United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy laws. “I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense,” she added. “I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza, and I think that we have thousands of women and children dead … that was completely avoidable.”\n“So I believe that enforcement of our own laws, through the Leahy laws, which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance when you see gross human rights violations is appropriate,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded. The Leahy laws are two statutory provisions, named for the former senator Patrick Leahy who introduced them in the 1990s, which prohibit the US defense department and state department from providing funds to “units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights”.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0f83ba8f080414a3d98ac9","title":"Congressman Ro Khanna says enabling 'genocide in Gaza' cost the Democrats the 2024 election","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-21T22:29:37Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-21T23:33:17Z","body":"Congressman Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California thought to be considering a run for the presidency in 2028, joined the criticism of the Democratic National Committee’s reluctantly released, incomplete postmortem on the party’s disastrous 2024 election defeat.
\nIn a social media video, Khanna said: “There’s not a single mention of Gaza in the 192-page DNC autopsy report that was just released today. As someone who campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin, let me tell you: one of the reasons we lost is our blank check to Israel and Netanyahu while they committed genocide in Gaza. We must speak and confront hard truths if this party is to win in 2028.”
\nAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York many progressives want to run for the presidency in 2028, told reporters she too was stunned by the omission of any mention of Gaza, Israel or the Uncommitted movement in the report.
\n“I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” the congresswoman said. “I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major thread that was happening in 2024. Regardless of how one feels about that issue, the fact that it’s not even addressed, I think, is a major oversight.”
\nOcasio-Cortez said in February that the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee should enforce laws barring US aid to countries that violate human rights, since unconditional aid to Israel had “enabled a genocide in Gaza”.
","cleanBody":"Congressman Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California thought to be considering a run for the presidency in 2028, joined the criticism of the Democratic National Committee’s reluctantly released, incomplete postmortem on the party’s disastrous 2024 election defeat. In a social media video, Khanna said: “There’s not a single mention of Gaza in the 192-page DNC autopsy report that was just released today. As someone who campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin, let me tell you: one of the reasons we lost is our blank check to Israel and Netanyahu while they committed genocide in Gaza. We must speak and confront hard truths if this party is to win in 2028.”\nAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York many progressives want to run for the presidency in 2028, told reporters she too was stunned by the omission of any mention of Gaza, Israel or the Uncommitted movement in the report. “I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” the congresswoman said. “I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major thread that was happening in 2024. Regardless of how one feels about that issue, the fact that it’s not even addressed, I think, is a major oversight.” Ocasio-Cortez said in February that the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee should enforce laws barring US aid to countries that violate human rights, since unconditional aid to Israel had “enabled a genocide in Gaza”.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0f740c8f080414a3d98a6b","title":"Stephen Miller suggests 'innocent' rioters who attacked Capitol police on January 6 are 'owed' more than just $1.776bn by US taxpayers","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-21T21:45:52Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-21T21:54:39Z","body":"Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, took three minutes of questions from reporters on Thursday.
\nHe concluded by defending the $1.776bn in taxpayer funds the Trump administration set aside this week to compensate people who claim they were wrongly prosecuted by the federal government, apparently including the hundreds of violent rioters convicted of attacking police officers as they tried to get at lawmakers on January 6 2021 in a failed bid to keep Donald Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
\nMiller was asked about the fact that there was significant pushback over the fund from lawmakers on Thursday, reportedly including 25 Republican senators who objcted to it during a nearly two-hour meeting on Thursday with Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer now serving as the acting attorney general.
\n“That’s a good closing question only because it allows me to say this, which is that the- we lived through four years of– more than four years, actually, but I’ll just say four years in this case, of unimaginable weaponization of the federal government against innocent people,” Miller said.
\n“We’ve had so many lives- it really goes back to, I would say, further, but so many lives destroyed, so many livelihoods ruined, so many people who were deprived of their fundamental rights and freedoms as American citizens. And this settlement is just a small measure of the justice that they are owed,” he continued.
\nHaving delivered what seemed like his pre-scripted talking points, the influential adviser then immediately concluded the briefing, holding up his hands and saying “anyway, thank you all for your time”, and walking away before any follow-up questions could be asked.
\n![\"Stephen](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/78dba7d1c0ad45f103f2b2c613a17e297fc640f2/0_0_3753_2937/1000.jpg\")
\n The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated a “Be on the Lookout” alert to law enforcement nationwide, targeting a comedian whose satire of US immigration enforcement went viral.
\nThe subject of the alert, known as a “Bolo”, was Ben Palmer, a Nashville-based standup comedian and prankster who created a parody anti-immigration tip website. His revealing videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have garnered millions of views on TikTok and YouTube.
\nThe DHS bulletin was issued by the department’s Nashville field office in February, about a week before the Washington Post profiled Palmer after a kindergarten teacher reported one of her student’s parents to Palmer’s supposed-tip page on spurious grounds, thinking she was communicating with the government.
\nThe Bolo was then shared by the Illinois State Police to a distribution list of state and local law enforcement agencies. The alert on Palmer was obtained by the Chicago-based journalism nonprofit Injustice Watch through a series of public records requests. It was not immediately clear how many other law enforcement departments around the US may also have shared the federal alert, as Injustice Watch was investigating matters in Illinois.
\n","cleanBody":"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated a “Be on the Lookout” alert to law enforcement nationwide, targeting a comedian whose satire of US immigration enforcement went viral. The subject of the alert, known as a “Bolo”, was Ben Palmer, a Nashville-based standup comedian and prankster who created a parody anti-immigration tip website. His revealing videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have garnered millions of views on TikTok and YouTube. The DHS bulletin was issued by the department’s Nashville field office in February, about a week before the Washington Post profiled Palmer after a kindergarten teacher reported one of her student’s parents to Palmer’s supposed-tip page on spurious grounds, thinking she was communicating with the government. The Bolo was then shared by the Illinois State Police to a distribution list of state and local law enforcement agencies. The alert on Palmer was obtained by the Chicago-based journalism nonprofit Injustice Watch through a series of public records requests. It was not immediately clear how many other law enforcement departments around the US may also have shared the federal alert, as Injustice Watch was investigating matters in Illinois.","postType":"blog","contributors":["aura-bogado"]}],"keyEvents":[{"id":"block-6a0f627c8f080414a3d98a0f","title":"Here's a recap of the day so far","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-21T19:59:22Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-21T19:59:22Z","body":"US Senate refuses to push through ICE funding amid row over Trump’s ballroom. A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
\nThe Democratic National Party belatedly released a copy of a report about why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election, written by a Democratic strategist. The report focuses on key demographics that Harris lost – including Latinos, men and rural voters in many states – and compares her performance to other Democrats in key state races, such as North Carolina governor Josh Stein.
\nTrump insists White House ballroom security costs would be a ‘very good expenditure’ despite GOP backlash. Asked about Republican backlash over plans to provide $1bn in security funds for his White House ballroom project, Trump drew distinctions between the ballroom and proposed security improvements.
\nTrump postponed a signing ceremony for an executive order on artificial intelligence because he didn’t like some aspects of the text. He announced this just a few hours before the ceremony with top CEOs at the White House was due to take place.
\nTrump says ‘it looks like I’ll be the one’ to intervene in Cuba after Castro indictment. Asked about the US aircraft carrier that arrived in the Caribbean yesterday and whether it was meant to intimidate the Cuban government, Trump said: “No, not at all.”
\nAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York many progressives want to run for the presidency in 2028, told reporters on Thursday that it was stunning that there was no mention of Gaza, Israel or the Uncommitted movement in the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss.
\n“I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” the congresswoman said. “I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major thread that was happening in 2024. Regardless of how one feels about that issue, the fact that it’s not even addressed, I think, is a major oversight.”
\n“I think that for young people it was a huge part of the environment”, she continued. “I can tell you, for myself as a candidate during that cycle, there’s no way that it was an ignorable issue, or totally immaterial. So I think that it’s a real disservice to not speak to that or include or assess that.”
\nIn February, Ocasio-Cortez said during a Munich security conference panel that the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee should reconsider the country’s military aid to Israel.
\nShe was responding to a question from Hagar Shezaf of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who asked the US congresswoman if “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel”.
\n“To me this isn’t just about a presidential election,” Ocasio-Cortez replied, “personally, I think that the United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy laws.
\n“I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense,” she added. “I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza, and I think that we have thousands of women and children dead … that was completely avoidable.”
\n\n “So I believe that enforcement of our own laws, through the Leahy laws, which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance when you see gross human rights violations is appropriate,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded.
\nThe Leahy laws are two statutory provisions, named for the former senator Patrick Leahy who introduced them in the 1990s, which prohibit the US defense department and state department from providing funds to “units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights”.
","cleanBody":"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York many progressives want to run for the presidency in 2028, told reporters on Thursday that it was stunning that there was no mention of Gaza, Israel or the Uncommitted movement in the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss. “I think it’s pretty unbelievable that Gaza would not be mentioned once in the autopsy report,” the congresswoman said. “I think it was very clearly a major dynamic and a major thread that was happening in 2024. Regardless of how one feels about that issue, the fact that it’s not even addressed, I think, is a major oversight.” “I think that for young people it was a huge part of the environment”, she continued. “I can tell you, for myself as a candidate during that cycle, there’s no way that it was an ignorable issue, or totally immaterial. So I think that it’s a real disservice to not speak to that or include or assess that.” In February, Ocasio-Cortez said during a Munich security conference panel that the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee should reconsider the country’s military aid to Israel. She was responding to a question from Hagar Shezaf of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who asked the US congresswoman if “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel”. “To me this isn’t just about a presidential election,” Ocasio-Cortez replied, “personally, I think that the United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy laws. “I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense,” she added. “I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza, and I think that we have thousands of women and children dead … that was completely avoidable.”\n“So I believe that enforcement of our own laws, through the Leahy laws, which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance when you see gross human rights violations is appropriate,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded. The Leahy laws are two statutory provisions, named for the former senator Patrick Leahy who introduced them in the 1990s, which prohibit the US defense department and state department from providing funds to “units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights”.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0f96788f080414a3d98b31","title":"House Democrats call Republicans 'cowardly' for cancelling scheduled vote on war powers resolution to check Trump on Iran","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-22T00:03:00Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-22T00:03:00Z","body":"The three top House Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, called the Republican leadership “cowardly” for cancelling a scheduled vote on a war powers resolution to end US hostilities in Iran that would likely have passed.
\n“For nearly three months, Donald Trump has forced America and our men and women in uniform into a reckless and costly war of choice in Iran. Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth took us to war without clear objectives, an exit strategy, public support or the authorization required by the United States Congress,” the Democrats said.\n
\n
\n ”The Republican-controlled House continues to behave like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump administration. Republicans cowardly pulled a scheduled vote on a War Powers Resolution—legislation that would have passed with bipartisan support and required the President to end the conflict in the Middle East,” they added.
The vote has been postponed until lawmakers return from a recess in June, but it appears likely that the resolution could pass then.
\nAccording to Politico, Brian Fitzpatrick, a Philadelphia-area Republican congressman who broke with his party last week to vote for the last Iran war powers resolution, and was attacked by Donald Trump on Wednesday, said the delay would not stop the resolution from passing soon. “The next time they bring it, it’s passing,” he said.
\nAmong the Republican House members absent on Thursday but expected to be present when the resolution is put to a vote in June was Thomas Massie, the Kentucky congressman who has been a critic of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran. Massie lost a primary election this week to a Trump-backed candidate who was encouraged to run after the president was angered by Massie’s role in forcing the Department of Justice to release investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.
","cleanBody":"The three top House Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, called the Republican leadership “cowardly” for cancelling a scheduled vote on a war powers resolution to end US hostilities in Iran that would likely have passed. “For nearly three months, Donald Trump has forced America and our men and women in uniform into a reckless and costly war of choice in Iran. Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth took us to war without clear objectives, an exit strategy, public support or the authorization required by the United States Congress,” the Democrats said. ”The Republican-controlled House continues to behave like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump administration. Republicans cowardly pulled a scheduled vote on a War Powers Resolution—legislation that would have passed with bipartisan support and required the President to end the conflict in the Middle East,” they added. The vote has been postponed until lawmakers return from a recess in June, but it appears likely that the resolution could pass then. According to Politico, Brian Fitzpatrick, a Philadelphia-area Republican congressman who broke with his party last week to vote for the last Iran war powers resolution, and was attacked by Donald Trump on Wednesday, said the delay would not stop the resolution from passing soon. “The next time they bring it, it’s passing,” he said. Among the Republican House members absent on Thursday but expected to be present when the resolution is put to a vote in June was Thomas Massie, the Kentucky congressman who has been a critic of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran. Massie lost a primary election this week to a Trump-backed candidate who was encouraged to run after the president was angered by Massie’s role in forcing the Department of Justice to release investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0fa1228f089865cf41a8fc","title":"Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer says DNC chair Ken Martin 'has to go'","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:19:17Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:20:29Z","body":"Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama who is now a host of the Pod Save America podcast, called on Thursday for the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, to resign or be fired over the botched autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss.
\nIn a post for Message Box, his Substack newsletter, Pfeiffer noted that Martin was forced to release the incomplete report after “an incredibly viral interview on Pod Save America” in April in which the DNC chair argued to Jon Favreau, a former Obama speechwriter, that the report was useful but releasing it would distract from the upcoming midterm elections.
\nThen, after CNN obtained and published portions of the report, Martin relented and admitted that while he had “commissioned a comprehensive review of the 2024 election”, when he received the report late last year, he discovered that it was poorly done and decided to shelve it rather than start the process over.
\n“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it,” Martin said in a preface to the draft report he finally released on Thursday.
\nPfeiffer’s response to Martin’s admission was scathing:
\n\n\nIn other words, the autopsy wasn’t released because the political crony that Martin hired to do the job didn’t really do the job. He failed to speak to many of the top decision makers and never really wrestled with the tough questions like Biden’s decision to run for reelection, his age, or the impact of his Gaza policy.
\nThe final product was a joke. Not good enough to be released, so Ken Martin just lied about it until he got caught.
\nThis is the final straw.
\nKen Martin is not up to the job, and his continued presence is going to make the DNC woefully ineffective heading into the midterms and then the critical 2028 primaries, where the DNC plays a major role.
\nHe should step down for the good of the party, and if he won’t, the DNC should fire him.
\n
On the Pod Save America YouTube channel on Thursday, Pfeiffer’s podmates, Favreau and Tommy Vietor, a former national security spokesperson for Obama, suggested that Martin had to go for not just lying about his reasons for not releasing the report, but “gaslighting” critics.
\nVietor pointed out that the 192-page autopsy included “zero mentions of the word Israel, Palestine or Gaza; not even examining the impact of that issue on the results is crazy.”
\nThe former Obama aides suggested that the party could replace Martin with a transitional figure, should he resign before the midterms, and also discussed the odd fact that Martin only came on the podcast to discuss the report after heatedly confronting the hosts in person at a Grindr-sponsored party ahead of this year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner.
\nAmong the names they suggested as possible interim leaders of the committee were Roger Lau, a former Elizabeth Warren campaign manager, Addisu Demissie, who has run campaigns for Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker, and Faiz Shakir, a Bernie Sanders advisor who founded More Perfect Union, a progressive nonprofit newsroom.
\nOne name they did not put forward was that of Ben Wikler, who ran the Wisconsin Democratic Party from 2019 to 2025 and finished second to Martin in the 2025 election for DNC chair despite the backing of the Pod Save America hosts.
\nWikler (who, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say I worked with briefly at Air America in 2004) has a new book out in July, titled, “This is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy”.
","cleanBody":"Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama who is now a host of the Pod Save America podcast, called on Thursday for the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, to resign or be fired over the botched autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss. In a post for Message Box, his Substack newsletter, Pfeiffer noted that Martin was forced to release the incomplete report after “an incredibly viral interview on Pod Save America” in April in which the DNC chair argued to Jon Favreau, a former Obama speechwriter, that the report was useful but releasing it would distract from the upcoming midterm elections. Then, after CNN obtained and published portions of the report, Martin relented and admitted that while he had “commissioned a comprehensive review of the 2024 election”, when he received the report late last year, he discovered that it was poorly done and decided to shelve it rather than start the process over. “I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards. I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it,” Martin said in a preface to the draft report he finally released on Thursday. Pfeiffer’s response to Martin’s admission was scathing: In other words, the autopsy wasn’t released because the political crony that Martin hired to do the job didn’t really do the job. He failed to speak to many of the top decision makers and never really wrestled with the tough questions like Biden’s decision to run for reelection, his age, or the impact of his Gaza policy. The final product was a joke. Not good enough to be released, so Ken Martin just lied about it until he got caught. This is the final straw. Ken Martin is not up to the job, and his continued presence is going to make the DNC woefully ineffective heading into the midterms and then the critical 2028 primaries, where the DNC plays a major role. He should step down for the good of the party, and if he won’t, the DNC should fire him. On the Pod Save America YouTube channel on Thursday, Pfeiffer’s podmates, Favreau and Tommy Vietor, a former national security spokesperson for Obama, suggested that Martin had to go for not just lying about his reasons for not releasing the report, but “gaslighting” critics. Vietor pointed out that the 192-page autopsy included “zero mentions of the word Israel, Palestine or Gaza; not even examining the impact of that issue on the results is crazy.”\nThe former Obama aides suggested that the party could replace Martin with a transitional figure, should he resign before the midterms, and also discussed the odd fact that Martin only came on the podcast to discuss the report after heatedly confronting the hosts in person at a Grindr-sponsored party ahead of this year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner. Among the names they suggested as possible interim leaders of the committee were Roger Lau, a former Elizabeth Warren campaign manager, Addisu Demissie, who has run campaigns for Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker, and Faiz Shakir, a Bernie Sanders advisor who founded More Perfect Union, a progressive nonprofit newsroom. One name they did not put forward was that of Ben Wikler, who ran the Wisconsin Democratic Party from 2019 to 2025 and finished second to Martin in the 2025 election for DNC chair despite the backing of the Pod Save America hosts. Wikler (who, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say I worked with briefly at Air America in 2004) has a new book out in July, titled, “This is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy”.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0faf7f8f08c1daf13f2b79","title":"Missing Republican congressman speaks","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:40:45Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:40:45Z","body":"Republican congressman Tom Kean Jr, who represents New Jersey but has not been seen for more than two months, spoke by phone on Thursday to David Wildstein, a former aide to New Jersey governor Chris Christie who now edits the politics website the New Jersey Globe.
\n“My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” Kean told Wildstein. “I understand the need for public transparency, and I appreciate the support of my constituents.”
\nKean, however, was less than transparent about what condition he is suffering from, merely saying his prognosis is positive, and expects it to have no long-term impact on his physical or cognitive health.
\n“I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll return to voting and to the campaign trail,” said the congressman, who has been quietly running for reelection without being seen or heard for over two months.
\nWildstein came to political journalism late in his career, after a career in politics which ended when he pleaded guilty in 2015 to masterminding the so-called Bridgegate scandal.
\nAccording to Wildstein, he came up with a scheme to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey for refusing to endorse Christie, a Republican, for governor, in which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey blocked lanes of traffic near the George Washington Bridge to flood Fort Lee with traffic.
\nThe Christie administration and the authority said the lanes were closed to study traffic patterns, but an email later made public showed that Christie’s deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, Bridget Anne Kelly, had written to Wildstein the month before the lanes were closed: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”
","cleanBody":"Republican congressman Tom Kean Jr, who represents New Jersey but has not been seen for more than two months, spoke by phone on Thursday to David Wildstein, a former aide to New Jersey governor Chris Christie who now edits the politics website the New Jersey Globe. “My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” Kean told Wildstein. “I understand the need for public transparency, and I appreciate the support of my constituents.” Kean, however, was less than transparent about what condition he is suffering from, merely saying his prognosis is positive, and expects it to have no long-term impact on his physical or cognitive health. “I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll return to voting and to the campaign trail,” said the congressman, who has been quietly running for reelection without being seen or heard for over two months. Wildstein came to political journalism late in his career, after a career in politics which ended when he pleaded guilty in 2015 to masterminding the so-called Bridgegate scandal. According to Wildstein, he came up with a scheme to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey for refusing to endorse Christie, a Republican, for governor, in which the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey blocked lanes of traffic near the George Washington Bridge to flood Fort Lee with traffic. The Christie administration and the authority said the lanes were closed to study traffic patterns, but an email later made public showed that Christie’s deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, Bridget Anne Kelly, had written to Wildstein the month before the lanes were closed: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0fb4378f080414a3d98bdf","title":"Democratic senator calls for investigation into transportion secretary Sean Duffy's 'Great American Road Trip' reality show","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:55:26Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-22T01:58:02Z","body":"Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called for the Department of Transportation’s independent inspector general to open an official investigation into transport secretary Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman, Fox News host and and reality TV star, over his involvement in the Great American Road Trip, a reality TV show starring his family that was paid for by the many of the corporations his agency regulates.
\n“The Secretary of Transportation spent 24 days over several months recording a ridiculous promotional TV show about himself—an all-expense paid vacation—sponsored by the very corporations he is tasked with regulating,” Murray said in a statement. “The companies he regulates—Shell, United, Toyota, Boeing, Royal Caribbean, among others—paid for his family’s vacation.”
\nAlthough the filming of the show was conducted in secret, earlier this month the Department of Transportation released this trailer for the program, which includes a scene in which Duffy takes his children to the location of a home he lived in 1997 as a cast member of MTV’s Real World: Boston. A year later, as a cast member of Road Rules: All Stars, Duffy met his future wife, Rachel Campos, a star of another Real World show.
\nBoth went on to host Fox News shows. In 2024, Rachel Campos Duffy was the Fox & Friends host who asked then presidential candidate Donald Trump if he would pledge to release the Epstein files.
\n“Yeah, I would,” Trump answered, before equivocating. “I guess I would. I think that, less so, because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”
\nThe Fox co-host sitting next to Campos Duffy during that awkward interview, Pete Hegseth, is now the US defense secretary.
