The existence of the US Agency for International Development hangs in the balance. President Donald Trump is racing to shut it down, declaring it a waste of money and run by “lunatics.” But experts warn this plays straight into the hands of the very country he considers to be the biggest threat to US interests — China. Efforts to dismantle the agency, which provides humanitarian and development aid, are moving at a frenetic pace. On the first day of Trump’s presidency, he ordered a 90-day freeze on almost all foreign aid. Elon Musk, head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, said Monday that he was…
Wisconsin’s attorney general is seeking to stop Elon Musk from giving away $2m (£1.5m) to two voters ahead of the state’s supreme court election. In a lawsuit, attorney general Josh Kaul called the offer an “egregious attempt to buy votes” and alleged the tech billionaire and his political action committee violated Wisconsin election laws. The 1 April election, which has drawn national attention, will determine whether Wisconsin’s highest court will have a liberal or conservative majority. On 27 March, Mr Musk posted on X that he would give a talk in Wisconsin on Sunday and “personally hand over two checks…
JD Vance to lead plan as Trump says there’s been ‘concerted’ effort to rewrite US history with ‘distorted narrative’ Donald Trump has ordered a highly controversial reshaping of the US Smithsonian Institution, claiming he will eliminate what his administration regards as “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the world’s largest set of museums, educational and research entities grouped under one institutional umbrella. In an executive order issued late on Thursday, the president said there had been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite US history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth”.…
US Vice-President JD Vance has accused Denmark of leaving Greenland vulnerable to alleged incursions by China and Russia, as he asked its people to “cut a deal” with the US. Speaking during a visit to the Arctic island, Vance minimised recent threats by US President Donald Trump to take over the island by force. Instead, he urged Greenlanders to sever ties with Denmark, which has owned the island for more than 300 years, saying it had not invested enough to protect the semi-autonomous territory. An overwhelming majority of Greenlanders oppose the idea of annexation, a poll indicated in January. Greenland’s prime minister…
by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. For a project explicitly designed to influence Congress, Steve Berger’s operation has left a scant paper trail. The archconservative evangelical pastor, who started a D.C. nonprofit a few years ago to shape national policy, does not file lobbying reports. His group does not show up in campaign finance records. There is a simple way to glimpse his effort’s expanding reach in Washington, however: Pay attention to who is walking out…
Former presidential candidate writes op-ed excoriating Signal leak and White House’s ‘dangerous’ actions Hillary Clinton on Friday called the Trump administration’s approach to governing both dumb and dangerous in an essay excoriating the Signal chat scandal and the Elon Musk-led mission to slash the federal workforce, and concluding that Trump would make the US “feeble and friendless”. The former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that has been given the headline: “How much dumber will this get?” and opens: “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity.”
by Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy, ProPublica, and Le Van for ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. In mid-February, Trump administration leaders received a desperate warning from their diplomats posted in Vietnam, one of the most important American partners in Asia. Workers were in the middle of cleaning up the site of an enormous chemical spill, the Bien Hoa air base, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly halted all foreign aid funding. The shutdown left exposed open pits of soil contaminated…
Ministers seek carve-out from import taxes before 2 April deadline – but critics believe they may have offered too many concessions UK ministers and senior officials at every level are holding talks with US counterparts this weekend in a last-ditch effort to secure a carve-out from swingeing import taxes. Government sources said ministers were raising Donald Trump’s looming tariffs as the “No 1” issue in every conversation with the US.
by Christopher Bing, Avi Asher-Schapiro and Annie Waldman ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. When President Donald Trump announced his marquee government cost-cutting initiative, he left no doubt about whom he intended to run it: Elon Musk. Still, questions about the scope of Musk’s authority have hounded the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency ever since. As DOGE began to order massive budget cuts and layoffs, and those affected by the moves began to raise questions in the press and in court about their…
hen I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, less than a year ago, I could never have imagined that writing a critical piece about the US government could put me at risk of deportation, threatening the life and career I’ve built here. But today, that threat is very real. Just this week, Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested mere blocks from where I live after publishing an op-