","cleanBody":"Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called for the Department of Transportation’s independent inspector general to open an official investigation into transport secretary Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman, Fox News host and and reality TV star, over his involvement in the Great American Road Trip, a reality TV show starring his family that was paid for by the many of the corporations his agency regulates. “The Secretary of Transportation spent 24 days over several months recording a ridiculous promotional TV show about himself—an all-expense paid vacation—sponsored by the very corporations he is tasked with regulating,” Murray said in a statement. “The companies he regulates—Shell, United, Toyota, Boeing, Royal Caribbean, among others—paid for his family’s vacation.” Although the filming of the show was conducted in secret, earlier this month the Department of Transportation released this trailer for the program, which includes a scene in which Duffy takes his children to the location of a home he lived in 1997 as a cast member of MTV’s Real World: Boston. A year later, as a cast member of Road Rules: All Stars, Duffy met his future wife, Rachel Campos, a star of another Real World show.\nBoth went on to host Fox News shows. In 2024, Rachel Campos Duffy was the Fox & Friends host who asked then presidential candidate Donald Trump if he would pledge to release the Epstein files. “Yeah, I would,” Trump answered, before equivocating. “I guess I would. I think that, less so, because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.” The Fox co-host sitting next to Campos Duffy during that awkward interview, Pete Hegseth, is now the US defense secretary.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0fb7b68f089865cf41a98a","title":"Closing summary","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-22T02:00:51Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-22T02:00:51Z","body":"This concludes our live chronicle of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
\nThe three top House Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, called the Republican leadership “cowardly” for cancelling a scheduled vote on a war powers resolution to end US hostilities in Iran that would likely have passed.
\nProgressive House Democrats Ro Khanna and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said they were stunned that a draft 192-page autopsy of the Democratic party’s 2024 election loss did not mention Gaza once.
\nRepublican congressman Tom Kean Jr, who represents New Jersey but has not been seen for more than two months, spoke by phone on Thursday to David Wildstein, a former aide to New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
\nDan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor to Barack Obama who is now a host of the Pod Save America podcast, called on Thursday for the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, to resign or be fired over the botched autopsy of the party’s 2024 election loss.
\nThe Senate refuses to vote on funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement as up to 25 Republican seantors objected to a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Trump’s White House ballroom and his $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
\nThis live blog is now closed.
\nDemocrats belatedly publish 2024 election autopsy report: ‘It won’t meet your standards’
\nA University of Michigan (U-M) student has sued the school, accusing it of violating his constitutional rights when it waged a vast undercover surveillance operation against him in response to his protest of Israel’s war in Gaza.
\nThe lawsuit, filed on Thursday in federal court by Cair-MI and University of Michigan student Josiah Walker, claims the university and individual private investigators conspired to intimidate, terrorize and retaliate against Walker in 2024 and 2025.
\nAccording to the suit, the university and private investigators falsified police reports, manipulated police documents, illegally stalked and assaulted Walker, illegally seized his property and executed “malicious prosecutions” against him. The “targeted and relentless” campaign caused Walker “psychological trauma”, says the suit, which was shared in advance with the Guardian.
\n“He modified his entire way of life because of this,” Cair-MI Amy Doukoure told the Guardian. “He was always in a heightened state of anxiety, and always hyper-vigilant and alert in a way that no college student should be when just going to class or work.”
\nWalker is a leader with Students Allied For Freedom and Equality (Safe), a group affiliated with Student for Justice in Palestine, and a volunteer with the campus Muslim chaplaincy.
\nThe Guardian in June 2025 revealed that University of Michigan had hired dozens of undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian students, trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations. The investigators sometimes threatened students, and one drove a car at Walker who had to jump out of the way, video Walker captured shows.
\nIn two bizarre interactions also captured on video, an undercover investigator who had been trailing Walker faked disabilities, and loudly and falsely accused Walker of attempting to rob him. Three days after the Guardian story ran, the university fired a private investigation firm and apologized for some of the investigators’ actions.
\n\nThe suit alleges that the defendants violated Walker’s right to free speech under the first amendment. It also claims his privacy rights under the fourth and 14th amendments were repeatedly violated, including by police “manipulating and exaggerating” reports to gain access to his Google drive and email. It claims none of the private investigators are permitted under Michigan law to conduct undercover surveillance, rendering the entire operation illegal.
\nIn 2024, the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, brought a case against Walker involving two trespassing charges that, the lawsuit alleges, relied on a falsified trespassing report. According to the lawsuit, Walker was falsely imprisoned over the trespass allegations in violation of his right to due process.
\nThe charges stem from an incident following a May 2024 raid on a Gaza encampment at University of Michigan in which Walker participated, when Walker contacted university police about retrieving seized religious items, like prayer mats.
\nThe suit claims Walker was repeatedly assured by police that he would not face consequences for retrieving the items. But at the station, a U-M officer “abruptly stormed in” and wrote Walker a trespass warning, according to the suit. The university ignored Walker’s requests for a copy of the trespassing report, which the lawsuit alleges was falsified.
\nThe complaint also details an incident in which body-cam footage allegedly reveals officers plotting to arrest Walker for trespassing at a September 2024 campus festival, even if he was doing nothing wrong.
\nAt the festival, officers tackled, beat and arrested Walker, video shows. They charged Walker with resisting arrest and trespassing.
\n“[This] demonstrates a deliberate conspiracy to violate his constitutional rights, punish him for protected speech, and assert state power over student dissent,” the lawsuit states.
\nWalker spent the night in county jail, and the suit alleges the arrest represents one of several instances of false imprisonment. Nessel did not file the resisting charge, and dropped the trespassing charges after the Guardian exposed her connections to U-M leadership who encouraged her to prosecute students, and defense attorneys called for a hearing into potential pro-Israel bias in her investigation.
\nNessel’s dismissal “confirmed what had always been apparent: the case lacked legal merit, was driven by political retaliation, and could not withstand judicial scrutiny”, the lawsuit states.
\nThe suit is one in a wave of legal actions filed by students around the US who allege that their civil rights were violated during universities’ crackdown on campus Gaza protests after 7 October 2023. The University of Maryland and University of California regent have paid damages in two of the cases, while Columbia University was ordered to reverse punishments.
\nWalker’s suit also alleges the university fabricated accusations to gain access to his email after, in 2025, Walker video-recorded an investigator who was tailing him around Ann Arbor at night. The investigator allegedly claimed Walker had “assaulted” him with the camera flash and damaged his eyes.
\nThe suit says assault and injury claims were made “to manufacture probable cause” for warrants to access Walker’s Google account, which contained sensitive personal, religious, academic and political materials, as well as privileged attorney-client information. Walker was not ultimately charged with assault.
\nThe lawsuit contends that University of Michigan has never used the same tactics against other protest movements, like those against the Vietnam war, or in support of reproductive justice or Israel. Only those advocating for Palestinian rights have been surveilled.
\nIn one instance, the suit claims, body-camera footage shows U-M police acknowledging pro-Israel protesters were violating the law and school rules. But police only dispersed and arrested pro-Palestinian counterprotesters, the suit alleges.
\nThe lawsuit asks for monetary damages and punitive measures for the university and private investigators.
\n“We want the university and City Shield [the private investigators] to know they can’t undertake these measures simply because they don’t like the speech being made,” Doukoure said.
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University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on 28 April 2024. 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\nThe Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two separate rules to delay and rescind the limits. The rules must go through an approval process that can take several years, and almost certainly will be challenged in court.
\nThe Trump administration’s plan comes just two years after the US Environmental Protection Agency set legally enforceable drinking water limits for six of the most dangerous Pfas compounds that have been studied. The chemicals include some of the most toxic substances, and are linked to a range of cancers and other serious health problems.
\nThe new Trump plan aims to undo or delay those limits, which public health advocates say would put the nation’s health at risk. Pfas are ubiquitous in the environment and estimated to be contaminating drinking water for more than 200 million people across the US.
\nAt the Monday press conference, the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, and US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, announced the new plan.
\n“The Trump EPA is committed to Make America Healthy Again by ensuring clean air, land, and water – and by taking on Pfas the right way, across the full life cycle and built to last,” Zeldin said in a statement.
\nPFAS are a class of at least 16,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.
\nPublic health advocates in 2024 hailed “historic” limits that would dramatically improve the safety of the nation’s water, and the rules marked the first time in 27 years the EPA had put in place new drinking water limits for contaminants. But the move was fiercely opposed by industry, including those now in leadership positions at the EPA.
\nEPA officials said in 2024 that the limits would reduce Pfas exposure for 100 million people and help prevent thousands of illnesses, including fewer birth-weight related infant deaths, kidney-cancer deaths, bladder-cancer deaths and deaths from cardiovascular disease.
\nPublic health advocates on Monday condemned the EPA.
\n“Zeldin and Kennedy are trying to sell potions out of the back of a covered wagon,” said Dr Anna Reade, director of Pfas advocacy at Natural Resources Defense Council. “The millions of Americans demanding safe drinking water are not going to fall for their hocus pocus.”
\nThe move is widely viewed as at odds with Donald Trump’s pledge to eliminate toxic chemicals from drinking water.
\nKennedy is a leader of the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement, of which eliminating toxic chemicals from food and water is a cornerstone. Maga and Maha have been at odds over the last year as the administration fails to follow through on many of its promises.
\nKennedy defended the delay and rescission of the limits at the press conference.
\n“I’ve read articles in the corporate media that say we’re trying to roll back Pfas protections, but that’s not true,” Kennedy said. He said the administration was putting in place a “clean water mandate”.
\nThe agency in 2024 under Biden set limits of 10 parts per trillion (ppt) for any combination of three Pfas compounds, including PFNA, PfHxS, and HFPO dimer acid, more commonly called GenX. For any combination of those three compounds and PFBS, the agency set a variable limit.
\nThe administration is proposing new rules to rescind those limits and alleged that Biden’s EPA did not follow the correct legal process, moved too quickly in developing the limits, and that the limits would not survive a court challenge. The Trump EPA will “redo” the process to determine if limits should be set for the four chemicals, which Kennedy alleged would save time by avoiding litigation.
\nEPA science showed that no level of exposure to Pfoa and Pfos in drinking water is safe, and the agency in 2022 set non-enforceable advisory health limits of 0.02 ppt and 0.004 ppt, respectively.
\nThe Biden administration in 2024 set drinking water limits of four ppt for the two compounds, in part because that is the level at which technology can reliably detect them. The EPA said it would give utilities two extra years, until 2031, to comply with the standards.
","atomsCSS":[],"shouldHideReaderRevenue":false,"discussionId":"/p/x54a2m","section":"US news","id":"us-news/2026/may/18/trump-administration-epa-pfas-water","displayImages":[{"urlTemplate":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d99cf8597347c3ab85ffd4e6d88db282aca50d8a/0_0_3316_2156/master/3316.jpg?w=#{width}&h=#{height}&q=#{quality}&fit=bounds&sig-ignores-params=true&s=fb68c34924d0aa57f7e389d773c1522d","height":2156,"width":3316,"orientation":"landscape","caption":"The plan comes just two years after the EPA set legally enforceable limits for six of the most dangerous Pfas compounds. Photograph: Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA","credit":"Rui Vieira/PA","altText":"A chrome tap with water flowing from it, photographed close-up with a blurred tiled background","cleanCaption":"The plan comes just two years after the EPA set legally enforceable limits for six of the most dangerous Pfas compounds.","cleanCredit":"Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA"}],"shouldHideAdverts":false,"standFirst":"EPA outlines effort to kill Biden-era rules as critics condemn RFK Jr and Lee Zeldin’s ‘hocus pocus’
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\nRecent research has found EtO is about 60 times more carcinogenic than thought when the last regulations were developed in 2006. In 2024, the Biden EPA passed a rule that strengthened the regulations to reflect the updated science, and required the nation’s EtO emitters to collectively cut their emissions by about 90%.
\nA new Harvard analysis details the administration’s case, which would limit the EPA’s ability to strengthen regulations when it determines hazardous air pollutants are more dangerous than previously thought.
\n\nIf the Trump EPA is successful in the legal fight, the 2024 regulations would be rescinded, resulting in nearly 8 tons of the carcinogenic gas continuing to be released in largely low-income neighborhoods. It would also permanently make it more difficult for the EPA to later protect people from toxic air pollutants.
\nThe move is part of the industry’s and the administration’s “broader strategy to roll back a wide array of controls on toxic chemicals and, particularly, carcinogens”, said Erik Olson, senior adviser with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
\n“This sends up a signal flare to everyone that we’ve got a real threat, and that the administration plans to gut cancer protections,” Olson said. The NRDC is among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit on a separate issue around the chemical.
\nThe outcome of its plan is especially important, public health advocates say, because of how regulations around chemicals are structured. Chemicals are generally approved with little review of industry claims that their substances are safe, and it can take independent science decades to learn the true risk, as has happened with EtO.
\nIt would also probably undo regulations, or proposed rules, around two other chemicals.
\nEtO is a flammable, colorless gas used to sterilize about 20bn medical devices annually, including pacemakers and syringes, as well as some foods. The chemical is also a potent carcinogen when inhaled, and linked to leukemia, among other health issues. Rescinding the new rule would leave about 2.3 million people exposed to the toxic gas.
\nThe 2024 Biden EPA rule would have reduced emissions at 89 facilities, had they gone into effect. The rule would have achieved that by, among other measures, requiring companies to use continuous monitoring and rein in fugitive emissions. Fugitive emission is air pollution that escapes from piping or places within a factory from which they are not intended to escape.
\nThe Trump administration’s proposed rescission would save companies $50m annually, the Harvard report notes. The agency did not calculate the costs associated with cancer increases, so the societal burden is unclear.
\nThe Clean Air Act explicitly requires the EPA to do a “residual risk review” of toxic chemicals within eight years after they are designated as hazardous pollutants. The agency first set emission standards for EtO in 1994, and completed its residual review in 2006, said Giancarlo Vargas, the paper’s co-author and attorney with the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program.
\nMore recent research shows the chemical is estimated to be 60 times more carcinogenic than levels used in the 2006 reassessment, Vargas said, so the EPA under Biden did a “discretionary” review aimed at strengthening limits and protecting public health.
\nThe Clean Air Act, however, “doesn’t really discuss whether you can do additional discretionary reviews” beyond the first that checks for a pollutant’s health impact, Vargas said. Under Biden, the EPA essentially interpreted the law as not prohibiting additional reviews, but the Trump administration is “now saying actually the silence means we don’t have the authority to go do this again”, Vargas said.
\nIt was a “big change” that would “rein in the EPA’s ability to consider public health risks when updating hazardous air pollutant standards”, Vargas added.
\nHe said he could not speak to why the EPA would want to do this, and the paper dissects the legal strategy, but does not take a position about whether the Trump EPA’s actions were sound or ethical.
\nThe agency is required by the Clean Air Act to do a technical review every eight years that assesses whether the best available technology around a chemical is being used, but that does not directly include public health questions.
\nThe administration’s action around EtO is “part of a broader pattern of authority limiting interpretations by the EPA”, said Erika Kranz, a supervisor at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program.
\n“We’ve seen EPA in other contexts during this administration also adopt these new statutory interpretations that limit the agency’s authority,” she said, noting the administration’s recent, controversial endangerment finding.
\nThe stakes in the legal battle are especially high because “this is locked in in the future – the EPA can’t take a new interpretation of that statute,” Kranz added.
\nMeanwhile, the NRDC is suing to stop the Trump administration from exempting EtO and other chemicals from regulations under the hazardous air pollutant rule. The president is wielding a never-before-used provision in the law that allows for exemptions for national security purposes, or if technology to implement the rule is “not available”.
\nThe move exempted about half of all commercial medical sterilizers from EtO standards, but the administration has not provided any evidence to support the decision, the NRDC alleges.
\n“President Trump’s exemptions of chemical plants from regulations of hazardous air pollutants not only sacrifice the health of communities, but they are also illegal and undemocratic,” Jen Sass, NRDC’s senior scientist, said in a statement.
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The president noted that he had a “great relationship” with Xi, and noted that there had been no ships from Iran to China, despite the country’s reliance on Iranian oil.
\nSeventeen tech and finance executives will join the president this week in Beijing, a White House official confirmed to the Guardian. Notably, the president’s on-off again ally Elon Musk will be in attendance, as well as outgoing CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Dina Powell McCormick of Meta and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg.
\nTrump also pledged to suspend the US federal gas tax in a bid to reduce pressure on Americans after the US-Israel war on Iran sparked a sharp rise in fuel prices. The president told reporters on Monday that his administration would look to pause the tax “till it’s appropriate”, as the price at the pump continues to spike. Trump did not note that it would require congressional approval to scrap the tax, which raises about $500m each week for the federal government.
\nThe suspect accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last month at a gala in Washington has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Cole Tomas Allen did not speak in court on Monday as his attorney entered the plea on his behalf. The charges against him include attempted assassination of the president, assault on a federal officer and firearms offenses.
\nChuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has vowed that Democrats will limit GOP leaders in Congress from passing a budget bill that confers $72bn for federal immigration enforcement, which includes $1bn for security measures for Donald Trump’s ballroom project. “Democrats will fight the Republicans’ reconciliation bill with every tool we have,” Schumer wrote in a Dear Colleague letter, and noted that lawmakers plan to challenge the legislation by claiming that some of its provisions violate the Byrd rule, and are extraneous and not actually budgetary.
\nThis concludes our chronicle of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Tuesday. Here are the latest developments:
\nBy a 6-3 vote along partisan lines, the Republican-dominated US supreme court granted Alabama’s request to vacate a federal court order barring the state from using a Congressional map drawn to eliminate a majority-Black district.
\nDonald Trump once again nominated Cameron Hamilton to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) just over a year after Hamilton was fired for publicly opposing plans to abolish the agency.
\nVirginia Democrats filed an emergency application to the US supreme court on Monday, asking the Republican-dominated body to set aside a state court decision and permit Virginia to use a new map of congressional districts for this years’s midterms that was approved by voters in a referendum last month.
\nThe US supreme court extended a short-term order to continue allowing nationwide access to mail-order mifepristone, an abortion medication, in a shadow-docket decision on Monday.
\nChuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, vowed that Democrats will block Republicans from passing a bill that confers $72bn for federal immigration enforcement, which includes $1bn for security measures for Trump’s ballroom.
\nSeventeen tech and finance executives will join the president this week in Beijing, a White House official confirmed to the Guardian. Elon Musk will be in attendance, as well as Apple’s Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Dina Powell McCormick of Meta and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg.
\nIn a rambling set of remarks to administration officials and law enforcement officers gathered for dinner on the patio that used to be the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump said he was taking a night off from trying to stop the war he started with Iran and instead boasted about his cut-rate renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, the $1bn ballroom he is building where the demolished East Wing of the White House used to be, and claimed that before he arrived the White House was “a shit house”.
\nTrump also repeatedly claimed that the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is “called the reflective pond”.
\nHe went on to survey the assembled diners about whether they would like JD Vance or Marco Rubio better as the 2028 Republican nominee for president.
","cleanBody":"In a rambling set of remarks to administration officials and law enforcement officers gathered for dinner on the patio that used to be the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump said he was taking a night off from trying to stop the war he started with Iran and instead boasted about his cut-rate renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, the $1bn ballroom he is building where the demolished East Wing of the White House used to be, and claimed that before he arrived the White House was “a shit house”. Trump also repeatedly claimed that the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is “called the reflective pond”. He went on to survey the assembled diners about whether they would like JD Vance or Marco Rubio better as the 2028 Republican nominee for president.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a027f2e8f087a8ca7130154","title":"'We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow', NAACP president says of supreme court ruling on Alabama","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:32:15Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:32:14Z","body":"The NAACP’s president, Derrick Johnson, has described the US supreme court ruling on Monday, allowing Alabama to change its congressional map to eliminate at least one Black-majority district, as “madness”.
\n“We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow,” Johnson said. “And anybody who is alarmed by these developments—as everybody should be—better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can.”
","cleanBody":"The NAACP’s president, Derrick Johnson, has described the US supreme court ruling on Monday, allowing Alabama to change its congressional map to eliminate at least one Black-majority district, as “madness”. “We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow,” Johnson said. “And anybody who is alarmed by these developments—as everybody should be—better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a02683d8f087a8ca71300da","title":"Banners thanking Trump for Washington DC renovations use image of him inspecting Federal Reserve renovation he derided","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-12T00:51:19Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:06:36Z","body":"Banners hung across Washington DC by the Trump administration, thanking Donald Trump for publicly funded improvements to federal parks, feature an image of the president inspecting the renovation of the Federal Reserve, a project he has derided as a massive waste of money that could be a crime.
\n![\"A](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/a7fc5b1a6dbe1cd76b9f4d85036cc85734ada677/0_0_6195_4130/1000.jpg\")
\n The banners, compared to North Korea-style agitprop by critics in a city that voted 90% for his opponent in 2024, show Trump in a white hard hat walking along construction scaffolding draped in orange tape, with the words, “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP” printed on the blue sky above him.
\n![\"Crews](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/65759426e8b8e637d070665c129d0838c6512e7a/0_0_5000_3333/1000.jpg\")
\n It is strange, then, that the National Park Service, which apparently produced the banners to cover fencing around sites the president is spending taxpayer money to renovate, chose a photograph of Trump taken on 24 July 2025, during the president’s antagonistic tour of the Federal Reserve renovation with Jerome Powell, the chairman he was trying to bully into lowering interest rates.
\nThe photograph was posted on the official White House Flickr account to commemorate the intensely awkward visit, during which the president made a point of confronting the chairman with false information about the cost of the renovation.
\n![\"Donald](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/4cb9572906e71a45dbf46326a835d3becfb98390/0_0_2048_1365/1000.jpg\")
\n After Powell resisted Trump’s demands to lower interest rates, despite the ongoing threat of inflation, the president’s justice department opened an investigation of the Federal Reserve chairman over the alleged “abuse of taxpayer dollars”.
\nWhen the Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen shared a photograph of one of the banners that had been “modified by local residents”, who used orange spray paint to change the slogan to “FUCK PRESIDENT TRUMP”, and transform the hard hat to a penis, the most popular comment on the post was: “Not modified, fixed.”
","cleanBody":"Banners hung across Washington DC by the Trump administration, thanking Donald Trump for publicly funded improvements to federal parks, feature an image of the president inspecting the renovation of the Federal Reserve, a project he has derided as a massive waste of money that could be a crime.\nThe banners, compared to North Korea-style agitprop by critics in a city that voted 90% for his opponent in 2024, show Trump in a white hard hat walking along construction scaffolding draped in orange tape, with the words, “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP” printed on the blue sky above him.\nIt is strange, then, that the National Park Service, which apparently produced the banners to cover fencing around sites the president is spending taxpayer money to renovate, chose a photograph of Trump taken on 24 July 2025, during the president’s antagonistic tour of the Federal Reserve renovation with Jerome Powell, the chairman he was trying to bully into lowering interest rates. The photograph was posted on the official White House Flickr account to commemorate the intensely awkward visit, during which the president made a point of confronting the chairman with false information about the cost of the renovation.\nAfter Powell resisted Trump’s demands to lower interest rates, despite the ongoing threat of inflation, the president’s justice department opened an investigation of the Federal Reserve chairman over the alleged “abuse of taxpayer dollars”. When the Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen shared a photograph of one of the banners that had been “modified by local residents”, who used orange spray paint to change the slogan to “FUCK PRESIDENT TRUMP”, and transform the hard hat to a penis, the most popular comment on the post was: “Not modified, fixed.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0260f48f087a8ca71300c6","title":"Trump nominates election deniers Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake to be US ambassadors","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-12T00:39:30Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T00:39:29Z","body":"In a slate of nominations sent to the Senate on Monday, Donald Trump asked senators to confirm two prominent supporters of his lie that he won the 2020 presidential election, Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake, as US ambassadors.
\nMastriano, a chemtrail conspiracy theorist who was at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 and then suffered a landslide loss in the 2022 race to be governor of Pennsylvania , was nominated to be the top US diplomat in Slovakia.
\nLake, a former television news anchor who claimed that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump, and disputed her own 2022 loss in the race to be Arizona’s governor, was nominated to represent the United States in Jamaica.
\nOther nominees sent to the Senate on Monday included: Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Brett Matsumoto, to replace Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner the president fired last year after she reported a drop in employment; and his third pick to be Surgeon General, Dr Nicole Saphier, a Fox News contributor who replaces the withdrawn nominee Casey Means, a wellness influencer who had in turn replaced the first nominee, former Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat.
","cleanBody":"In a slate of nominations sent to the Senate on Monday, Donald Trump asked senators to confirm two prominent supporters of his lie that he won the 2020 presidential election, Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake, as US ambassadors. Mastriano, a chemtrail conspiracy theorist who was at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 and then suffered a landslide loss in the 2022 race to be governor of Pennsylvania , was nominated to be the top US diplomat in Slovakia. Lake, a former television news anchor who claimed that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump, and disputed her own 2022 loss in the race to be Arizona’s governor, was nominated to represent the United States in Jamaica. Other nominees sent to the Senate on Monday included: Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Brett Matsumoto, to replace Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner the president fired last year after she reported a drop in employment; and his third pick to be Surgeon General, Dr Nicole Saphier, a Fox News contributor who replaces the withdrawn nominee Casey Means, a wellness influencer who had in turn replaced the first nominee, former Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0264148f08f695b7fc203f","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-11T23:36:59Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-11T23:36:58Z","body":"In a procedural vote, the Senate moved to advance the nomination of Kevin Warsh to be a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of fourteen years from February 1, 2026.
\nThe 49-44 vote, with the support of two Democrats, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Chris Coons of Delaware, moves Donald Trump’s pick to chair the Federal Reserve a step closer to a seat on the board.
\nA vote on his nomination as chair will follow.
\nSenator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, had previously promised to block Warsh’s nomination unless a politically motivated criminal investigation into the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, was dropped.
\nAfter the US attorney for the District of Columbia, former Fox host Jeanine Pirro, said that the investigation was over, for now, Tillis said that he would support Warsh.
\n“I take the Department of Justice at its word: the investigation is closed,” Tillis said in a statement.
","cleanBody":"In a procedural vote, the Senate moved to advance the nomination of Kevin Warsh to be a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of fourteen years from February 1, 2026. The 49-44 vote, with the support of two Democrats, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Chris Coons of Delaware, moves Donald Trump’s pick to chair the Federal Reserve a step closer to a seat on the board. A vote on his nomination as chair will follow. Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, had previously promised to block Warsh’s nomination unless a politically motivated criminal investigation into the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, was dropped. After the US attorney for the District of Columbia, former Fox host Jeanine Pirro, said that the investigation was over, for now, Tillis said that he would support Warsh. “I take the Department of Justice at its word: the investigation is closed,” Tillis said in a statement.","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0253038f087a8ca7130075","title":"US supreme court clears the way for Alabama to eliminate majority-Black congressional district","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-11T22:29:11Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:58:28Z","body":"By a 6-3 vote along partisan lines, the Republican-dominated US supreme court granted Alabama’s request to vacate a federal court order barring the state from using a congressional map drawn to eliminate a majority-Black district, which violated the 14th amendment to the US constitution by discriminating against Black voters.
\nAlabama argued that it should be free to ignore the court order based on a supreme court ruling last month that struck down a majority-Black US House district in Louisiana as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, gutting a key achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement, the federal Voting Rights Act.
\nThe high court agreed and overturned that order, directing a lower district court to reconsider the case in light of the Louisiana decision. That could free the state to instead use a map approved in 2023 by the Republican-led legislature that includes only one district where Black residents comprise a majority.
\nAnticipating a court reversal, Alabama officials recently enacted a law allowing it to void the results of a primary election scheduled for next week for some congressional districts and instead hold a new primary under the revised district boundaries.
\nLast week, Alabama’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, signed two bills to authorize her to call a special election in certain congressional and state senate districts in anticipation of a favorable supreme court ruling in the state’s ongoing redistricting litigation.
\nJustices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all nominated by Democratic presidents, dissented from the ruling. In addition to holding that Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the justices noted, the District Court held “that Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama.”
\n“That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by,” they added, “any of the legal issues discussed in Callais,” the Louisiana case.
\nThe justices also noted that just three years ago, the supreme court had “affirmed the District Court’s order instructing Alabama to remedy this identified racial discrimination by drawing a new map containing two districts in which Black voters would have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice”.
\nThey went on to note that the district court’s “finding of discriminatory intent,” was based on “a comprehensive examination of Alabama’s transparent, intentional attempt to limit Black voting power”.
","cleanBody":"By a 6-3 vote along partisan lines, the Republican-dominated US supreme court granted Alabama’s request to vacate a federal court order barring the state from using a congressional map drawn to eliminate a majority-Black district, which violated the 14th amendment to the US constitution by discriminating against Black voters. Alabama argued that it should be free to ignore the court order based on a supreme court ruling last month that struck down a majority-Black US House district in Louisiana as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, gutting a key achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement, the federal Voting Rights Act. The high court agreed and overturned that order, directing a lower district court to reconsider the case in light of the Louisiana decision. That could free the state to instead use a map approved in 2023 by the Republican-led legislature that includes only one district where Black residents comprise a majority. Anticipating a court reversal, Alabama officials recently enacted a law allowing it to void the results of a primary election scheduled for next week for some congressional districts and instead hold a new primary under the revised district boundaries. Last week, Alabama’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, signed two bills to authorize her to call a special election in certain congressional and state senate districts in anticipation of a favorable supreme court ruling in the state’s ongoing redistricting litigation. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all nominated by Democratic presidents, dissented from the ruling. In addition to holding that Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the justices noted, the District Court held “that Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama.” “That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by,” they added, “any of the legal issues discussed in Callais,” the Louisiana case. The justices also noted that just three years ago, the supreme court had “affirmed the District Court’s order instructing Alabama to remedy this identified racial discrimination by drawing a new map containing two districts in which Black voters would have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice”. They went on to note that the district court’s “finding of discriminatory intent,” was based on “a comprehensive examination of Alabama’s transparent, intentional attempt to limit Black voting power”.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a024ea88f08d0fd2ca4ce68","title":"Meet the new Fema boss, same as the old Fema boss","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-11T22:01:44Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T07:29:29Z","body":"As our colleague Maya Yang reports, Donald Trump has once again nominated Cameron Hamilton to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) just over a year after Hamilton was fired for publicly opposing plans to abolish the agency.
\nDuring a House oversight hearing on 7 May 2025, Hamilton, then the acting administrator of the disaster relief agency was asked by representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, whether he agreed with plans floated by the president and his homeland secretary at the time, Kristi Noem, to eliminate Fema.
\nHamilton asked the appropriations committee’s chair, the Republican Tom Cole, if he had to answer the question.
\n“I’m not going to let you off that easy,” Cole replied.
\n“As the senior adviser to the president on disasters and emergency management,” Hamilton answered, measuring his words carefully, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
\nTwenty-four hours later, Hamilton was no longer leading the agency and was replaced by David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who was serving as an assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. Richardson, who had no experience in managing responses to natural disasters, resigned six months ago after intense criticism of his handling of deadly floods in Texas.
\nHamilton, a former Navy SEAL who worked for a defense contractor and ran unsuccessfully for Congress, also has limited disaster management experience.
","cleanBody":"As our colleague Maya Yang reports, Donald Trump has once again nominated Cameron Hamilton to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) just over a year after Hamilton was fired for publicly opposing plans to abolish the agency. During a House oversight hearing on 7 May 2025, Hamilton, then the acting administrator of the disaster relief agency was asked by representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, whether he agreed with plans floated by the president and his homeland secretary at the time, Kristi Noem, to eliminate Fema. Hamilton asked the appropriations committee’s chair, the Republican Tom Cole, if he had to answer the question. “I’m not going to let you off that easy,” Cole replied. “As the senior adviser to the president on disasters and emergency management,” Hamilton answered, measuring his words carefully, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Twenty-four hours later, Hamilton was no longer leading the agency and was replaced by David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who was serving as an assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. Richardson, who had no experience in managing responses to natural disasters, resigned six months ago after intense criticism of his handling of deadly floods in Texas. Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL who worked for a defense contractor and ran unsuccessfully for Congress, also has limited disaster management experience.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a02430a8f08f695b7fc1f7c","title":"Trump administration plans to reduce tariffs on beef imports until after midterms – reports","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-11T21:21:57Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:56:50Z","body":"Faced with rising anger over inflation as his war on Iran sends fuel and fertilizer costs soaring and beef prices reach record-highs in the US, Donald Trump plans to temporarily reduce tariffs on imported steaks and ground beef, at least until after the midterm elections in November, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Politico.
\nThe Journal reports that the cuts to tariffs on beef imports could come as soon as Monday, by suspending “the annual tariff-rate quota – which applies a higher tariff rate after a certain level of beef imports are reached – on all beef-exporting nations”, enabling Americans to buy more imported beef at lower tariff rates.
\nAccording to Politico, the planned reduction in tariffs on beef imports is for 200 days, which could lower prices for American consumers until a few weeks after they vote in the midterm elections that Trump’s Republican allies in Congress are in danger of losing.
\nThe cut in tariffs on imported beef is likely to anger US cattle ranchers.
\nThe administration reportedly plans to placate domestic cattle ranchers by removing a number of regulations intended to protect endangered species, including gray and Mexican wolves, and a new USDA rule that requires electronic ear tags on livestock intended to help limit disease outbreak impact.
\nOne Congressional Republican told Politico reporter Meredith Lee Hill the measure to cut tariffs on imported beef was “a shit sandwich”, and called the other policies mere “window dressing”.
","cleanBody":"Faced with rising anger over inflation as his war on Iran sends fuel and fertilizer costs soaring and beef prices reach record-highs in the US, Donald Trump plans to temporarily reduce tariffs on imported steaks and ground beef, at least until after the midterm elections in November, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and Politico. The Journal reports that the cuts to tariffs on beef imports could come as soon as Monday, by suspending “the annual tariff-rate quota – which applies a higher tariff rate after a certain level of beef imports are reached – on all beef-exporting nations”, enabling Americans to buy more imported beef at lower tariff rates. According to Politico, the planned reduction in tariffs on beef imports is for 200 days, which could lower prices for American consumers until a few weeks after they vote in the midterm elections that Trump’s Republican allies in Congress are in danger of losing. The cut in tariffs on imported beef is likely to anger US cattle ranchers. The administration reportedly plans to placate domestic cattle ranchers by removing a number of regulations intended to protect endangered species, including gray and Mexican wolves, and a new USDA rule that requires electronic ear tags on livestock intended to help limit disease outbreak impact. One Congressional Republican told Politico reporter Meredith Lee Hill the measure to cut tariffs on imported beef was “a shit sandwich”, and called the other policies mere “window dressing”.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a02381e8f08f695b7fc1f1c","title":"Virginia Democrats ask Republican-dominated US supreme court to restore congressional map designed to boost Democrats","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-11T20:35:24Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-11T20:38:14Z","body":"Virginia Democrats filed an emergency application to the US supreme court on Monday, asking the Republican-dominated body to set aside a state court decision and permit Virginia to use a new map of congressional districts for this years’s midterms that was approved by voters in a referendum last month.
\nThe map was thrown out by Virginia’s supreme court last week.
\nVirginia’s supreme court ruled that the state cannot use new congressional maps approved by voters to help Democrats gain as many as four new seats in the US House of Representatives, handing Republicans a major win ahead of November’s midterm elections.
\nIn a 4-3 decision, the court found that the state’s general assembly did not follow the appropriate constitutional procedure in approving the map, which voters then passed in a referendum last month.
\n“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the court wrote.
\nThe ruling was a setback for Democrats’ efforts nationwide to counter gerrymanders approved by Republican-led states that may oust Democratic House representatives and boost the odds Donald Trump’s allies retain their majority in Congress’s lower chamber in the November midterm elections.
\nThe Virginia Democrats, led by Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia house of delegates, told the justices in a filing that the state court’s ruling has “deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts”.
\nThe lawmakers cited a 2023 supreme court ruling that warned that state courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”
","cleanBody":"Virginia Democrats filed an emergency application to the US supreme court on Monday, asking the Republican-dominated body to set aside a state court decision and permit Virginia to use a new map of congressional districts for this years’s midterms that was approved by voters in a referendum last month. The map was thrown out by Virginia’s supreme court last week. Virginia’s supreme court ruled that the state cannot use new congressional maps approved by voters to help Democrats gain as many as four new seats in the US House of Representatives, handing Republicans a major win ahead of November’s midterm elections. In a 4-3 decision, the court found that the state’s general assembly did not follow the appropriate constitutional procedure in approving the map, which voters then passed in a referendum last month. “This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the court wrote. The ruling was a setback for Democrats’ efforts nationwide to counter gerrymanders approved by Republican-led states that may oust Democratic House representatives and boost the odds Donald Trump’s allies retain their majority in Congress’s lower chamber in the November midterm elections. The Virginia Democrats, led by Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia house of delegates, told the justices in a filing that the state court’s ruling has “deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts”. The lawmakers cited a 2023 supreme court ruling that warned that state courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]}],"keyEvents":[{"id":"block-6a0233618f08d0fd2ca4cd95","title":"Here's a recap of the day so far","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-11T20:02:36Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-11T20:13:10Z","body":"Ahead of travelling to China on Tuesday, Trump said that he hoped to get “a lot” out of his meeting with Xi Jinping. The president noted that he had a “great relationship” with Xi, and noted that there had been no ships from Iran to China, despite the country’s reliance on Iranian oil.
\nSeventeen tech and finance executives will join the president this week in Beijing, a White House official confirmed to the Guardian. Notably, the president’s on-off again ally Elon Musk will be in attendance, as well as outgoing CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Dina Powell McCormick of Meta and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg.
\nTrump also pledged to suspend the US federal gas tax in a bid to reduce pressure on Americans after the US-Israel war on Iran sparked a sharp rise in fuel prices. The president told reporters on Monday that his administration would look to pause the tax “till it’s appropriate”, as the price at the pump continues to spike. Trump did not note that it would require congressional approval to scrap the tax, which raises about $500m each week for the federal government.
\nThe suspect accused of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last month at a gala in Washington has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Cole Tomas Allen did not speak in court on Monday as his attorney entered the plea on his behalf. The charges against him include attempted assassination of the president, assault on a federal officer and firearms offenses.
\nChuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has vowed that Democrats will limit GOP leaders in Congress from passing a budget bill that confers $72bn for federal immigration enforcement, which includes $1bn for security measures for Donald Trump’s ballroom project. “Democrats will fight the Republicans’ reconciliation bill with every tool we have,” Schumer wrote in a Dear Colleague letter, and noted that lawmakers plan to challenge the legislation by claiming that some of its provisions violate the Byrd rule, and are extraneous and not actually budgetary.
\nBy a 6-3 vote along partisan lines, the Republican-dominated US supreme court granted Alabama’s request to vacate a federal court order barring the state from using a congressional map drawn to eliminate a majority-Black district, which violated the 14th amendment to the US constitution by discriminating against Black voters.
\nAlabama argued that it should be free to ignore the court order based on a supreme court ruling last month that struck down a majority-Black US House district in Louisiana as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, gutting a key achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement, the federal Voting Rights Act.
\nThe high court agreed and overturned that order, directing a lower district court to reconsider the case in light of the Louisiana decision. That could free the state to instead use a map approved in 2023 by the Republican-led legislature that includes only one district where Black residents comprise a majority.
\nAnticipating a court reversal, Alabama officials recently enacted a law allowing it to void the results of a primary election scheduled for next week for some congressional districts and instead hold a new primary under the revised district boundaries.
\nLast week, Alabama’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, signed two bills to authorize her to call a special election in certain congressional and state senate districts in anticipation of a favorable supreme court ruling in the state’s ongoing redistricting litigation.
\nJustices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all nominated by Democratic presidents, dissented from the ruling. In addition to holding that Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the justices noted, the District Court held “that Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama.”
\n“That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by,” they added, “any of the legal issues discussed in Callais,” the Louisiana case.
\nThe justices also noted that just three years ago, the supreme court had “affirmed the District Court’s order instructing Alabama to remedy this identified racial discrimination by drawing a new map containing two districts in which Black voters would have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice”.
\nThey went on to note that the district court’s “finding of discriminatory intent,” was based on “a comprehensive examination of Alabama’s transparent, intentional attempt to limit Black voting power”.
","cleanBody":"By a 6-3 vote along partisan lines, the Republican-dominated US supreme court granted Alabama’s request to vacate a federal court order barring the state from using a congressional map drawn to eliminate a majority-Black district, which violated the 14th amendment to the US constitution by discriminating against Black voters. Alabama argued that it should be free to ignore the court order based on a supreme court ruling last month that struck down a majority-Black US House district in Louisiana as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, gutting a key achievement of the 1960s civil rights movement, the federal Voting Rights Act. The high court agreed and overturned that order, directing a lower district court to reconsider the case in light of the Louisiana decision. That could free the state to instead use a map approved in 2023 by the Republican-led legislature that includes only one district where Black residents comprise a majority. Anticipating a court reversal, Alabama officials recently enacted a law allowing it to void the results of a primary election scheduled for next week for some congressional districts and instead hold a new primary under the revised district boundaries. Last week, Alabama’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, signed two bills to authorize her to call a special election in certain congressional and state senate districts in anticipation of a favorable supreme court ruling in the state’s ongoing redistricting litigation. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all nominated by Democratic presidents, dissented from the ruling. In addition to holding that Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the justices noted, the District Court held “that Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama.” “That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by,” they added, “any of the legal issues discussed in Callais,” the Louisiana case. The justices also noted that just three years ago, the supreme court had “affirmed the District Court’s order instructing Alabama to remedy this identified racial discrimination by drawing a new map containing two districts in which Black voters would have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice”. They went on to note that the district court’s “finding of discriminatory intent,” was based on “a comprehensive examination of Alabama’s transparent, intentional attempt to limit Black voting power”.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0260f48f087a8ca71300c6","title":"Trump nominates election deniers Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake to be US ambassadors","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-12T00:39:30Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T00:39:29Z","body":"In a slate of nominations sent to the Senate on Monday, Donald Trump asked senators to confirm two prominent supporters of his lie that he won the 2020 presidential election, Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake, as US ambassadors.
\nMastriano, a chemtrail conspiracy theorist who was at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 and then suffered a landslide loss in the 2022 race to be governor of Pennsylvania , was nominated to be the top US diplomat in Slovakia.
\nLake, a former television news anchor who claimed that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump, and disputed her own 2022 loss in the race to be Arizona’s governor, was nominated to represent the United States in Jamaica.
\nOther nominees sent to the Senate on Monday included: Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Brett Matsumoto, to replace Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner the president fired last year after she reported a drop in employment; and his third pick to be Surgeon General, Dr Nicole Saphier, a Fox News contributor who replaces the withdrawn nominee Casey Means, a wellness influencer who had in turn replaced the first nominee, former Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat.
","cleanBody":"In a slate of nominations sent to the Senate on Monday, Donald Trump asked senators to confirm two prominent supporters of his lie that he won the 2020 presidential election, Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake, as US ambassadors. Mastriano, a chemtrail conspiracy theorist who was at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 and then suffered a landslide loss in the 2022 race to be governor of Pennsylvania , was nominated to be the top US diplomat in Slovakia. Lake, a former television news anchor who claimed that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump, and disputed her own 2022 loss in the race to be Arizona’s governor, was nominated to represent the United States in Jamaica. Other nominees sent to the Senate on Monday included: Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Brett Matsumoto, to replace Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner the president fired last year after she reported a drop in employment; and his third pick to be Surgeon General, Dr Nicole Saphier, a Fox News contributor who replaces the withdrawn nominee Casey Means, a wellness influencer who had in turn replaced the first nominee, former Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a02683d8f087a8ca71300da","title":"Banners thanking Trump for Washington DC renovations use image of him inspecting Federal Reserve renovation he derided","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-12T00:51:19Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:06:36Z","body":"Banners hung across Washington DC by the Trump administration, thanking Donald Trump for publicly funded improvements to federal parks, feature an image of the president inspecting the renovation of the Federal Reserve, a project he has derided as a massive waste of money that could be a crime.
\n\n The banners, compared to North Korea-style agitprop by critics in a city that voted 90% for his opponent in 2024, show Trump in a white hard hat walking along construction scaffolding draped in orange tape, with the words, “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP” printed on the blue sky above him.
\n\n It is strange, then, that the National Park Service, which apparently produced the banners to cover fencing around sites the president is spending taxpayer money to renovate, chose a photograph of Trump taken on 24 July 2025, during the president’s antagonistic tour of the Federal Reserve renovation with Jerome Powell, the chairman he was trying to bully into lowering interest rates.
\nThe photograph was posted on the official White House Flickr account to commemorate the intensely awkward visit, during which the president made a point of confronting the chairman with false information about the cost of the renovation.
\n\n After Powell resisted Trump’s demands to lower interest rates, despite the ongoing threat of inflation, the president’s justice department opened an investigation of the Federal Reserve chairman over the alleged “abuse of taxpayer dollars”.
\nWhen the Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen shared a photograph of one of the banners that had been “modified by local residents”, who used orange spray paint to change the slogan to “FUCK PRESIDENT TRUMP”, and transform the hard hat to a penis, the most popular comment on the post was: “Not modified, fixed.”
","cleanBody":"Banners hung across Washington DC by the Trump administration, thanking Donald Trump for publicly funded improvements to federal parks, feature an image of the president inspecting the renovation of the Federal Reserve, a project he has derided as a massive waste of money that could be a crime.\nThe banners, compared to North Korea-style agitprop by critics in a city that voted 90% for his opponent in 2024, show Trump in a white hard hat walking along construction scaffolding draped in orange tape, with the words, “Thank you, PRESIDENT TRUMP” printed on the blue sky above him.\nIt is strange, then, that the National Park Service, which apparently produced the banners to cover fencing around sites the president is spending taxpayer money to renovate, chose a photograph of Trump taken on 24 July 2025, during the president’s antagonistic tour of the Federal Reserve renovation with Jerome Powell, the chairman he was trying to bully into lowering interest rates. The photograph was posted on the official White House Flickr account to commemorate the intensely awkward visit, during which the president made a point of confronting the chairman with false information about the cost of the renovation.\nAfter Powell resisted Trump’s demands to lower interest rates, despite the ongoing threat of inflation, the president’s justice department opened an investigation of the Federal Reserve chairman over the alleged “abuse of taxpayer dollars”. When the Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen shared a photograph of one of the banners that had been “modified by local residents”, who used orange spray paint to change the slogan to “FUCK PRESIDENT TRUMP”, and transform the hard hat to a penis, the most popular comment on the post was: “Not modified, fixed.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a027f2e8f087a8ca7130154","title":"'We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow', NAACP president says of supreme court ruling on Alabama","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:32:15Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:32:14Z","body":"The NAACP’s president, Derrick Johnson, has described the US supreme court ruling on Monday, allowing Alabama to change its congressional map to eliminate at least one Black-majority district, as “madness”.
\n“We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow,” Johnson said. “And anybody who is alarmed by these developments—as everybody should be—better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can.”
","cleanBody":"The NAACP’s president, Derrick Johnson, has described the US supreme court ruling on Monday, allowing Alabama to change its congressional map to eliminate at least one Black-majority district, as “madness”. “We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow,” Johnson said. “And anybody who is alarmed by these developments—as everybody should be—better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0283378f08f695b7fc20e3","title":"In paved-over Rose Garden, Trump boasts of renovating the 'reflective pond' and the White House, claiming it was 'a shit house'","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:49:25Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:49:25Z","body":"In a rambling set of remarks to administration officials and law enforcement officers gathered for dinner on the patio that used to be the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump said he was taking a night off from trying to stop the war he started with Iran and instead boasted about his cut-rate renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, the $1bn ballroom he is building where the demolished East Wing of the White House used to be, and claimed that before he arrived the White House was “a shit house”.
\nTrump also repeatedly claimed that the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is “called the reflective pond”.
\nHe went on to survey the assembled diners about whether they would like JD Vance or Marco Rubio better as the 2028 Republican nominee for president.
","cleanBody":"In a rambling set of remarks to administration officials and law enforcement officers gathered for dinner on the patio that used to be the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump said he was taking a night off from trying to stop the war he started with Iran and instead boasted about his cut-rate renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, the $1bn ballroom he is building where the demolished East Wing of the White House used to be, and claimed that before he arrived the White House was “a shit house”. Trump also repeatedly claimed that the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is “called the reflective pond”. He went on to survey the assembled diners about whether they would like JD Vance or Marco Rubio better as the 2028 Republican nominee for president.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-6a0287298f08f695b7fc2101","title":"Closing summary","publishedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:56:20Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-05-12T01:56:19Z","body":"This concludes our chronicle of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Tuesday. Here are the latest developments:
\nBy a 6-3 vote along partisan lines, the Republican-dominated US supreme court granted Alabama’s request to vacate a federal court order barring the state from using a Congressional map drawn to eliminate a majority-Black district.
\nDonald Trump once again nominated Cameron Hamilton to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) just over a year after Hamilton was fired for publicly opposing plans to abolish the agency.
\nVirginia Democrats filed an emergency application to the US supreme court on Monday, asking the Republican-dominated body to set aside a state court decision and permit Virginia to use a new map of congressional districts for this years’s midterms that was approved by voters in a referendum last month.
\nThe US supreme court extended a short-term order to continue allowing nationwide access to mail-order mifepristone, an abortion medication, in a shadow-docket decision on Monday.
\nChuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, vowed that Democrats will block Republicans from passing a bill that confers $72bn for federal immigration enforcement, which includes $1bn for security measures for Trump’s ballroom.
\nSeventeen tech and finance executives will join the president this week in Beijing, a White House official confirmed to the Guardian. Elon Musk will be in attendance, as well as Apple’s Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Dina Powell McCormick of Meta and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg.
\nThis live blog is now closed.
\nLevels of some of the most dangerous Pfas compounds have dramatically fallen in Canadian seabird eggs, which the authors of a new peer-reviewed study say illustrates how regulations are effective.
\nResearchers looked at Pfas levels in the eggs of northern gannets in the St Lawrence Seaway basin over a 55-year period. Pfas levels shot up from the 1960s through the peak of the chemicals’ use in the late 1990s and early aughts, then fell.
\nThe fall coincides with several developments – facing regulatory scrutiny, the chemical giant 3M, which is one of the largest producers of Pfas, began moving away from Pfos, among its most common and toxic compounds. By 2015, major chemical makers reached an agreement with the US Environment Protection Agency to phase out Pfos and Pfoa, the latter a similarly problematic compound.
\n\nRaphael Lavoie, a co-author and ecotoxicologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, called the findings “good news”.
\n“We see this incredible rise to a peak where concentrations seem to be higher than toxicological threshold for those birds, then it really decreases in a nice way,” Lavoie said. “The regulations are having a good effect.”
\nPfas are a class of at least 16,000 chemicals commonly used to make products resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they are linked to a range of health issues such as cancer, thyroid disease, kidney problems and decreased immunity.
\nThe eggs were collected from the remote Bonaventure Island, which holds North America’s largest northern gannet colony. Data shows the levels of Pfos fell from a peak level in the eggs of 100 parts per billion (ppb) to a level of 26ppb by 2024, a 74% drop. Levels of Pfoa are down about 40% over this time, though they ticked back up in recent years.
\nMeanwhile, PFHxS, another common, toxic Pfas compound fell from 0.69 to 0.19ppb, or about 72%.
\nThe paper details how Pfas production increased sharply between 1969 and the mid-1990s, driven by widespread applications from firefighting foams to stain guards, as well as various manufacturing processes. With virtually no regulatory oversight, the chemicals rapidly accumulated in the environment, exposing wildlife like the northern gannet. The birds faced high risk as the St Lawrence received water pollution from the upper midwest manufacturing centers around the Great Lakes. The chemicals reached levels in the eggs that suggested ecotoxicological risks, Lavoie said.
\nAs the dangers of the most commonly used Pfas came into focus around this time, the US, Europe and Canada each ratcheted up regulatory pressure with proposed regulations or risk actions. The United Nations similarly targeted Pfos, and the compound was also listed in the 2009 Stockholm convention, which requires signatory countries to restrict its production and use. In recent decades, militaries and other users of firefighting foam switched to Pfas-free products, or stopped using the chemicals during training exercises, which has significantly reduced water pollution.
\nHowever, it is not all good news. The chemical makers moved to a newer generation of smaller Pfas, and those also present risks to the environment and wildlife. The levels of those compounds have probably grown, and the study found one example of a shift, but the new Pfas are more difficult to measure in bird eggs because they do not accumulate in wildlife as much, Lavoie said.
\nMoreover, compounds such as Pfos stay in the environment or animals’ bodies for decades, so the birds and environment will remain contaminated for the foreseeable future, which the authors wrote “emphasizes the importance of maintaining scientific and regulatory vigilance”.
","atomsCSS":[],"shouldHideReaderRevenue":false,"discussionId":"/p/x528cj","section":"Environment","id":"environment/2026/may/11/pfas-seabird-eggs-forever-chemicals","displayImages":[{"urlTemplate":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/447640957b482ce8438c953a29ba9af0b20802d3/0_0_4928_3288/master/4928.jpg?w=#{width}&h=#{height}&q=#{quality}&fit=bounds&sig-ignores-params=true&s=479cf046dbc7f622ec879d2857e9db83","height":3288,"width":4928,"orientation":"landscape","caption":"Northern gannets on Canada’s Bonaventure Island, the birds’ largest colony in North America. Photograph: Photograph: Betend A/Andia/Universal Images Group/Getty Images","credit":"Betend A/Andia/Universal Images Group/Getty Images","altText":"a colony of birds on an island","cleanCaption":"Northern gannets on Canada’s Bonaventure Island, the birds’ largest colony in North America.","cleanCredit":"Photograph: Betend A/Andia/Universal Images Group/Getty Images"}],"shouldHideAdverts":false,"standFirst":"Levels of Pfas in northern gannet eggs in Canada fell up to 74% over 55-year period of study
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\nThe plan also calls for opening up parts of Grand Canyon national park, and other sensitive landscapes. Cattle destroy critical habitats for wildlife because they strip land bare of essential vegetation and pollute streams with feces, urine, sediment and carcasses. Meanwhile, park rangers and ranchers often kill grizzly bears and other predators who prey on cattle, despite that ranchers and the government pushed the cattle into the predators’ home range.
\nThe degree to which livestock grazing degrades ecosystems makes it a top threat to animals and plants at risk of extinction, environmental advocates say. These issues exceed the combined impacts of logging and mining on protected species.
\nThe Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) alleges in a notice of intent to sue that the Trump administration fast-tracked the plan without consulting the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which, under the Endangered Species Act, must review the plan’s impact on protected species.
\n“The federal grazing program is already a disaster for endangered species and the places they live,” said Andrea Zaccardi, carnivore conservation legal director at CBD. “Expanding grazing across 24m more acres will make that devastation even worse and likely drive more animals and plants to extinction.”
\nTrump implemented the new plan through a memorandum of understanding signed in March by the US Bureau of Land Management, and would use emergency authority to fast-track grazing where it is not currently allowed.
\nZaccardi said it is unclear why the administration is aggressively opening up the land. While there have been isolated instances of individual ranchers asking for some “allotments” to be opened to grazing, there is no industry-wide effort that environmental groups are aware of, she added.
\nThe Bureau of Land Management declined to comment, but the new policy states that it plans to implement “a goal of a no net loss of Animal Unit Months within allotments” and maximizing “authorization of livestock use” across vast western rangelands.
\nThe move comes as meat prices remain high, but while the harm to wildlife would probably be significant, advocates say the benefit to the livestock industry would be small – grazing on public lands accounts for just 2% of the nation’s beef cattle.
\nAbout half of 2,400 stream miles of endangered species habitat surveyed by CBD since 2017 show significant damage from livestock. Meanwhile, surveys of more than 200 forest service and Bureau of Land Management grazing allotments in Arizona and New Mexico show damage to critical habitat from authorized, unauthorized, trespassing and feral livestock. The cattle are also a threat to fish because they eat the riparian vegetation along streams’ edges that keeps the water cool.
\nAmong the most alarming potential fallout is how the plan would foster conflict among cattle, ranchers and predators, advocates say. Congress in the 1930s authorized the wildlife services to kill wildlife at the request of private landowners, including if they threaten livestock. Predators, like grizzlies, covered by the Endangered Species Act, are not exempted, and Zaccardi said the law is a major threat to the bears, gray wolves and Mexican wolves that are particularly prone to preying on cattle.
\nState and federal agents “lethally remove” hundreds of thousands of animals annually in what some advocates have previously characterized as a “bloodbath”. Some of the lands listed in the memorandum have not been used for grazing for decades and many predators likely live there, Zaccardi said.
\n“The likelihood of this increasing conflict with predators is extremely high,” she added.
\nThe plan also contains “unusual provisions to benefit” big agriculture, said Chandra Rosenthal, western lands and rocky mountain advocate with the Public Employees For Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit.
\nAmong those is the establishment of “immersion and training programs for new and existing federal employees to the daily life, decisions, and dilemmas of ranchers”, Peer noted. The memorandum makes little mention of rangeland environmental conditions and instead the plan will “deregulate”, “streamline” and “incorporate beneficial flexibility”.
\n“The Trump administration does not appear to care that commercial livestock grazing exacts an enormous toll on native ecosystems and wildlife throughout the American West,” Rosenthal said in a statement.
\nThe plan would also open lands in popular national parks and monuments, including Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument, Canyons of the Ancients national monument in Colorado, and Arizona’s Sonoran desert national monument.
\nThe Trump administration has 60 days to respond to the notice of intent to sue. If it fails to, then CBD would ask a federal judge to order the Trump administration to review how the plan would impact protected wildlife, as is required under the Endangered Species Act.
\n\n
\n
\n
Opponents say administration’s plan prioritizes big agriculture at expense of wildlife and protected species
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\nIndependent scientists who reviewed the results say the data gaps and the contamination raise concerns, though they added the testing shows some bright spots, and praised the US Food and Drug Administration for expanding the testing program, then making the results public.
\nTop FDA officials’ statements also appear to, in part, contradict a 2014 FDA paper that detailed how small amounts of the chemicals found in the current testing likely present a serious risk for newborns who are small, still developing and have a greater food to body weight ratio than adults.
\n\nIn a statement announcing the results, Department of Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said: “We tested more infant formula than ever before, and the results are clear: most products meet a high safety standard – but even small exposures matter for newborns.
\n“We will hold manufacturers accountable, and give parents honest, transparent data they can trust. Protecting our children’s health is non-negotiable,” Kennedy added. The release did not detail the next steps.
\nUnder Kennedy, the FDA launched Operation Stork Speed, which tested 300 baby formula samples for Pfas, phthalates, lead, pesticides, mercury and other dangerous substances that have been found with some regularity in baby formula.
\nPfas and phthalates, among the most toxic manmade chemicals, were among the most widespread detections. At least half contained Pfos, one of the most dangerous Pfas compounds for which the federal government previously found no level of exposure in drinking water is safe.
\nAbout half of the samples also contained some phthalates, a plasticizer, and some showed relatively low levels of lead. Several samples also had chlorpyrifos, a highly toxic pesticide the EPA tried to ban in 2021. Industry mounted a successful legal challenge to undo the decision.
\nMaricel Maffini, an independent consultant who does regulatory work aimed at pressuring the FDA to strengthen consumer protections, said she is “encouraged that [the FDA] is moving to test for other things”, but added she was alarmed by the prevalence of endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as phthalates and Pfas.
\nThese especially present a risk because even at low doses they can impact children’s hormones at a key stage of development, causing developmental, reproductive, neurological and other health harms immediately, or later in life.
\n“There is no really safe amount of endocrine disruptors,” Maffini said. “It seems the overarching argument is that in low amounts they don’t do anything, or are not too risky, but that goes against everything we know about how these chemicals impact the body, and what they can do.”
\nSignificant gaps in the FDA test data also exist – the product names are not listed, so it is unclear which are free from the chemicals. Meanwhile, the agency did not say if a sample contained more than one contaminant. Though little research on exposures to multiple chemicals exists, it is generally thought to have an additive or synergistic effect that makes them even more dangerous.
\nThe FDA wrote that 95% of Pfos levels were below 2.9 parts per trillion (ppt). Drinking water limits are set for four ppt, though those may not be protective of an infant drinking formula, public health advocates say. A wide range of studies have also linked low levels of exposure to Pfas in utero or in infanthood to decreased immunity.
\nThe FDA’s top line of its Pfas results notes that it tested for 30 Pfas compounds, and “most Pfas compounds (25 of 30) were not found in any samples”. But a majority of samples still contained some Pfas, and most at levels that concerned independent experts.
\nMuch of the Pfas were found in dry formulas, which have to be mixed with water that potentially also contains Pfas, and would make the product more toxic, noted Tasha Stoiber, a scientist with the Environmental Working Group non-profit.
\n“We do know very low levels of exposure are associated with health effects, and … newborns are in this critical stage of development,” Stoiber said. The kind of short-chain Pfas that are used throughout the food system were found in the formulas, Toiber added.
\n“Thinking about this from a high level – when there is widespread use of Pfas, this is the result,” she said.
\nThe likely source of the phthalates, which were found in 46% of samples, is plastic food packaging or processing equipment. The chemicals give plastic elasticity, but readily shed into food and drinks. Despite the risks, the FDA has not set any enforceable limit on phthalates, established a safe level of daily intake, and has put in place few other guidelines around it.
\nMarty Makary, the FDA commissioner, called the results “encouraging”.
\n“You can judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable members,” Makary said. “That’s why we’re doing everything in our power to make sure our babies and infants have safe, high quality formula options that are backed by a resilient supply chain.”
\nLead and other metal contamination has long been a problem in baby formulas, and the levels in the most recent tests are comparatively lower than they have been in the past, said Tom Neltner, director of the Unleaded Kids non-profit. That indicates public and political pressure on industry to act is working, he said, but added that the FDA’s snapshot of formulas is not enough to ensure safety.
\n“We need ongoing transparency,” Neltner said.
\nIndustry regularly tests its formulas, but the FDA claims it largely does not have the authority to view them, which Neltner said is untrue. New legislation introduced in California and Vermont would require formula producers to share their test results with the public. Neltner praised the administration’s expanded testing, and said the FDA’s next step is to set an action level on lead, which does not yet exist.
\n“The next step can’t be to declare it safe, because there is no assurance that companies will keep it at these levels,” Neltner said.
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\nCommunities from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to San Diego, California, and St Petersburg, Florida, are exploring municipalizing their grids to join the country’s approximately 2,000 public power companies.
\nMunicipal utilities – or “munis” – are owned and operated by local authorities and broadly have lower rates, better reliability scores and are structurally more accountable to customers.
\nThe industry front group operations aim to counter that narrative in a high-stakes fight – private utilities stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue should communities municipalize.
\nThe latest front is in Michigan, where the Ann Arbor Responsible Energy Coalition (A2rec) appears to be a local, grassroots organization opposing a public power campaign in the upper midwest city of about 123,000 people. But state filings show its mailing address was One Energy Plaza – the headquarters of DTE Energy, the deeply unpopular private utility giant that serves Ann Arbor.
\nCampaign finance records show A2rec is funded with nearly $2m from DTE, its contractors, the utility lobby and an industry consultant behind other front operations against public power. One of those helped defeat a 2023 statewide vote to establish public power across Maine.
\nUtilities are funding the front groups because “the public power movement is a direct threat to their profits”, said Sean Higgins, president of Ann Arbor for Public Power (A2P2).
\n“If this happens, then Ann Arbor is no longer paying them for electricity, so that cuts into their profit margin, so obviously they oppose it,” Higgins added. The front groups are one in a broader suite of tactics utilities use to hide their identity in regulatory, political and public opinion battles.
\nAdvocates say the front groups at times have resorted to especially unusual measures – in St Petersburg, for example, the industry allegedly recruited some of their canvassers from the parking lots of plasma centers where people donate plasma for money.
\nIn a statement to the Guardian, DTE Energy touted its work to upgrade and improve its grid in Ann Arbor, but did not respond to questions about whether it was behind A2rec.
\n“We’re in agreement with the Ann Arbor Responsible Energy Coalition that the path of a city takeover of the electric system will only serve to put a financial strain … on Ann Arbor,” a spokesperson said.
\nIn most states, municipalities can legally take over the grid from private or investor-owned utilities, a process called municipalization. The municipality must pay the utility a fair price for the grid’s infrastructure before it establishes its own power company. The process is long and complicated, and utilities legally resist it, though some communities have succeeded.
\nFederal data shows public power companies’ bills, on average, are about 14% lower than private. That is in part because private utility profits that go to Wall Street investors are baked into customers’ bills. Public power companies do not need to earn those profits, and excess revenue is typically invested in the grid or used to lower customers’ bills.\n
\n
\n Public power advocates have tried to convince city leadership to municipalize the grid since 2018, but officials and council members who advocates say are aligned with DTE, stymied the push. The city instead opted to push for a “Sustainable Energy Utility” in which residents can buy energy generated by renewable sources in Ann Arbor. The city hired a former DTE executive to run the program, which will leave the company in charge of its deteriorated grid, and continue to expose customers to annual steep rate increase demands.
Ann Arbor for Public Power wants to fully cut DTE out of the equation. It aims to put municipalization up for a citywide vote and is collecting signatures to get the issue on the November ballot – advocates say the front operation is timed to derail that.
\nIn recent weeks, blasts of social media ads and A2rec’s canvassers hit residents with claims that public power would saddle Ann Arbor ratepayers with $1bn in debt and up to 40% rate increase.
\nThe language in a door hanger suggests a homegrown movement: “Our city cannot afford a government takeover of our power. We deserve reliable, affordable, clean energy – but a city-run utility is not how we get there.”
\nThe door hanger warns of “crushing costs” including $700 yearly increases in power bills. A customer paying $100 a month on their electric bill would be paying about $650 a month in 10 years, according to DTE’s calculations.
\nThe claims are “wildly inaccurate”, public power advocates say, and sourced from a study that DTE funded. Advocates point to an independent study commissioned by the city of Ann Arbor, which put the cost at about $300m. Residents would quickly see reductions in bills.
\nA2rec’s campaign finance filings show $25,000 in donations from the Edison Electric Institute, a national lobbying group for the industry, and over a dozen DTE donations totaling near $1.9m. Records do not show any donations from residents in Ann Arbor, and none from Michigan residents who do not have connections to the company.
\nThe front group is “DTE’s playbook 101”, said Yousef Rabhi, who is part of Ann Arbor for Public Power. The former state representative regularly introduced clean energy and utility affordability legislation that DTE worked to kill during his 2017-2023 tenure.
\n“They have so many front groups that I’ve lost count by now,” said Rabhi, who is running for Ann Arbor mayor and includes public power as a campaign plank. “This is another attempt by DTE to pull the wool over voters’ eyes, and the things they’re saying are complete fabrications.”
\nIn a statement posted to social media last month, A2rec admitted its connection to DTE and denied that it was running an astroturf campaign.
\n“It’s true DTE helped get this legal entity set up,” the statement read. “We are not hiding that, and we are fully compliant with all campaign finance reporting requirements.”
\nNone of the literature and ads reviewed by the Guardian show DTE or industry funding sources, and A2rec in late April amended its campaign filings to replace its corporate address in Washington DC with a local post office box.
\nAds and talking points with similar figures to those in Ann Arbor have been pushed for months by connected industry-backed front groups opposing public power campaigns in Clearwater and nearby St Petersburg. The two cities, with a combined population of 400,000, are exploring the municipalization of grids currently owned by utility giant Duke Energy.
\nTwo industry-backed groups, Clearwater Energy Alliance and Pinellas Energy Alliance, launched their campaigns late last year, claiming in literature that municipalization “could take generations to pay off”.
\nPublic power advocates initially could not tie the groups to Duke because they are funded by dark money – Florida has looser campaign finance reporting laws than Michigan, Marley Price, co-founder of the Dump Duke public power advocacy group, said.
\nHowever, two Tampa Bay Times investigations in recent months found connections among energy alliance front groups, Duke, and the industry effort to kill Maine’s public power push. One investigation identified an apparent architect of the Florida campaign as Willy Ritch, a Democratic strategist and utility industry operative who runs the Salt Public Affairs firm. He also appears to have been in part behind the Maine operation, the Times found.
\nThe investigation discovered other parallels among the front operations in each state, like shared phone numbers, and similar language and claims. The email attached to the Florida front group sites was also attached to webpages for the energy alliances opposing public power campaigns in Ann Arbor and San Diego.
\nPrice said she alerted Ann Arbor for Public Power and advocates in San Diego to the findings. In recent days, Michigan campaign finance records showed a new $54,000 expenditure from A2rec to Ritch’s Salt Public Affairs.
\nAre the campaigns effective? While industry resoundingly defeated the public power campaign in Maine, and Price said she had heard residents repeat some of the Florida front groups’ talking points, she suspects the operation is largely backfiring.
\nAttempts to conceal their identity and questionable tactics, like hiring people off of Reddit or in plasma center parking lots, have generated widespread suspicion, Price said.
\n“Especially in St Pete, it has had more of a negative impact,” Price said. “They’re definitely spending more money which is making people frustrated because this is probably coming from our utility bills in one way or another.”
\nIn Ann Arbor, Rabhi said “the fact that they’re fighting so hard should be an indication to Ann Arbor voters that we’re doing the right thing”.
\n“DTE is evil, and what we’re doing here is trying to undo the grips of that fossil fuel corporation, and move to a renewable energy future that is reliable, cheaper and not going to happen with DTE as our energy provider,” Rabhi said.
\n• This article was amended on 7 May 2026 to correctly describe the $54,000 expenditure from A2rec to Ritch’s Salt Public Affairs.
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\nUtility bills are up as much as 40% in some regions since 2021, and, nationwide, utilities shut off power to customers 13m times last year, federal data shows.
\nAmid the difficulties, CEO pay increased at 38 of 51 top utilities, industry watchdog Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) found in its review of companies’ financial records.
\nEPI also detailed how some executives received pay raises despite failing to meet performance standards, including for outages. Many executives were also provided private jets, condominiums and other perks for which customers often paid the costs.
\n\nThe issues “feel unjust at face value”, said Jonathan Kim, a research associate with EPI, who authored the report. “It’s the idea that we should be footing the bill for these people’s grotesquely large salaries,” Kim added.
\nThe analysis found 38 CEOs received pay raises, and those collectively tallied $82m.
\nUtility prices are a main driver of continuing inflation. Consumers have paid as much as 6.7% more on their electric bills between 2024 and 2025. Since 2017, utility CEO compensation has risen 47%, on average, outpacing inflation and worker pay, according to the analysis. Customers for the utilities examined in the report collectively paid more than $5bn for CEO compensation during that period.
\nDonald Trump promised to slash utility bills in half during his 2024 campaign but has failed to follow through, an April Guardian analysis found.
\nBill Ferhman, the American Electric Power CEO, received the largest pay increase as his compensation package spiked by $23m, or 176% to $36.6m.
\nFerhman was followed by ConEd’s Tim Cawley, whose compensation jumped by $4.9m, or 33% to about $20m. Meanwhile, Southern Company’s Chris Womack received a $4.3m, or 18%, increase to $28m.
\nFerhman’s pay shot up even as the Ohio-based company turned off customers’ service 173,000 times.
\nA ConEd spokesperson said: “Executive compensation is designed to attract and retain the leadership required to operate one of the most complex energy systems in the world, drive Con Edison’s nation-leading reliability and deliver on New York’s clean energy goals. The majority of executive compensation is performance based and paid by shareholders.”
\nSouthern Company said: “Our performance-based executive compensation program is directly tied to what matters most to our business – delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy while running our business efficiently and keeping costs down.”
\nAn AEP spokesperson said the compensation is largely dependent on the CEO meeting five-year performance targets. “This compensation structure aligns leadership incentives with the long-term interests of customers, communities, and shareholders,” the spokesperson added.
\nMost CEOs also received increases as they tried to hike prices. John Ketchum, NextEra Energy CEO, was the nation’s third highest-paid CEO in 2025, with a $24m compensation package. NextEra subsidiary Florida Power & Light last year requested approval from state regulators to saddle customers with a record-breaking $6.9bn rate hike.
\nThe situation is in part driven by utility structure – many are regulated monopolies, and their customers often cannot choose to buy electricity or gas from a different company. There is often no direct way for customers to hold the companies accountable. Public energy utilities are typically regulated by state-level utility commissions that are run by political appointees. These commissions are often viewed as industry-friendly.
\nThe cost of CEO pay does not have a major impact on an individual customer’s bill. The compensation packages are complex and typically include incentives, bonuses, stocks and other performance payments directly tied to profits and shareholder returns. With little meaningful regulatory oversight, the utilities’ CEOs aim to boost profits to please shareholders, who then reward the CEOs with bonuses.
\n“The justification for these huge bonuses and pay is that it’s an incentive to increase shareholder profits, and that’s at the core of everything here,” said Chris Gilmer-Hill, policy manager with the Michigan Environmental Justice Council, which does regulatory battle with utilities in the state.
\nMeanwhile, many utilities have cut CEO incentives aimed at improving customer service, reliability, affordability and sustainability, Kim said.
\nSome executives even got raises despite their companies failing to provide reliable service or meet customer satisfaction metrics. Jason Wells, the CenterPoint Energy CEO, received a $2.6m compensation bump in 2025 even though he failed to meet the reliability standard for the number of customers with four or more outages longer than five minutes, the report found.
\nIn Minnesota, the Xcel CEO Bob Frenzel received a maximum bonus for customer satisfaction after apparently changing the threshold, the report notes. The award came amid an influx of customer complaints in recent years that drew regulatory scrutiny in Colorado and Minnesota. His overall pay climbed $3.1m, or 23%, last year.
\n“They’re lowering the bar for customer outcomes – it’s essentially being replaced with ‘Are we making more profits?’” Kim said. “People aren’t getting reliable customer service, and customers are not happy about it, but profits went up, so CEO pay also went up.”
\nThe high bills, poor service and lavish bonuses in Michigan encapsulate much of the problem. Customers of DTE Energy, which serves Detroit and the surrounding region, paid for a raise for outgoing CEO Jerry Norcia, who received $14m. Customers also paid for a raise for his replacement, Joi Harris, who was compensated nearly $7m. Customers paid for Norcia’s full salary, even though he did not helm the company for the entire year. The company’s CEOs also receive sports and concert tickets and access to a company condominium.
\n“DTE seems to see exorbitant bonuses and CEO pay as an incentive to maximize profits, and they’re always going to have an incentive to funnel ratepayer money into maximizing profits however they can,” Gilmer-Hill said.
\nDTE shares service territory with Consumers Energy. Its CEO, Garett Rochow, failed to meet performance standards for the “customer experience index” and worker safety, but his pay still went up by $132,000.
\nThe revelations also come as new federal data shows Michigan had the highest utility disconnection rate in the midwest in 2024, the last year for which data is available.
\nRegulators and governments can take action to rein in utility executives. Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, in 2024 successfully fought against a DTE proposal to include executives’ personal private jet travel in rate increases.
\nMaryland recently passed legislation that protects customers from paying CEOs more than 110% of what the chair of the public utility commission makes, and similar legislation was proposed last session in Minnesota, but it died, Kim said. A similar proposal has been discussed in Michigan, Gilmer-Hill said.
\n“More policymakers are thinking about this,” Kim added.
\n• The headline of this article was amended on 29 April 2026. An earlier version said the CEOs received an average pay raise of $12.3m; this should have said an average pay raise of 16% to $12.3m.
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\n\nThe review of scientific literature considers how endocrine-disrupting chemicals, often found in plastic, coupled with climate change’s effects, such as heat stress, are each linked to reductions in fertility and fecundity across global species – including in humans, wildlife and invertebrates.
\nThough the reproductive harms of each of these issues in isolation are well-studied, there is little research on what happens when living organisms are subjected to both. Together, the two issues likely pose a greater threat to fertility, and the additive effect is “alarming”, said Susanne Brander, a study lead author and courtesy faculty at Oregon State University.
\n“You’re not just getting exposed to one – but two – stressors at the same time that both may affect your fertility, and in turn the overall impact is going to be a bit worse,” Brander said. The paper looked at 177 studies.
\nShanna Swan, a co-author on the new paper, co-produced a groundbreaking 2017 study that found sperm levels among men in western countries had plummeted by more than 50% over four decades. Human fertility has been diminishing at a similar rate, other research has shown.
\nThe University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation previously found the world was approaching a “low-fertility future”, with more than three quarters of countries below replacement rate by 2050.
\nThe new paper’s authors zeroed in on the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals and substances, including microplastics, bisphenol, phthalates, and Pfas. These are thought to cause a range of serious reproductive issues, disrupt hormones, and be a potential driver of the fertility drop.
\nBrander noted how these chemicals’ harms are often the same across organisms, from invertebrates to humans. Phthalates, for example, have been linked to altered sperm shape in invertebrates, spermatogenesis in rodents, and reduced sperm counts in humans. Similarly, Pfas are thought to impact sperm quality, and both are linked to hormone disruption. The chemicals are ubiquitous in consumer goods, so humans are often regularly exposed.
\nMeanwhile, previous research has shown how warming temperatures, lower oxygen levels and heat stress, among other issues associated with climate change, similarly may exacerbate infertility.
\nHeat stress has been found to affect human hormones, and is linked to spermatogenesis in rodents and bulls. Research shows that temperature also plays a role in sex determination in fish, reptiles and amphibians. The species has evolved to choose which sex it produces in part based on temperature, and the heating planet can “push it too far in one direction or the other, which overrides that evolutionary benefit”, Brander said.
\nSimilarly, many endocrine disruptors may alter environmental sex determination.
\nThe study broke down some of the overlapping effects of chemical exposure and climate change on taxonomic groups, from invertebrates to humans. For example, birds’ exposure to increased temperature, Pfas, organochlorines, and pyrethroids individually may each cause abnormal sperm, increased fledgling mortality, abnormal testes, and population decline.
\n“What happens if they’re exposed to more than one of those stressors at the same time? There has been little exploration of that question. Even if there have not been a lot of studies looking at these simultaneously, if you have two different factors that both cause the same adverse effect, then there’s a likelihood that they are going to be additive,” Brander said.
\nKatie Pelch, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council nonprofit, who was not part of the study, said the authors reviewed high-quality science. She said she wants to see more examples of the overlap in impacts, but still concurred with the overall premise.
\n“It is likely [multiple stressors] would have an additive effect, at very least, even if they have different mechanisms of harm,” Pelch added.
\nThe solution to the systemic problems would involve reining in climate change and reducing the use of toxic chemicals. The study cites the global reduction of the use of DDT and PCBs achieved under the Stockholm convention as an example of an effective measure, but much more is needed, Brander said.
\n“There is enough evidence in both areas to act to reduce our impact on the planet,” she said.
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\nThe England air force base, now called England Airpark, is a sprawling former military facility in Louisiana where Pfas levels in the groundwater have been found at at least 41m parts per trillion (ppt).
\nFederal drinking water limits for several Pfas compounds range from 4 to 10ppt, meaning the levels have been at least 575,000 times higher than the limit. Military bases are often contaminated with high quantities of Pfas, but England’s groundwater has shown the highest levels ever recorded, and it is among the most Pfas-polluted sites in the US.
\nEngland is also contaminated with other highly toxic chemicals, such as TCE and a range of volatile organic compounds, while officials have raised concerns about asbestos in the barracks. Though the base likely draws its drinking water from elsewhere, the chemicals are also in the soil and air, public health advocates say.
\nThat raises a health risk for kids and families staying at the site, added Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst with the Environmental Working Group non-profit, which tracks military pollution nationwide.
\n\n“There shouldn’t be housing at contaminated bases and we need to be cleaning up this stuff much faster if we’re going to put people in harm’s way,” Hayes said.
\nThe US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement: “We have no new detention centers to announce at this time.”
\nThe US Environmental Protection Agency and ICE did not respond to a request for comment. Project officials told the Guardian in March that the lease for the site was being finalized and it could be operational within 60 to 90 days.
\nPfas are a class of at least 16,000 compounds typically used to make common products that resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they accumulate and do not naturally break down, and they are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems.
\nPfas are a common ingredient in firefighting foam used at airports and military bases, and the Department of Defense is in the process of phasing them out because the highly toxic substances have widely contaminated water and the environment around more than 770 bases nationwide.
\nICE is proposing a children’s detention center for a “first of its kind” short-term facility that officials involved have said would hold migrant families and unaccompanied children next to a runway from which they are flown out of the US. The larger England Airpark complex holds a private Geo Group detention center, which the Guardian previously investigated over a range of abuses.
\nThe project’s developers have said the facility will confine family groups and children for between three and five days inside a converted military barracks, and will only house those who voluntarily choose to “self-deport”. Immigrant rights groups say the “self-deport” claim is misleading, and most are in the program involuntarily. It is also likely they will spend much longer than five days at the centers, advocates say.
\nFirefighting foam was used in training exercises around the base. It traveled to the groundwater via the soil, meaning the ground is contaminated with the chemicals. The base also held burn pits the military used to incinerate munitions, trash, human waste, toxic waste, plastic, and a range of goods and chemicals. Jet fuel is typically used as an accelerants, and the pits are notorious for polluting the immediate region with a range of substances, including Pfas.
\nThe chemicals are highly mobile and volatile, meaning they easily move through the environment, including from the ground into the air. Children are especially at risk to the chemicals’ adverse health effects because their bodies are smaller. The health impacts of exposure at once to all chemicals used at the base remain unclear.
\n“The risk for people living on site is in the dust and in the air, and we don’t know what levels are in the dust, or if the kids are playing outside – these can be areas of concern,” Hayes said before adding that the military is not testing soil and air at the site.
\nFrances Kelly, with Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention, said water is piped in from the nearby city of Alexandria. The city, however, also draws from the groundwater and it is at least publicly unclear where the Pfas plume’s edge lies. Records from nearby Pineville show elevated levels of three types of Pfas compounds, though not those that are the main compounds on England Airpark.
\nKelly said deed records show the property is restricted to industrial use, and questioned why the site is being used for housing. Residential land requires stronger cleanup than industrial land.
\nA spokesperson with the airpark said the Pfas pollution was not on the barracks site, but did not immediately respond to questions about whether the air and soil had been tested.
\nHayes said federal records do not indicate that Pfas cleanup has begun, and the military remains in its remedial investigation phase. That involves mapping the Pfas plume.
\n“It doesn’t appear that they’re doing the construction of cleanup, which means they’re doing testing and mapping, so the plume is going to get bigger at the site,” Hayes said.
\nThough levels of Pfas in the groundwater have dropped in recent years, they still remain astronomically high. Because the military is not actively removing the plume, the lower levels only mean that the plume is spreading out in the aquifer, so Pfas is not as concentrated around the source of the pollution.
\nIt is unclear whether there is any legal action that can be taken, but advocates are continuing to try to stop the plan.
\n“There’s always a way to undo it,” Kelly said.
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The Slack messages, attributed to Acker, also include lewd comments about a female U-M student and a picture of her with her friends.
\nThe messages were shared with the Guardian just days before a heated primary convention election for two open U-M board of regents seats. The board is the university’s governing body, and the usually low-profile race is especially tense this year as pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian candidates compete for seats. The race has become a local flashpoint in the broader battle over criticism of Israel on campuses.
\nAcker is known to be a confrontational, pro-Israel leader at the large public university. He is an attorney who helped recruit the Michigan attorney general to bring highly unusual prosecutions against students, and, while he was on the board, it led a sprawling undercover surveillance operation against the students. The prosecutions and surveillance operations were dropped after Guardian stories on each. Acker has also drawn criticism for leading the university as it dismantled its diversity, equity and inclusion initiative amid pressure from Donald Trump.
\nAcker is being challenged by Amir Makled, a progressive defense attorney from Dearborn, Michigan, who represented some of the pro-Palestinian protesters who faced prosecution. He is popular among the Democratic party’s left flank, which has been frustrated with U-M’s crackdown on student protests and the school’s relations with its unions.
\nThe Guardian knows the identity of the strategist named in the messages, which Acker appears to have posted in a Slack group in 2020 and 2021, but is not naming her to protect her privacy. One message reads that a “buddy banged [redacted] on election night 2018 and we literally discussed this yesterday. Said it was the most insane experience of his life”. In one message, the strategist is referred to as “an absolute freak in bed”. The messages continue in a similar tone.
\n![\"A](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/a27471cf7551805e0a05bb29c9be239a8d0b25cb/0_0_2170_690/1000.jpg\")
\n Acker’s lawyer said in an email that his client had never used Slack and had “doubts about the authenticity of the alleged ‘Slack screengrabs’”. When asked by the Guardian whether Acker denied writing the messages, his attorney responded: “Your understanding that Mr Acker does not deny this is not correct or incorrect.”
\nThe Guardian reviewed a number of conversations over several years in the Slack group including the account bearing Acker’s name, and cross-referenced an email linked to the Slack account under his name with his personal Gmail account.
\nSix people who were part of the Slack group confirmed that they saw the messages when they were sent. The group is mostly made up of about 30 left-leaning professionals and discusses sports and Michigan politics. They are not involved in the regents race. Members of the group whom the Guardian spoke with said they were in the Slack group with Acker for years and that he offered the comments unprompted.
\nThe strategist declined to comment.
\nCurrent U-M regent Paul Brown is also a part of the three-way race. His term and Acker’s term both expire on 1 January. At a 19 April convention, Democratic party delegates from across the state will in effect choose two candidates as nominees for the general election in November.
\nAcker largely has the support of the political establishment, and is endorsed by the US Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and several major unions. Makled has endorsements from many of the school’s graduate unions and the United Auto Workers.
\nMakled told the Guardian the messages “are reprehensible, if they are true”.
\nThe message about the strategist was just one in a series of sexual messages about the strategist. One read she “likes it extremely rough and very very very much into props”.
\nAnother message appears to show Acker describing being contacted by a parent of a U-M student. It describes to the group that the parent – referred to as a “joo”, apparently meaning “Jew” – revealed that his daughter had had mono and “a series of UTIs”. The post was followed by a picture of the daughter and her friends.
\n“Like maybe he doesn’t realize that his daughter fucks, apparently a lot,” the message reads.
\nIt is unclear whether the messages will affect Whitmer and McMorrow’s endorsements of Acker. In an emotional speech in 2013, Whitmer discussed being sexually assaulted in college, and McMorrow in 2020 filed a complaint against a state representative whom she alleged sexually harassed her in the legislature. (The representative denied the claim.)
\nIn a statement, McMorrow said: “If these messages are real, then they are disgusting.” A spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether they affect McMorrow’s endorsement.
\nWhitmer did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did the University of Michigan or the Michigan Education Association, a major union that endorsed Acker.
\n![\"A](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/0406e792150163ad42de65f086c069e6218062a1/0_0_2504_752/1000.jpg\")
\n The messages come shortly after Makled drew criticism for posts on X in 2025. A retweet lamented the death of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Another retweet, from Candace Owens, referred to Israelis as “demons” over attacks on Palestinian Christians.
\nThe retweets caused Makled to lose an endorsement from the Service Employees International Union this week, he said.
\nHe told the Guardian that the Slack messages were “especially disappointing after I have been falsely accused of supporting things I’ve never supported”.
\nThe delegates’ votes are expected to be counted, and the state party is expected to make its endorsements, on Sunday evening.
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The ongoing controversy probably marks a preview of things to come as the midterm and 2028 election seasons ramp up, and it is drawing warnings from Arab American leaders in a state where the party’s Israel policy badly damaged Kamala Harris’s campaign.
\nMallory McMorrow, a state senator favored by much of the establishment, is locked in a tight three-way race with the progressive Abdul El-Sayed, and Haley Stevens, the US representative who is backed by Aipac. El-Sayed and Piker last week announced plans to rally together. In response, McMorrow, the Anti-Defamation League, the Trump administration, Third Way, Senator Elissa Slotkin and other pro-Israel figures went on the offensive, labeling Piker as antisemitic and seeking to tar El-Sayed over his association with him.
\n\nPiker, who is Muslim and has an audience of 3 million on the Twitch streaming platform, often strongly criticizes Israel over its assault on Gaza, Lebanon invasion, war with Iran, treatment of Palestinian people, and other issues, sometimes in provocative terms – he described Hamas as “a thousand times better than the fascist settler colonial apartheid state”. He is also a heavyweight political force with a massive following among younger voters: Piker interviewed and earned praise from Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, and was invited by the Harris campaign to livestream from the Democratic national convention in August 2024.
\nSeven Arab American leaders who spoke with the Guardian say centrist Democrats’ attack on El-Sayed and Piker are strategic and moral blunders that show the party is making the same mistakes that fueled their 2024 electoral demise in this critical swing state and nationally.
\nThey dismissed the attacks as an effort to censor criticism of Israel, and an expression of anti-Arab bias that imbues much of the political establishment. Michigan holds the nation’s largest Arab American population per capita in the US, and it is anchored by a huge Lebanese diaspora largely from southern Lebanon. The controversy unfolds amid Israel’s assault on southern Lebanon, and as Israel and its military action are deeply unpopular among Democrats.
\n“They are not showing empathy toward Lebanese and Muslim communities,” said Basim Elkarra, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations Action.
\nHarris lost Michigan in 2024 by a narrow 80,000 votes, and by one estimate support for Israel cost her 100,000 votes here. A November 2024 Guardian analysis found a 22,000-vote swing away from Democrats in the three cities with the largest Arab American and Muslim populations alone. Nationally, one poll found it to be the top issue for Democrats who did not support Harris.
\n“Some in the Democratic party haven’t learned from 2024,” Elkarra added. “Especially in a battleground state, I think they’re going to suffer the consequences in 2028 if they don’t rectify their strategy.”
\n***
\nThis moment in Michigan is particularly sensitive. McMorrow and her surrogates have said Piker should be shunned because the rallies come less than a month after the Temple Israel synagogue attack, which was widely condemned by the Arab American community in Michigan. McMorrow did not respond to requests for comment.
\n“That is not somebody that you should be campaigning with at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state,” McMorrow said to Jewish Insider while highlighting that children were at the synagogue. “You don’t fan the flames.”
\n\nBut Arab American and Muslim community leaders who spoke with the Guardian stressed that both sides’ suffering can be acknowledged as the Middle East conflict intensifies. They see the exclusion of their pain as a deliberate political maneuver.
\nIsrael’s Lebanon invasion has displaced more than 1 million civilians in recent months, and the IDF has begun wiping out Lebanese villages that some Michiganders or their families are from “in accordance with the model in Gaza”, in the words of Israel’s defense minister. Virtually every one of the 120,000 Lebanese American people in Michigan has family members or friends who have been displaced or killed by Israel, Arab Americans who spoke with the Guardian said.
\n“There is an asymmetry of compassion and asymmetry of political pressure – Arabs get the pressure and Israel gets compassion,” said James Zogby, a Lebanese American member of the Democratic National Committee. “No one will pay attention to the human element of the situation, which is that their ancestral village is gone, and their homes demolished.”
\nIn an interview with the Guardian, El-Sayed expressed a similar sentiment: “The Arab community, their voice and their pain has been rendered insignificant or, even worse, an inconvenient aspect of our political situation.”
\n\nNational polling shows more Democrats sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis, support for Israel’s war in Gaza plummeted as low as 8% among party voters, and the vast majority of Democrats support an arms embargo. Piker frequently expresses sympathy for the Palestinian people, criticizes Israel’s wars, and calls for an arms embargo.
\nPiker called the Temple Israel attack a “heinous act of violence”. But he said he also believed it was “Islamophobic to say: ‘Oh, this Muslim critic of Israel who has the majority opinion on Israel should not be going to a campaign rally.’
\n“Michigan is a state [Democrats] lost for this exact reason.”
\nWhen asked about a comment in which he labeled some Orthodox Jews in Israel “inbred”, Piker told the Guardian he uses the term “as a pejorative against ethnoreligious and racial supremacists of all different varieties – it has nothing to do with Judaism”. He has largely said he stands by his comments, but has also recently expressed regret about the “inbred” comment, and said he could have been more careful.
\nPiker said he regularly educates listeners about the dangers of antisemitism and “how it is the canary in the coalmine of fascism”.
\n“I will continue to do this because antisemitism is morally repugnant, but the difference is I believe that antisemitism and Islamophobia are morally repugnant … and I’m an anti-genocide, antifascist and therefore an anti-Zionist,” Piker said.
\n***
\nThough many of El-Sayed’s and Piker’s political positions are aligned, El-Sayed told the Guardian he did not agree with everything Piker has said, and he also offered an explanation on X. But he said winning requires talking with anyone from Joe Rogan to Hasan Piker. To illustrate the point, El-Sayed appeared on Fox News last week.
\nThe interests of all Michiganders and Arab Americans are “one and the same”, El-Sayed said.
\n“Every dollar that we spend on an aimless, illegal, unjustified war in Iran that allows Israel to annex southern Lebanon and destroy people and their lives, is a dollar not spent to improve our schools, provide people with healthcare and fix our broken infrastructure.”
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John Hoeven, the Republican senator from North Dakota, told reporters that the continuing resolution could not pass by unanimous consent because Democratic senator Chris Coons objected. This comes amid a record-breaking partial government shutdown that has lasted 45 days.
\nKaroline Leavitt continued to blame Democratic lawmakers for the ongoing funding lapse, after both chambers of Congress remain at an impasse on passing a bill to reopen a portion of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Congress is now on a scheduled two-week recess, and many members have left Washington for their districts. The press secretary said today that the president is encouraging lawmakers to return to Capitol Hill and secure a deal, after negotiations broke down last week.
\nWhile Donald Trump has signed an executive order to pay TSA employees as the shutdown continues, Leavitt offered no more information as to how they administration is securing these funds to issue paychecks. Airport security officers are expected to see their first full paycheck today, after the president directed the DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, to issue payments immediately on Friday.
\nThe Department of Justice sued Minnesota’s education department and the state’s school athletics body for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports. In a lawsuit, the DoJ claims that by making against female student athletes compete against transgender girls, as well as share locker rooms and bathrooms with them, Minnesota is violating Title IX – the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination for any programs that receive federal funding.
\nThe average price for a gallon of gasoline in the US is about to hit $4, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). This is up 33% from a month ago, when the average price was $2.98 per gallon. It’s the highest national average since 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The price at the pump is the most tangible hit Americans have felt since the US‑Israel war on Iran began almost five weeks ago.
\nTalks over ending the record-breaking partial government shutdown remain at an impasse, as congress is on its scheduled two-week recess. TSA employees began to get some backpay on Monday, but their union said it’s not enough and is calling on lawmakers to return to Washington DC and end the shutdown.
\nHere’s what else happened today:
\nAllegations swirl that a broker for Pete Hegseth inquired into an investment in key defense companies before the Iran war began. The Morgan Stanley broker allegedly made an inquiry with BlackRock regarding an investment into a defense-focused equity fund. The Pentagon denied the allegations calling them “entirely false and fabricated”.
\nFlorida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill to rename the Palm Beach International Airport after Donald Trump. This would make the airport the latest in a long list of institutions, government programs, buildings and even money named after the president.
\nThe US government has directed all of its embassies and consulates to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda. Marco Rubio signed a cable on Monday directing the embassies to coordinate with the US military’s psychological operations unit to address disinformation. It suggested using Elon Musk’s social media platform X to carry out the campaign.
\nJosé Guadalupe Ramos, a Mexican national, becomes the 14th known person to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since the beginning of the year. He was found unconscious in his bunk last week at the Adelanto detention center in California and pronounced dead after being taken to a nearby medical center.
\nThe army is investigating a helicopter fly-by at Kid Rock’s hillside swimming pool in Tennessee on Saturday. Two army choppers on a training run visited and hovered by the rocker’s house as he saluted them. According to the army, there was no official request for the fly-by, which triggered the administrative review.
\nA two-year-old detained at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement family detention center in Dilley, Texas, is said to be sick and not getting adequate help. Joaquin Castro, a democratic congressman from San Antonio, raised alarms on X on Monday saying that the boy has a fever and isn’t eating. He called on ICE to provide proper medical care to the child and release him and his month immediately.
\nSenate Republicans did not use the pro forma session today to try to pass a stopgap funding bill advanced by House GOP leaders on Friday. John Hoeven, the Republican senator from North Dakota, told reporters that the continuing resolution could not pass by unanimous consent because Democratic senator Chris Coons objected.
\nKaroline Leavitt continued to blame Democratic lawmakers for the ongoing funding lapse to reopen a portion of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The press secretary said today that the president is encouraging lawmakers to return to Capitol Hill and secure a deal, after negotiations broke down last week.
\nWhile Donald Trump has signed an executive order to pay TSA employees as the shutdown continues, Leavitt offered no more information as to how they administration is securing these funds to issue paychecks. Airport security officers were expected to see their first full paycheck today, after the president directed the DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, to issue payments immediately on Friday.
\nThe Department of Justice sued Minnesota’s education department and the state’s school athletics body for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports. In a lawsuit, the DoJ claims that by making against female student athletes compete against transgender girls, as well as share locker rooms and bathrooms with them, Minnesota is violating Title IX – the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination for any programs that receive federal funding.
\nThe average price for a gallon of gasoline in the US is about to hit $4, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). This is up 33% from a month ago, when the average price was $2.98 per gallon, and is the highest national average since 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The spike in the price at the pump is the most tangible hit Americans have felt since the US‑Israel war on Iran began almost five weeks ago.
\nCalifornia Congressman Ro Khanna requested a meeting with King Charles during his upcoming visit to the US. Khanna said he’d like to bring survivors of the late sex offender Jefferey Epstein to the meeting.
\n“As you are aware, this is not solely an American matter,” Khanna wrote in a letter to King Charles. “Epstein’s network had significant ties to the United Kingdom through Ghislaine Maxwell, through Epstein’s relationships with British public figures, and through the social and political circles in which he operated. These connections raise broader questions about how Epstein was able to maintain influence, credibility, and protection across borders for so long.”
\nKhanna is the co-author of the Epstein Files Transparency Act and has been active in advocating of behalf of Epstein’s victims and calling for the release of the files regarding the disgraced financier.
\nKing Charles is scheduled to visit the US the week of April 27th and is expected to address a joint meeting of Congress. King Charles’ younger brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office relating to his ties to Epstein. Peter Mandelson, a former UK ambassador to the US, was also arrested in February on similar allegations.
\n“A meeting with survivors would provide an opportunity to identify any additional information British institutions and individuals may be able to share and open a dialogue about whether there will be a full accounting of how Epstein’s and Maxwell’s network operated in the United Kingdom,” Khanna wrote in his letter. “It would also ensure that survivors are heard directly and that these matters are addressed with transparency, seriousness, and accountability.”
","cleanBody":"California Congressman Ro Khanna requested a meeting with King Charles during his upcoming visit to the US. Khanna said he’d like to bring survivors of the late sex offender Jefferey Epstein to the meeting. “As you are aware, this is not solely an American matter,” Khanna wrote in a letter to King Charles. “Epstein’s network had significant ties to the United Kingdom through Ghislaine Maxwell, through Epstein’s relationships with British public figures, and through the social and political circles in which he operated. These connections raise broader questions about how Epstein was able to maintain influence, credibility, and protection across borders for so long.” Khanna is the co-author of the Epstein Files Transparency Act and has been active in advocating of behalf of Epstein’s victims and calling for the release of the files regarding the disgraced financier. King Charles is scheduled to visit the US the week of April 27th and is expected to address a joint meeting of Congress. King Charles’ younger brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office relating to his ties to Epstein. Peter Mandelson, a former UK ambassador to the US, was also arrested in February on similar allegations. “A meeting with survivors would provide an opportunity to identify any additional information British institutions and individuals may be able to share and open a dialogue about whether there will be a full accounting of how Epstein’s and Maxwell’s network operated in the United Kingdom,” Khanna wrote in his letter. “It would also ensure that survivors are heard directly and that these matters are addressed with transparency, seriousness, and accountability.”","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69cb1bb48f08cbd9debe9391","title":"Florida to rename Palm Beach airport after Donald Trump","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:59:27Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:59:26Z","body":"Donald Trump is now getting an airport that bears his name. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, signed a bill on Monday saying the Palm Beach International Airport was being renamed to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport.
\nTrump’s family business filed a trademark application for the airport name in February. If approved, the name change would take effect on July 1.
\nThe Florida airport is the latest in a series of buildings, institutions, government programs, navy battleships, national parks passes and even money to be named after the president.
\nDeSantis also worked last year to get a parcel of land in Miami to be the home for Trump’s presidential library. On Truth Social on Monday, Trump posted a video of a rendering of the library, which showed a massive mirrored skyscraper emblazoned with his name and the American flag.
","cleanBody":"Donald Trump is now getting an airport that bears his name. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, signed a bill on Monday saying the Palm Beach International Airport was being renamed to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Trump’s family business filed a trademark application for the airport name in February. If approved, the name change would take effect on July 1. The Florida airport is the latest in a series of buildings, institutions, government programs, navy battleships, national parks passes and even money to be named after the president. DeSantis also worked last year to get a parcel of land in Miami to be the home for Trump’s presidential library. On Truth Social on Monday, Trump posted a video of a rendering of the library, which showed a massive mirrored skyscraper emblazoned with his name and the American flag.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69cb16d88f0887f60811aa5f","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:37:24Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:37:23Z","body":"The Pentagon is denying reports that a broker for Pete Hegseth looked into making investments in defense companies before the Iran war. Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for the Pentagon and assistant to Hegseth, said in a post on X that the allegations are “entirely false and fabricated”.
\n“Secretary Hegseth and the Department of War remain unwavering in their commitment to the highest standards of ethics and strict adherence to all applicable laws and regulations,” Parnell posted.
\nAccording to a report by the Financial Times, which cited three people familiar with the matter, a Morgan Stanley broker who worked for Hegseth contacted BlackRock in February with an inquiry about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the equity fund Defense Industrials Active ETF. The investment reportedly didn’t go through.
\nParnell said: “Neither Secretary Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached BlackRock about any such investment. This is yet another baseless, dishonest smear designed to mislead the public.”
","cleanBody":"The Pentagon is denying reports that a broker for Pete Hegseth looked into making investments in defense companies before the Iran war. Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for the Pentagon and assistant to Hegseth, said in a post on X that the allegations are “entirely false and fabricated”. “Secretary Hegseth and the Department of War remain unwavering in their commitment to the highest standards of ethics and strict adherence to all applicable laws and regulations,” Parnell posted. According to a report by the Financial Times, which cited three people familiar with the matter, a Morgan Stanley broker who worked for Hegseth contacted BlackRock in February with an inquiry about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the equity fund Defense Industrials Active ETF. The investment reportedly didn’t go through. Parnell said: “Neither Secretary Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached BlackRock about any such investment. This is yet another baseless, dishonest smear designed to mislead the public.”","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69cb11308f08cbd9debe9356","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:17:03Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:17:02Z","body":"The TSA workers union is calling on congress to end the shutdown and fund the Department of Homeland Security. In a statement on Monday, Hydrick Thomas, the union’s president, said TSA workers have been showing up to work for weeks despite not getting paid.
\n“We have performed our duty,” Thomas said. “Unfortunately, Congress has failed to perform theirs. To leave Washington while tens of thousands of workers are going without pay shows a clear lack of respect for the essential employees tasked with keeping our nation safe.”
\nCongress just started a two-week recess as the partial government shutdown, which is now the longest in US history, sees no end in sight. The shutdown has left thousands of federal workers without pay checks and travelers stuck in long TSA lines at airports. Late last week, Donald Trump issued an executive order for TSA agents to receive backpay for at least two paychecks.
\nThe American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) TSA Council 100 is the exclusive union for more than 45,000 TSA officers across the country. Thomas said that even with agents now getting some backpay, it’s still financially difficult.
\n“Many of our members have seen bills pile up, interest and late fees add up, cars repossessed, and families thrown into disarray because Congress has failed to do their jobs,” Thomas said. “Backpay alone does not fix those problems… To say we are utterly disgusted and disappointed with our elected officials is an understatement.”
","cleanBody":"The TSA workers union is calling on congress to end the shutdown and fund the Department of Homeland Security. In a statement on Monday, Hydrick Thomas, the union’s president, said TSA workers have been showing up to work for weeks despite not getting paid. “We have performed our duty,” Thomas said. “Unfortunately, Congress has failed to perform theirs. To leave Washington while tens of thousands of workers are going without pay shows a clear lack of respect for the essential employees tasked with keeping our nation safe.” Congress just started a two-week recess as the partial government shutdown, which is now the longest in US history, sees no end in sight. The shutdown has left thousands of federal workers without pay checks and travelers stuck in long TSA lines at airports. Late last week, Donald Trump issued an executive order for TSA agents to receive backpay for at least two paychecks. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) TSA Council 100 is the exclusive union for more than 45,000 TSA officers across the country. Thomas said that even with agents now getting some backpay, it’s still financially difficult. “Many of our members have seen bills pile up, interest and late fees add up, cars repossessed, and families thrown into disarray because Congress has failed to do their jobs,” Thomas said. “Backpay alone does not fix those problems… To say we are utterly disgusted and disappointed with our elected officials is an understatement.”","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69cb0be68f083204a736aee9","title":"US directs its embassies to wage campaign against foreign ‘hostility’","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:52:43Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:52:42Z","body":"The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it.
\nThe cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday and obtained by the Guardian, also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad.
\nIt comes as the United States is at war with Iran, whose government has for decades operated one of the world’s most sophisticated and prolific state disinformation apparatuses, and as Russian and Chinese influence operations continue to target American allies across Europe, Asia and Latin America.
\nRead more
\n","cleanBody":"The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it. The cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday and obtained by the Guardian, also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad. It comes as the United States is at war with Iran, whose government has for decades operated one of the world’s most sophisticated and prolific state disinformation apparatuses, and as Russian and Chinese influence operations continue to target American allies across Europe, Asia and Latin America. Read more","postType":"key-event","contributors":["joseph-gedeon"]},{"id":"block-69cb05ea8f0887f60811a9dd","title":"Pete Hegseth's broker inquired into defense fund investment before Iran war, FT reports","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:30:13Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:30:12Z","body":"A broker working for Pete Hegseth allegedly aimed to make major investments in key defense companies before the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, according to the Financial Times.
\nThe defense secretary’s broker, who worked at Morgan Stanley, apparently contacted BlackRock in February with an inquiry about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the equity fund Defense Industrials Active ETF, per the Financial Times, which cited three people familiar with the matter.
\nThe inquiry was flagged internally at BlackRock, due to the request being made on behalf of a potential client who was high-profile. The equity fund’s holdings include some of the world’s biggest defense corporations, including RTX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Palantir.
\nAccording to the Financial Times, the investment didn’t go through as it wasn’t yet available for Morgan Stanley clients to purchase.
\nHegseth has been leading the war in Iran and has said that the US will continue to fight for “as long as we need to”. During briefings, he’s quotes bible scripture and a review by the Guardian has found that Hegseth has expressed a violent antipathy towards Iran for years.
","cleanBody":"A broker working for Pete Hegseth allegedly aimed to make major investments in key defense companies before the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, according to the Financial Times. The defense secretary’s broker, who worked at Morgan Stanley, apparently contacted BlackRock in February with an inquiry about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the equity fund Defense Industrials Active ETF, per the Financial Times, which cited three people familiar with the matter. The inquiry was flagged internally at BlackRock, due to the request being made on behalf of a potential client who was high-profile. The equity fund’s holdings include some of the world’s biggest defense corporations, including RTX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Palantir. According to the Financial Times, the investment didn’t go through as it wasn’t yet available for Morgan Stanley clients to purchase. Hegseth has been leading the war in Iran and has said that the US will continue to fight for “as long as we need to”. During briefings, he’s quotes bible scripture and a review by the Guardian has found that Hegseth has expressed a violent antipathy towards Iran for years.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69cafdc08f083204a736ae93","title":"José Guadalupe Ramos, a Mexican national, dies in ICE detention in LA","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-30T22:53:32Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-30T22:53:32Z","body":"A Mexican immigrant has died at a detention center outside Los Angeles, marking at least the 14th death in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since the year began.
\nSecurity staff at the Adelanto detention center found José Guadalupe Ramos unconscious and unresponsive in his bunk on 25 March, according to an ICE press release. Staff attempted to carry out life-saving procedures, including CPR, then called emergency services, who took Ramos to Victory Valley Global medical center in nearby Victorville. He was pronounced dead there at 9.29pm.
\nAt his medical screening on 24 February, ICE found that Ramos suffered from diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia. He received “daily medication to treat his illness”, according to ICE.
\nIt was not clear whether he received medication for a single illness or all three. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.
\nRead more
\n","cleanBody":"A Mexican immigrant has died at a detention center outside Los Angeles, marking at least the 14th death in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since the year began. Security staff at the Adelanto detention center found José Guadalupe Ramos unconscious and unresponsive in his bunk on 25 March, according to an ICE press release. Staff attempted to carry out life-saving procedures, including CPR, then called emergency services, who took Ramos to Victory Valley Global medical center in nearby Victorville. He was pronounced dead there at 9.29pm. At his medical screening on 24 February, ICE found that Ramos suffered from diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia. He received “daily medication to treat his illness”, according to ICE. It was not clear whether he received medication for a single illness or all three. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for clarification. Read more","postType":"key-event","contributors":["roque-planas"]},{"id":"block-69cafab58f083204a736ae78","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-30T22:39:37Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:35:00Z","body":"A protest statue has appeared on the National Mall in Washington DC: a baroque-styled marble and gold toilet. It’s built like a throne, where anyone can sit on the commode as if it were a chair.
\n![\"A](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/e86a212c4e489db7fab309597f072f3cbe736b48/418_0_4164_3333/1000.jpg\")
\n “A Throne Fit for a King,” reads a plaque attached to the statue. “In a time of unprecedented division, escalating conflict, and economic turmoil, President Trump focused on what truly mattered: remodeling the Lincoln bathroom in the White House.”
\n![\"The](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/2bf746be2668ad92e317af42f8e158a303edd483/668_0_6681_5347/1000.jpg\")
\n The throne comes as Donald Trump is remaking the White House in his image. Along with renovating the Lincoln bathroom, he’s had gilded doilies attached to the walls of the Oval Office and had the East Wing of the building torn down to build a massive ballroom. The president is long-rumored to own a gold toilet.
\nThe statue comes after another protest piece appeared on the Mall depicting Trump and the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands. The roll of toilet paper with the toilet throne reads “The Secret Handshake”, which is the name of the group that claimed responsibility for the hand-holding statue.
\n![\"A](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/29b784b74cac019f77c341b06fcb722b7b62b9ee/688_0_6880_5504/1000.jpg\")
\n Lindsey Graham appears to have spent last weekend at Disney World, riding Space Mountain in the theme park’s Magic Kingdom, according to TMZ. The Republican senator from South Carolina’s Florida vacation comes amid a more than six-week partial government shutdown over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
\nPhotos captured by TMZ show Graham waiting in line for rides, eating at a breakfast buffet and strolling through Disney World with what looks like a bubble wand in his hand. The gossip news site said Graham spent three days at the theme park.
\nThe partial government shutdown, which is now the longest in US history, has left thousands of federal workers without pay checks and travelers stuck in long TSA lines at airports. Graham told TMZ he was in Florida to meet with Trump officials, and then went to Orlando afterwards.
\nOn Monday, Graham blamed the democrats for the shutdown in a post on X and referenced working on a “new deal” for DHS: “Threats to our country are through the roof and it’s well past time to pay all workers. Schumer and gang are playing a dangerous game with our homeland security.”
","cleanBody":"Lindsey Graham appears to have spent last weekend at Disney World, riding Space Mountain in the theme park’s Magic Kingdom, according to TMZ. The Republican senator from South Carolina’s Florida vacation comes amid a more than six-week partial government shutdown over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Photos captured by TMZ show Graham waiting in line for rides, eating at a breakfast buffet and strolling through Disney World with what looks like a bubble wand in his hand. The gossip news site said Graham spent three days at the theme park. The partial government shutdown, which is now the longest in US history, has left thousands of federal workers without pay checks and travelers stuck in long TSA lines at airports. Graham told TMZ he was in Florida to meet with Trump officials, and then went to Orlando afterwards. On Monday, Graham blamed the democrats for the shutdown in a post on X and referenced working on a “new deal” for DHS: “Threats to our country are through the roof and it’s well past time to pay all workers. Schumer and gang are playing a dangerous game with our homeland security.”","postType":"blog","contributors":[]}],"keyEvents":[{"id":"block-69cad56b8f083204a736ad9d","title":"Here's a recap of the day so far","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-30T20:04:03Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:22:45Z","body":"Senate Republicans did not use the pro forma session today to try to pass a stopgap funding bill advanced by House GOP leaders on Friday. John Hoeven, the Republican senator from North Dakota, told reporters that the continuing resolution could not pass by unanimous consent because Democratic senator Chris Coons objected. This comes amid a record-breaking partial government shutdown that has lasted 45 days.
\nKaroline Leavitt continued to blame Democratic lawmakers for the ongoing funding lapse, after both chambers of Congress remain at an impasse on passing a bill to reopen a portion of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Congress is now on a scheduled two-week recess, and many members have left Washington for their districts. The press secretary said today that the president is encouraging lawmakers to return to Capitol Hill and secure a deal, after negotiations broke down last week.
\nWhile Donald Trump has signed an executive order to pay TSA employees as the shutdown continues, Leavitt offered no more information as to how they administration is securing these funds to issue paychecks. Airport security officers are expected to see their first full paycheck today, after the president directed the DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, to issue payments immediately on Friday.
\nThe Department of Justice sued Minnesota’s education department and the state’s school athletics body for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports. In a lawsuit, the DoJ claims that by making against female student athletes compete against transgender girls, as well as share locker rooms and bathrooms with them, Minnesota is violating Title IX – the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination for any programs that receive federal funding.
\nThe average price for a gallon of gasoline in the US is about to hit $4, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). This is up 33% from a month ago, when the average price was $2.98 per gallon. It’s the highest national average since 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The price at the pump is the most tangible hit Americans have felt since the US‑Israel war on Iran began almost five weeks ago.
\nThe army is investigating what appears to be a detour taken by two Apache helicopters on a training run on Saturday. The helicopters under question visited and hovered alongside Kid Rock’s hillside swimming pool in Tennessee.
\nKid Rock, an outspoken Donald Trump supporter and rock musician, posted a video to X showing him salute the choppers as they flew by.
\n“This is a level of respect that shit for brains Governor of California will never know. God Bless America and all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend her,” Kid Rock wrote on his post, along with an American Flag and prayer hands emoji.
\nAccording to the Associated Press, there was no official request from Kid Rock to have the helicopters fly by, which is what triggered the administrative review.
\n“Army aviators must adhere to strict safety standards, professionalism, and established flight regulations... Appropriate action will be taken if any violations are found,” the army said in a written statement.
","cleanBody":"The army is investigating what appears to be a detour taken by two Apache helicopters on a training run on Saturday. The helicopters under question visited and hovered alongside Kid Rock’s hillside swimming pool in Tennessee. Kid Rock, an outspoken Donald Trump supporter and rock musician, posted a video to X showing him salute the choppers as they flew by. “This is a level of respect that shit for brains Governor of California will never know. God Bless America and all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend her,” Kid Rock wrote on his post, along with an American Flag and prayer hands emoji. According to the Associated Press, there was no official request from Kid Rock to have the helicopters fly by, which is what triggered the administrative review. “Army aviators must adhere to strict safety standards, professionalism, and established flight regulations... Appropriate action will be taken if any violations are found,” the army said in a written statement.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69cafdc08f083204a736ae93","title":"José Guadalupe Ramos, a Mexican national, dies in ICE detention in LA","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-30T22:53:32Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-30T22:53:32Z","body":"A Mexican immigrant has died at a detention center outside Los Angeles, marking at least the 14th death in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since the year began.
\nSecurity staff at the Adelanto detention center found José Guadalupe Ramos unconscious and unresponsive in his bunk on 25 March, according to an ICE press release. Staff attempted to carry out life-saving procedures, including CPR, then called emergency services, who took Ramos to Victory Valley Global medical center in nearby Victorville. He was pronounced dead there at 9.29pm.
\nAt his medical screening on 24 February, ICE found that Ramos suffered from diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia. He received “daily medication to treat his illness”, according to ICE.
\nIt was not clear whether he received medication for a single illness or all three. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.
\nRead more
\n","cleanBody":"A Mexican immigrant has died at a detention center outside Los Angeles, marking at least the 14th death in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since the year began. Security staff at the Adelanto detention center found José Guadalupe Ramos unconscious and unresponsive in his bunk on 25 March, according to an ICE press release. Staff attempted to carry out life-saving procedures, including CPR, then called emergency services, who took Ramos to Victory Valley Global medical center in nearby Victorville. He was pronounced dead there at 9.29pm. At his medical screening on 24 February, ICE found that Ramos suffered from diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia. He received “daily medication to treat his illness”, according to ICE. It was not clear whether he received medication for a single illness or all three. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for clarification. Read more","postType":"key-event","contributors":["roque-planas"]},{"id":"block-69cb05ea8f0887f60811a9dd","title":"Pete Hegseth's broker inquired into defense fund investment before Iran war, FT reports","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:30:13Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:30:12Z","body":"A broker working for Pete Hegseth allegedly aimed to make major investments in key defense companies before the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, according to the Financial Times.
\nThe defense secretary’s broker, who worked at Morgan Stanley, apparently contacted BlackRock in February with an inquiry about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the equity fund Defense Industrials Active ETF, per the Financial Times, which cited three people familiar with the matter.
\nThe inquiry was flagged internally at BlackRock, due to the request being made on behalf of a potential client who was high-profile. The equity fund’s holdings include some of the world’s biggest defense corporations, including RTX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Palantir.
\nAccording to the Financial Times, the investment didn’t go through as it wasn’t yet available for Morgan Stanley clients to purchase.
\nHegseth has been leading the war in Iran and has said that the US will continue to fight for “as long as we need to”. During briefings, he’s quotes bible scripture and a review by the Guardian has found that Hegseth has expressed a violent antipathy towards Iran for years.
","cleanBody":"A broker working for Pete Hegseth allegedly aimed to make major investments in key defense companies before the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, according to the Financial Times. The defense secretary’s broker, who worked at Morgan Stanley, apparently contacted BlackRock in February with an inquiry about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the equity fund Defense Industrials Active ETF, per the Financial Times, which cited three people familiar with the matter. The inquiry was flagged internally at BlackRock, due to the request being made on behalf of a potential client who was high-profile. The equity fund’s holdings include some of the world’s biggest defense corporations, including RTX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Palantir. According to the Financial Times, the investment didn’t go through as it wasn’t yet available for Morgan Stanley clients to purchase. Hegseth has been leading the war in Iran and has said that the US will continue to fight for “as long as we need to”. During briefings, he’s quotes bible scripture and a review by the Guardian has found that Hegseth has expressed a violent antipathy towards Iran for years.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69cb0be68f083204a736aee9","title":"US directs its embassies to wage campaign against foreign ‘hostility’","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:52:43Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-30T23:52:42Z","body":"The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it.
\nThe cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday and obtained by the Guardian, also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad.
\nIt comes as the United States is at war with Iran, whose government has for decades operated one of the world’s most sophisticated and prolific state disinformation apparatuses, and as Russian and Chinese influence operations continue to target American allies across Europe, Asia and Latin America.
\nRead more
\n","cleanBody":"The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it. The cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday and obtained by the Guardian, also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad. It comes as the United States is at war with Iran, whose government has for decades operated one of the world’s most sophisticated and prolific state disinformation apparatuses, and as Russian and Chinese influence operations continue to target American allies across Europe, Asia and Latin America. Read more","postType":"key-event","contributors":["joseph-gedeon"]},{"id":"block-69cb1bb48f08cbd9debe9391","title":"Florida to rename Palm Beach airport after Donald Trump","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:59:27Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-31T00:59:26Z","body":"Donald Trump is now getting an airport that bears his name. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, signed a bill on Monday saying the Palm Beach International Airport was being renamed to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport.
\nTrump’s family business filed a trademark application for the airport name in February. If approved, the name change would take effect on July 1.
\nThe Florida airport is the latest in a series of buildings, institutions, government programs, navy battleships, national parks passes and even money to be named after the president.
\nDeSantis also worked last year to get a parcel of land in Miami to be the home for Trump’s presidential library. On Truth Social on Monday, Trump posted a video of a rendering of the library, which showed a massive mirrored skyscraper emblazoned with his name and the American flag.
","cleanBody":"Donald Trump is now getting an airport that bears his name. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, signed a bill on Monday saying the Palm Beach International Airport was being renamed to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Trump’s family business filed a trademark application for the airport name in February. If approved, the name change would take effect on July 1. The Florida airport is the latest in a series of buildings, institutions, government programs, navy battleships, national parks passes and even money to be named after the president. DeSantis also worked last year to get a parcel of land in Miami to be the home for Trump’s presidential library. On Truth Social on Monday, Trump posted a video of a rendering of the library, which showed a massive mirrored skyscraper emblazoned with his name and the American flag.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69cb293e8f083204a736af6e","title":"Today’s recap","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-31T02:06:12Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-31T02:06:11Z","body":"Talks over ending the record-breaking partial government shutdown remain at an impasse, as congress is on its scheduled two-week recess. TSA employees began to get some backpay on Monday, but their union said it’s not enough and is calling on lawmakers to return to Washington DC and end the shutdown.
\nHere’s what else happened today:
\nAllegations swirl that a broker for Pete Hegseth inquired into an investment in key defense companies before the Iran war began. The Morgan Stanley broker allegedly made an inquiry with BlackRock regarding an investment into a defense-focused equity fund. The Pentagon denied the allegations calling them “entirely false and fabricated”.
\nFlorida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill to rename the Palm Beach International Airport after Donald Trump. This would make the airport the latest in a long list of institutions, government programs, buildings and even money named after the president.
\nThe US government has directed all of its embassies and consulates to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda. Marco Rubio signed a cable on Monday directing the embassies to coordinate with the US military’s psychological operations unit to address disinformation. It suggested using Elon Musk’s social media platform X to carry out the campaign.
\nJosé Guadalupe Ramos, a Mexican national, becomes the 14th known person to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since the beginning of the year. He was found unconscious in his bunk last week at the Adelanto detention center in California and pronounced dead after being taken to a nearby medical center.
\nThe army is investigating a helicopter fly-by at Kid Rock’s hillside swimming pool in Tennessee on Saturday. Two army choppers on a training run visited and hovered by the rocker’s house as he saluted them. According to the army, there was no official request for the fly-by, which triggered the administrative review.
\nA two-year-old detained at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement family detention center in Dilley, Texas, is said to be sick and not getting adequate help. Joaquin Castro, a democratic congressman from San Antonio, raised alarms on X on Monday saying that the boy has a fever and isn’t eating. He called on ICE to provide proper medical care to the child and release him and his month immediately.
\nSenate Republicans did not use the pro forma session today to try to pass a stopgap funding bill advanced by House GOP leaders on Friday. John Hoeven, the Republican senator from North Dakota, told reporters that the continuing resolution could not pass by unanimous consent because Democratic senator Chris Coons objected.
\nKaroline Leavitt continued to blame Democratic lawmakers for the ongoing funding lapse to reopen a portion of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The press secretary said today that the president is encouraging lawmakers to return to Capitol Hill and secure a deal, after negotiations broke down last week.
\nWhile Donald Trump has signed an executive order to pay TSA employees as the shutdown continues, Leavitt offered no more information as to how they administration is securing these funds to issue paychecks. Airport security officers were expected to see their first full paycheck today, after the president directed the DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, to issue payments immediately on Friday.
\nThe Department of Justice sued Minnesota’s education department and the state’s school athletics body for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports. In a lawsuit, the DoJ claims that by making against female student athletes compete against transgender girls, as well as share locker rooms and bathrooms with them, Minnesota is violating Title IX – the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination for any programs that receive federal funding.
\nThe average price for a gallon of gasoline in the US is about to hit $4, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA). This is up 33% from a month ago, when the average price was $2.98 per gallon, and is the highest national average since 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The spike in the price at the pump is the most tangible hit Americans have felt since the US‑Israel war on Iran began almost five weeks ago.
\nThis live blog is now closed.
\nTrump news at a glance: US promotes Elon Musk’s X to fight foreign propaganda
\nAs thousands of US soldiers and marines arrive in the Middle East, Iran is accusing Washington of privately plotting a ground assault while publicly touting ceasefire talks. Donald Trump threatened to ‘obliterate’ Iran’s energy infrastructure, said his ‘preference would be to take the oil’ in Iran and that US forces could seize the regime’s export hub on Kharg Island, while also claiming he was in talks with a new ‘reasonable regime’. Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthi forces have also entered the conflict, bringing the threat of further damage to the global economy.
Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian columnist and host of Politics Weekly America, Jonathan Freedland
","type":"youtube"}]},"trailText":"This live blog is now closed.","showQuotedHeadline":false,"showLiveIndicator":false,"sublinks":[],"mainImage":{"urlTemplate":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/296564c17b060e9b21c7e5b565cec00e2b67d6ef/1146_311_4955_3966/master/4955.jpg?w=#{width}&h=#{height}&q=#{quality}&fit=bounds&sig-ignores-params=true&s=23016da70a35faf093bb5e21a693bdd5","height":3966,"width":4955,"orientation":"landscape","credit":"Aaron Schwartz/Reuters","altText":"Passengers wait in a TSA security checkpoint queue that stretches through an airport in Baltimore, Maryland.","cleanCredit":"Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/Reuters"},"renderedItemProd":{"minBridgetVersion":"8.0.0","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/mar/30/donald-trump-shutdown-ice-dhs-tsa-airports-iran-jd-vance-latest-news-updates?dcr=apps&edition=uk"},"renderedItemBeta":{"minBridgetVersion":"8.0.0","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/mar/30/donald-trump-shutdown-ice-dhs-tsa-airports-iran-jd-vance-latest-news-updates?dcr=apps&edition=uk"},"renderedItemDebug":{"minBridgetVersion":"8.0.0","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/mar/30/donald-trump-shutdown-ice-dhs-tsa-airports-iran-jd-vance-latest-news-updates?dcr=apps&edition=uk"},"cardDesignType":"Article","correspondingTags":[],"type":"Article","importance":0},{"title":"Trump to revoke protections for endangered species in Gulf of Mexico","rawTitle":"Trump to revoke protections for endangered species in Gulf of Mexico","item":{"trailText":"President is convening so-called ‘God squad’ to override provisions of Endangered Species Act for ‘national security’","body":"Donald Trump is dispatching a so-called “God squad” of top officials to revoke protections for endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico, purportedly to protect national security by expanding oil and gas industry operations.
\nIf successful, the administration may kill off dozens of protected species – from Rice’s whales and whooping cranes to sea turtles.
\nThe rarely used “God squad” provision in the Endangered Species Act (ESA) allows a president to convene a committee of agency heads empowered to effectively veto protections for species on the brink of extinction. The committee essentially weighs whether the benefits from a proposed project outweigh the continued existence of protected wildlife.
\nThe Trump administration is attempting to justify the ESA exemption for “reasons of national security”, marking the first time a security claim has been made. However, oil and gas companies have not asked for the exemption, raising questions about why it is being requested, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which has sued to stop the committee from convening.
\n\nThe move is presumably aimed at bringing down gas prices that are soaring amid the US-Israel war on Iran, opponents say. Trump wants to make it appear as if the administration is taking action over the growing crisis, but the claim that there is a national security threat is “nonsense” for a multitude of reasons, Hartl said.
\n“What is the threat here? Or is the main threat Donald Trump’s abysmal polling numbers?” Hartl asked. “This is performative and it’s red meat being thrown to the far-right and industry.”
\nOnly about 51 Rice’s whales remain, and they and other wildlife are largely on the brink of extinction because of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill, which devastated the gulf when it leaked about 210m gallons.
\nThe squad, officially called the Endangered Species Committee, includes seven federal agency leaders, who, in the rare instances in which a federal action of significant public or economic interest comes into “irresolvable conflict” with the ESA, each vote on whether the project’s benefits outweigh the protected species’ wellbeing.
\nIf five of the seven votes are in favor of a project proceeding, it moves forward, which could drive species to extinction. It convenes on 31 March.
\nAmong other actions, the “God squad” is proposing to override a National Marine Fisheries Service requirement for the oil and gas industry to drive ships at safe speeds in the eastern gulf and monitor the location of whales to avoid strikes and deaths.
\nPete Hegseth, secretary of defense, is requesting to exempt all oil and gas industry activities in the Gulf of Mexico from the ESA, though the military and industry has not proposed a specific project, or cited a conflict.
\n“No one is asking for this,” Hartl said.
\nThe administration is also attempting to exempt itself and Hegseth from following clear, specific protocol laid out in the ESA, again citing national security threats as justification.
\nThe statute requires the committee’s documents and meetings to be open to the public. It has withheld public documents requested by the Center for Biological Diversity, Hartl said. Its allegedly open meeting was livestreamed, but not open to the public, the center states in its lawsuit.
\nThe “God squad” has only been convened three times, and the only project on which it overrode the ESA was a dam, but the plans included meaningful provisions that helped at-risk cranes survive. Andrew Bowman, president of the Defenders of Wildlife advocacy group, said no administration from either party has attempted to avoid the protocols as Hegseth has.
\n“Hegseth’s posturing that our national security somehow requires risking the extinction of the gulf’s threatened and endangered species by ignoring the ESA’s requirements is breathtaking in its utter contempt for America’s national wildlife heritage – and the rule of law,” Bowman said in a statement.
\nEven if Hegseth and the administration followed the protocol, it is unclear whether lowering gas prices fits with the spirit of the law, Hartl said. He noted that Congress included a military exemption when passing the ESA, but lawmakers at the time made clear it was intended to apply to military exercises or drills.
\nThe Center for Biological Diversity’s first suit was argued on Friday during an emergency hearing, and a judge has yet to rule. The suit focuses on the administration’s failure to follow protocol.
\nThe administration could very easily follow the protocol and again file for an exemption within a few days, Hartl said. If it does, then the Center for Biological Diversity will probably relitigate, and argue against the use of gas prices as an exemption justification.
\n“It’s tragic that the Rice’s whale, which has lived in this planet’s oceans for millions of years, could now go extinct because of a small man’s petty indifference,” Hartl said.
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\nThe analysis coincided with the introduction of California legislation that would by 2035 fully ban Pfas from being used as active ingredients in pesticides, and require warning labels and other restrictions in the meantime.
\nThe Environmental Working Group (EWG) non-profit conducted the analysis of California department of pesticide regulation residue testing records. It found about 90% of peaches, plums and nectarines contained Pfas residues, while 80% of strawberries and grapes showed them. Those levels are especially alarming because children commonly eat fruits like grapes and strawberries, and children are most at risk from the chemicals’ toxic effects, said Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice-president of EWG’s California operations.
\n“Most consumers don’t expect to find Pfas ‘forever chemicals’ on their strawberries – I think this information is shocking to most people,” Del Chiaro added.
\nPfas are a class of at least 16,000 compounds typically used to make common products that resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and accumulate, and are linked to cancer, kidney disease, liver problems, immune disorders, birth defects and other serious health problems.
\nAdvocates began sounding the alarm over Pfas in pesticides in 2023. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Joe Biden attempted to discredit the author of one study that identified the chemicals in pesticides, while, under Donald Trump, the EPA has increased the number of Pfas proposed for use on crops.
\nAt least 60% of active ingredients federally approved to be used in common pesticides in recent years fit the most widely accepted definition of Pfas, a 2023 analysis of EPA data found. The chemicals are added as an active ingredient to crop pesticides to kill weeds or pests.
\nEWG analyzed records for 930 samples across 78 types of non-organic, California-grown fruits and vegetables.
\nIt found 348 samples, or 37%, showed Pfas residues. About 40 individual types of fruits and vegetables contained residues, meaning at least half of all produce varieties were treated with Pfas pesticides.
\nThe chemicals are not just a problem for food – they persist in the environment and pollute drinking water supplies. The city of Fresno, in an agricultural region, recently sued Pfas makers over pollution of groundwater, which exceeded federal limits by 600%. The contamination impacts more than 120,000 homes.
\nA previous EWG analysis of state records found 2.5m pounds of Pfas are spread on California cropland annually.
\n“Here’s a chemical that we in society at large are trying to get out of our environment and drinking water … and yet here on the flip side there is a regulatory agency permitting its use on crops,” Del Chiaro said.
\nThe health impacts are largely unclear because Pfas pesticides are a relatively new issue to researchers, and little data beyond that produced by industry exists.
\n“We know that Pfas can be dangerous, we know that pesticides can be dangerous, but we don’t really know enough about this new understudied exposure route,” said Varun Subramaniam, a report co-author and analyst with EWG.
\nHe noted that the produce may contain more than one kind of Pfas pesticide. Ten products are approved for use on strawberries, but the regulatory system only accounts for the risks of one pesticide, even though that is not how people are typically exposed.
\n“We know people are exposed to cocktails of pesticides and literature shows that these combinations can often be more harmful, so that’s a blind spot for the EPA at the moment,” Subramaniam said.
\nThe proposed legislation in California would ban the use of Pfas as an active ingredient in pesticides by 2035. By 2030, the 23 Pfas pesticides that are already banned by the European Union, but still used in the US, would also be banned in California. The bill would also place a moratorium on approvals of new Pfas pesticides, and require labels to warn farmers, who advocates say often do not know their pesticides contain Pfas.
\nThe pesticide industry will almost certainly mount a ferocious campaign against the legislation. Maine and Minnesota have already passed similar bans, making it more likely to pass in California. Though the state often leads in new environmental protections, Gavin Newsom, California’s governor and a frontrunning potential candidate for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president, is susceptible to industry influence, especially on Pfas legislation.
\nIn December, the California legislature by a wide margin passed a bill that would have banned Pfas in cookware and other everyday products, but Newsom vetoed it after receiving pressure from the cookware industry and celebrity chefs. He has so far not said anything about the pesticide legislation.
\nThe bill’s author, California assemblymember Nick Schultz, said in a statement that he doesn’t want his kids “eating strawberries contaminated with chemicals that will stay in their bodies for decades”.
\n“We are providing a clear, responsible road map for our farmers to transition away from these persistent chemicals while re-establishing California as a global leader in food safety,” Schultz added.
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Thanks for reading, and here are some of the latest developments:
\nDonald Trump signed an executive order Friday instructing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents as the partial shutdown drags on. Negotiations on Capitol Hill remain stalled after House Republicans rejected a Senate‑passed deal to fund key DHS subagencies, including the TSA. More here.
\nHouse Republicans have rejected legislation, passed by the Senate, that would finance most of DHS but withhold funds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The move imperils efforts to end a 42‑day partial government shutdown that has seen thousands of DHS employees miss paychecks and furious travelers miss flights due to long airport security lines. More here.
\nHouse minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined by Democratic whip Katherine Clark and Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar, told reporters that he and his colleagues back the bill passed by the Senate to fund most of the department of homeland security, noting that House Republicans are “the only thing standing” in the way of ending the chaos at airports nationwide. “House Democrats are prepared to support the bill to end the Trump Republican shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security,” said Jeffries.
\nIran-linked hackers have broken into the personal email inbox of Kash Patel, FBI’s director, publishing photographs of him and other documents on the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday. More here.
\nWashington expects its operation against Iran to conclude in “weeks, not months”, the US secretary of state has said, despite continuing violence across the region and a threat from Israel to “escalate and expand” its attacks against the Islamic republic. “When we are done with them here in the next couple weeks, they will be weaker than they’ve been in recent history,” Marco Rubio told reporters on Friday after meeting G7 foreign ministers in France. More here.
\nThis brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close. Thanks for reading, and here are some of the latest developments:
\nDonald Trump signed an executive order Friday instructing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents as the partial shutdown drags on. Negotiations on Capitol Hill remain stalled after House Republicans rejected a Senate‑passed deal to fund key DHS subagencies, including the TSA. More here.
\nHouse Republicans have rejected legislation, passed by the Senate, that would finance most of DHS but withhold funds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The move imperils efforts to end a 42‑day partial government shutdown that has seen thousands of DHS employees miss paychecks and furious travelers miss flights due to long airport security lines. More here.
\nHouse minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined by Democratic whip Katherine Clark and Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar, told reporters that he and his colleagues back the bill passed by the Senate to fund most of the department of homeland security, noting that House Republicans are “the only thing standing” in the way of ending the chaos at airports nationwide. “House Democrats are prepared to support the bill to end the Trump Republican shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security,” said Jeffries.
\nIran-linked hackers have broken into the personal email inbox of Kash Patel, FBI’s director, publishing photographs of him and other documents on the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday. More here.
\nWashington expects its operation against Iran to conclude in “weeks, not months”, the US secretary of state has said, despite continuing violence across the region and a threat from Israel to “escalate and expand” its attacks against the Islamic republic. “When we are done with them here in the next couple weeks, they will be weaker than they’ve been in recent history,” Marco Rubio told reporters on Friday after meeting G7 foreign ministers in France. More here.
\nThe actor Jane Fonda joined journalists, musicians and writers outside Washington’s John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in urging US citizens to “break your silence” and “stand tall against authoritarianism”.
\nAt a damp but defiant rally hosted by Fonda’s Committee for the First Amendment on Friday, around a hundred invited guests gathered to hear speakers and singers rail against book bans, political censorship and other threats to free speech under Donald Trump.
\n“Today, books are being banned, plaques and monuments depicting historical events this administration wants to forget are being removed,” Fonda said from a stage under a grey, rainy sky. “Museums, the National Endowment for the Arts, state arts councils, public broadcasting – they’re all being defunded.”
\n![\"Jane](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/84e1714005483e12b4dcb9b717fc01862b540def/0_0_5000_3335/1000.jpg\")
\n The choice of the Kennedy Center as a backdrop was pointed: the US president has seized control of the national arts complex, targeted so-called “woke” programming, had his name added to its marble facade and announced that it will close for two years of renovations. Dozens of layoffs began this week.
\nFonda observed: “This beloved citadel of the arts has become a symbol of what is happening. The centre has been effectively silenced after artists refused to bow to ideological demands and the racist erasure of history.
\nRead the full story here:
\n","cleanBody":"The actor Jane Fonda joined journalists, musicians and writers outside Washington’s John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in urging US citizens to “break your silence” and “stand tall against authoritarianism”. At a damp but defiant rally hosted by Fonda’s Committee for the First Amendment on Friday, around a hundred invited guests gathered to hear speakers and singers rail against book bans, political censorship and other threats to free speech under Donald Trump. “Today, books are being banned, plaques and monuments depicting historical events this administration wants to forget are being removed,” Fonda said from a stage under a grey, rainy sky. “Museums, the National Endowment for the Arts, state arts councils, public broadcasting – they’re all being defunded.”\nThe choice of the Kennedy Center as a backdrop was pointed: the US president has seized control of the national arts complex, targeted so-called “woke” programming, had his name added to its marble facade and announced that it will close for two years of renovations. Dozens of layoffs began this week. Fonda observed: “This beloved citadel of the arts has become a symbol of what is happening. The centre has been effectively silenced after artists refused to bow to ideological demands and the racist erasure of history. Read the full story here:","postType":"blog","contributors":["davidsmith"]},{"id":"block-69c71d7e8f084d6bedab5871","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-28T00:21:51Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-28T00:21:50Z","body":"Further delays are expected at DC area airports after a ground stop was issued amid an issue at a main air traffic control facility, according to an alert by the Federal Aviation Administration.
\nThe FAA issued the alert on Friday evening, citing the reason as an “environmental” problem at the Potomac Consolidated TRACON, which controls the airspace over Andrews, BWI, Ronald Reagan, Dulles, Richmond and other airports. The stops for Dulles and BWI have since been lifted, but remain in place for DCA.
\nReuters is reporting that an odor was detected at the air traffic control tower, which is located in Virginia.
","cleanBody":"Further delays are expected at DC area airports after a ground stop was issued amid an issue at a main air traffic control facility, according to an alert by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA issued the alert on Friday evening, citing the reason as an “environmental” problem at the Potomac Consolidated TRACON, which controls the airspace over Andrews, BWI, Ronald Reagan, Dulles, Richmond and other airports. The stops for Dulles and BWI have since been lifted, but remain in place for DCA. Reuters is reporting that an odor was detected at the air traffic control tower, which is located in Virginia.","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c716848f08a9060e5ebe8d","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T23:59:10Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T23:59:09Z","body":"Politico reported that the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, has been hospitalized at least twice for stress-related issues over the past seven months.
\nThe stress stemmed from carrying out Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda, which led to hospitalizations in September and December, according to the outlet, which cited two current and two former administration officials.
\nPolitico’s sources said that they saw Lyons “break out into a full sweat, with his face turning deep red,” according to the report. Sources also told Politico that Stephen Miller yelled at Lyons during daily morning phone calls, which was partially to blame for the stress.
\nIn a statement to Politico, Lyons said that his stress was not related to other Trump officials, and he did not address the two alleged hospitalizations.
","cleanBody":"Politico reported that the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, has been hospitalized at least twice for stress-related issues over the past seven months. The stress stemmed from carrying out Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda, which led to hospitalizations in September and December, according to the outlet, which cited two current and two former administration officials. Politico’s sources said that they saw Lyons “break out into a full sweat, with his face turning deep red,” according to the report. Sources also told Politico that Stephen Miller yelled at Lyons during daily morning phone calls, which was partially to blame for the stress. In a statement to Politico, Lyons said that his stress was not related to other Trump officials, and he did not address the two alleged hospitalizations.","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c70d3a8f084d6bedab5842","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T23:29:48Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T23:29:48Z","body":"It looks like TMZ’s callout for photos of US lawmakers boarding planes during the partial government shutdown is working, just as they head out for a two-week Easter recess.
\n“If anybody goes to Disney World with their family for spring break or goes to a beach somewhere or anywhere on vacation, and you see one of the 535 members of Congress, take a picture and send it to us at TMZ,” requested TMZ’s executive producer Harvey Levin in a video posted on social media on Thursday.
\nToday, TMZ posted a picture of Texas senator Ted Cruz on board a plane departing Washington DC. The outlet also shared a video from Fox News of Senate majority leader John Thune, seen at the Reagan National Airport in the nation’s capital. TMZ also posted a video of senator Marsha Blackburn walking through Reagan National Airport on Thursday night.
\nLawmakers are departing as the House prepares to vote around 10:30 pm ET tonight on legislation to fund the department of homeland security through 22 May.
","cleanBody":"It looks like TMZ’s callout for photos of US lawmakers boarding planes during the partial government shutdown is working, just as they head out for a two-week Easter recess. “If anybody goes to Disney World with their family for spring break or goes to a beach somewhere or anywhere on vacation, and you see one of the 535 members of Congress, take a picture and send it to us at TMZ,” requested TMZ’s executive producer Harvey Levin in a video posted on social media on Thursday. Today, TMZ posted a picture of Texas senator Ted Cruz on board a plane departing Washington DC. The outlet also shared a video from Fox News of Senate majority leader John Thune, seen at the Reagan National Airport in the nation’s capital. TMZ also posted a video of senator Marsha Blackburn walking through Reagan National Airport on Thursday night. Lawmakers are departing as the House prepares to vote around 10:30 pm ET tonight on legislation to fund the department of homeland security through 22 May.","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c709c88f08a9060e5ebe44","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T22:51:51Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T22:51:50Z","body":"At a major Saudi investment conference in Miami, President Donald Trump recommended that investors bet big on artificial intelligence.
\n“The one that they’re going crazy about is AI,” he said during a Q&A session. “If you want to say one thing, AI, and just hope that it works.”
\nOn a question related to Africa, Trump pointed to the region’s “tremendous potential.”
\n“It’s got tremendous Earth. It’s got tremendous value underground,” he said. “Africa has tremendous value in its land, and if they can unify and get together, I think it’s got tremendous potential.”
","cleanBody":"At a major Saudi investment conference in Miami, President Donald Trump recommended that investors bet big on artificial intelligence. “The one that they’re going crazy about is AI,” he said during a Q&A session. “If you want to say one thing, AI, and just hope that it works.” On a question related to Africa, Trump pointed to the region’s “tremendous potential.” “It’s got tremendous Earth. It’s got tremendous value underground,” he said. “Africa has tremendous value in its land, and if they can unify and get together, I think it’s got tremendous potential.”","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c700348f086b26b5ba194d","title":"Trump: 'Cuba is next'","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T22:11:52Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T22:20:58Z","body":"During a speech in Miami on Friday, President Trump pointed to his administration’s military intervention in Venezuela earlier this year and said: “Cuba is next, by the way. But pretend I didn’t say that.”
\nHere’s a video of that moment, posted by journalist Aaron Rupar.
","cleanBody":"During a speech in Miami on Friday, President Trump pointed to his administration’s military intervention in Venezuela earlier this year and said: “Cuba is next, by the way. But pretend I didn’t say that.” Here’s a video of that moment, posted by journalist Aaron Rupar.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c6fb0b8f086b26b5ba1919","title":"Iran has to 'open up strait of Trump - I mean, Hormuz', says US president","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T21:54:33Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T22:15:37Z","body":"Concerning the strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels, President Trump demanded that Iran “open it up” before he referred to the waterway as the “strait of Trump.”
\n“We’re negotiating now,” Trump said. “But they have to open it up. They have to open up the strait of Trump. I mean Hormuz. Yes, excuse me. I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake. The fake news will say ‘he accidentally said’. There’s no accidents with me.”
","cleanBody":"Concerning the strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels, President Trump demanded that Iran “open it up” before he referred to the waterway as the “strait of Trump.” “We’re negotiating now,” Trump said. “But they have to open it up. They have to open up the strait of Trump. I mean Hormuz. Yes, excuse me. I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake. The fake news will say ‘he accidentally said’. There’s no accidents with me.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c6f92c8f086b26b5ba1910","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T21:44:11Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T21:44:10Z","body":"President Trump is delivering remarks at the Future Investment Initiative, a Saudi business conference in Miami. It’s his second time addressing the conference.
\nHe began by praising the US military, and called Iran a “bully” that was participating in “nuclear blackmail.”
\n“We’re closer than ever to the rise of the Middle East that is finally free, at last, from Iranian terror aggression and nuclear blackmail,” he said. “For 47 years, Iran has been known as the bully of the Middle East, but they are not the bully any longer.”
\nJust a reminder: My colleague Lucy Campbell is covering the latest developments in the Middle East for The Guardian’s live blog.
\n","cleanBody":"President Trump is delivering remarks at the Future Investment Initiative, a Saudi business conference in Miami. It’s his second time addressing the conference. He began by praising the US military, and called Iran a “bully” that was participating in “nuclear blackmail.” “We’re closer than ever to the rise of the Middle East that is finally free, at last, from Iranian terror aggression and nuclear blackmail,” he said. “For 47 years, Iran has been known as the bully of the Middle East, but they are not the bully any longer.” Just a reminder: My colleague Lucy Campbell is covering the latest developments in the Middle East for The Guardian’s live blog.","postType":"blog","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c6f7a08f08a9060e5ebdc8","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T21:34:35Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T21:34:35Z","body":"Democrats have accused Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr of using his agency’s powers to target personalities and programs who oppose Donald Trump. In a speech to CPAC, he did not entirely deny the charge.
\n“When the Democrats were in charge of the FCC, they did not apply the law in an even-handed way,” Carr told the annual gathering of conservatives held this year in Grapevine, Texas.
\n“They weaponized it, and what I think we should do is not weaponize it, but also not just sit on our hands. We should take the authorities we have and apply it in a fair and even handed way, and we’re doing it.”
\nCarr’s approach to the FCC’s authorities exploded into the public eye last September, when he pressured television stations to “take action” against Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel was temporarily taken off the air, leading to complaints from Democrats, as well as a handful of Republicans, that Carr was advocating censorship.
\nCarr touched briefly on that episode in his speech to CPAC, describing it as a moment where local broadcasters acted as a check on media firms Comcast and Disney.
\n“You saw that in the instance with Jimmy Kimmel ... you had local TV stations for the first time push back and say, ‘We don’t want to run that program in our community.’”
\nHe also cheered instances of conservatives gaining influence in media firms, calling them evidence that Trump was “winning”.
\n“PBS: defunded. NPR: defunded. Joy Reid gone from MSNBC, sleepy eyes Chuck Todd gone, Jim Acosta gone, John Dickerson gone, [Stephen] Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN has got new ownership as well,” Carr said.
\n“We’re not on the point yet of raising the mission accomplished flag, but President Trump is taking on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning.”
","cleanBody":"Democrats have accused Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr of using his agency’s powers to target personalities and programs who oppose Donald Trump. In a speech to CPAC, he did not entirely deny the charge. “When the Democrats were in charge of the FCC, they did not apply the law in an even-handed way,” Carr told the annual gathering of conservatives held this year in Grapevine, Texas. “They weaponized it, and what I think we should do is not weaponize it, but also not just sit on our hands. We should take the authorities we have and apply it in a fair and even handed way, and we’re doing it.” Carr’s approach to the FCC’s authorities exploded into the public eye last September, when he pressured television stations to “take action” against Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel was temporarily taken off the air, leading to complaints from Democrats, as well as a handful of Republicans, that Carr was advocating censorship. Carr touched briefly on that episode in his speech to CPAC, describing it as a moment where local broadcasters acted as a check on media firms Comcast and Disney. “You saw that in the instance with Jimmy Kimmel ... you had local TV stations for the first time push back and say, ‘We don’t want to run that program in our community.’” He also cheered instances of conservatives gaining influence in media firms, calling them evidence that Trump was “winning”. “PBS: defunded. NPR: defunded. Joy Reid gone from MSNBC, sleepy eyes Chuck Todd gone, Jim Acosta gone, John Dickerson gone, [Stephen] Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN has got new ownership as well,” Carr said. “We’re not on the point yet of raising the mission accomplished flag, but President Trump is taking on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning.”","postType":"blog","contributors":["chris-stein"]}],"keyEvents":[{"id":"block-69c6db3c8f086b26b5ba1835","title":"A gold tractor on the White House lawn brought Trump up short","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T19:38:48Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T19:41:42Z","body":"Earlier this afternoon, Donald Trump addressed farmers from the White House and was distracted by the presence of a gold tractor on the White House south lawn.
\n“I assume it’s a gift to me,” said Trump, who has decorated much of the interior of the White House with ostentatious gold fittings.
\nYet even Trump seemed to find the gesture excessive, exclaiming: “That’s crazy. That’s really something. Thank you very much for the gift. I really appreciate it. Can you imagine if I accepted that gift, what they would do? A Democrat would accept.”
\n![\"A](\"https://media.guim.co.uk/9bc2c5f7a57834eddbad54ea2ae4ebe49145aaa0/480_0_3750_3000/1000.jpg\")
\n The divide on the right over Donald Trumps’ decision to go to war with Iran was on stark display at the Conservative Political Action Conference during a panel focused on the military that included the former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, the Guardian’s Chris Stein writes.
\n“I counseled as loud as possible against doing this in the first place. We face a extremely difficult challenge,” Prince said.
\n“I don’t share the optimism of the administration that there’s going to be a peaceful stop to this. They will burn it down.”
\nHe warned that, if Trump attempts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by ordering a ground invasion, “you will see imagery of burning American warships in the next couple of weeks. And I don’t think people are really prepared for that.”
\nOthers on the panel characterized the war as something that was best seen through.
\n“The American people have to understand we can’t stop now that we’ve started,” said Jason Redman, a former Navy Seal who was wounded in combat in Iraq.
\n“I fought 21 years and almost sacrificed my life and sacrificed the lives of friends of mine against terrorism so that hopefully my kids would never have to take that fight against terrorism. I have my first grandchild coming. I don’t want my grandchild to have to fight Iran in 20 years.”
","cleanBody":"The divide on the right over Donald Trumps’ decision to go to war with Iran was on stark display at the Conservative Political Action Conference during a panel focused on the military that included the former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, the Guardian’s Chris Stein writes. “I counseled as loud as possible against doing this in the first place. We face a extremely difficult challenge,” Prince said. “I don’t share the optimism of the administration that there’s going to be a peaceful stop to this. They will burn it down.” He warned that, if Trump attempts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by ordering a ground invasion, “you will see imagery of burning American warships in the next couple of weeks. And I don’t think people are really prepared for that.” Others on the panel characterized the war as something that was best seen through. “The American people have to understand we can’t stop now that we’ve started,” said Jason Redman, a former Navy Seal who was wounded in combat in Iraq. “I fought 21 years and almost sacrificed my life and sacrificed the lives of friends of mine against terrorism so that hopefully my kids would never have to take that fight against terrorism. I have my first grandchild coming. I don’t want my grandchild to have to fight Iran in 20 years.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":["chris-stein"]},{"id":"block-69c6e0788f084d6bedab570e","title":"The day so far: the DHS funding fight in Washington","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T19:59:51Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T20:09:05Z","body":"House Republicans have formally rejected the Senate’s compromise deal to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the TSA.
\nSpeaker Mike Johnson, in announcing the rejection said, “this gambit that was done last night is a joke” of the Senate-passed bill that made its way to the House in the predawn hours.
\nJohnson also announced that House Republicans are instead going to put forward a stopgap spending bill to fund the entire DHS at current levels for two months.
\nHowever, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has already said that the House’s stopgap funding measure is “dead on arrival” in the chamber. Senators are also on a two-week recess, so there is little hope of another deal passing quickly in Congress.
\nAmid the tumult on Capitol Hill and airports nationwide, the DHS says TSA workers will start seeing paychecks as early as Monday.
\nMore than 3,450 TSA officers nationally, nearly 12% of the workforce, had called off work by Thursday. At least 510 had quit. TSA officers have not been paid since mid-February due to the partial DHS shutdown.
\nHouse minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined by Democratic whip Katherine Clark and Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar, told reporters on Friday that he and his colleagues back the bill passed by the Senate to fund most of the department of homeland security, noting that House Republicans are “the only thing standing” in the way of ending the chaos at airports nationwide.
\n“House Democrats are prepared to support the bill to end the Trump Republican shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security,” said Jeffries.
\nHis remarks come shortly after House speaker Mike Johnson rejected the Senate-passed DHS funding bill, calling it “a joke.”
\n“None of this is a joke,” Clark said. “All of this has real-world consequences for American families.”
","cleanBody":"House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined by Democratic whip Katherine Clark and Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar, told reporters on Friday that he and his colleagues back the bill passed by the Senate to fund most of the department of homeland security, noting that House Republicans are “the only thing standing” in the way of ending the chaos at airports nationwide. “House Democrats are prepared to support the bill to end the Trump Republican shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security,” said Jeffries. His remarks come shortly after House speaker Mike Johnson rejected the Senate-passed DHS funding bill, calling it “a joke.” “None of this is a joke,” Clark said. “All of this has real-world consequences for American families.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c6fb0b8f086b26b5ba1919","title":"Iran has to 'open up strait of Trump - I mean, Hormuz', says US president","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T21:54:33Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T22:15:37Z","body":"Concerning the strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels, President Trump demanded that Iran “open it up” before he referred to the waterway as the “strait of Trump.”
\n“We’re negotiating now,” Trump said. “But they have to open it up. They have to open up the strait of Trump. I mean Hormuz. Yes, excuse me. I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake. The fake news will say ‘he accidentally said’. There’s no accidents with me.”
","cleanBody":"Concerning the strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels, President Trump demanded that Iran “open it up” before he referred to the waterway as the “strait of Trump.” “We’re negotiating now,” Trump said. “But they have to open it up. They have to open up the strait of Trump. I mean Hormuz. Yes, excuse me. I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake. The fake news will say ‘he accidentally said’. There’s no accidents with me.”","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c700348f086b26b5ba194d","title":"Trump: 'Cuba is next'","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-27T22:11:52Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-27T22:20:58Z","body":"During a speech in Miami on Friday, President Trump pointed to his administration’s military intervention in Venezuela earlier this year and said: “Cuba is next, by the way. But pretend I didn’t say that.”
\nHere’s a video of that moment, posted by journalist Aaron Rupar.
","cleanBody":"During a speech in Miami on Friday, President Trump pointed to his administration’s military intervention in Venezuela earlier this year and said: “Cuba is next, by the way. But pretend I didn’t say that.” Here’s a video of that moment, posted by journalist Aaron Rupar.","postType":"key-event","contributors":[]},{"id":"block-69c734708f084d6bedab58db","title":"Closing summary","publishedDateTime":"2026-03-28T02:02:34Z","lastUpdatedDateTime":"2026-03-28T02:02:33Z","body":"This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close. Thanks for reading, and here are some of the latest developments:
\nDonald Trump signed an executive order Friday instructing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents as the partial shutdown drags on. Negotiations on Capitol Hill remain stalled after House Republicans rejected a Senate‑passed deal to fund key DHS subagencies, including the TSA. More here.
\nHouse Republicans have rejected legislation, passed by the Senate, that would finance most of DHS but withhold funds from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The move imperils efforts to end a 42‑day partial government shutdown that has seen thousands of DHS employees miss paychecks and furious travelers miss flights due to long airport security lines. More here.
\nHouse minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined by Democratic whip Katherine Clark and Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar, told reporters that he and his colleagues back the bill passed by the Senate to fund most of the department of homeland security, noting that House Republicans are “the only thing standing” in the way of ending the chaos at airports nationwide. “House Democrats are prepared to support the bill to end the Trump Republican shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security,” said Jeffries.
\nIran-linked hackers have broken into the personal email inbox of Kash Patel, FBI’s director, publishing photographs of him and other documents on the internet, the hackers and the bureau said on Friday. More here.
\nWashington expects its operation against Iran to conclude in “weeks, not months”, the US secretary of state has said, despite continuing violence across the region and a threat from Israel to “escalate and expand” its attacks against the Islamic republic. “When we are done with them here in the next couple weeks, they will be weaker than they’ve been in recent history,” Marco Rubio told reporters on Friday after meeting G7 foreign ministers in France. More here.
\nThis live blog is now closed.
\n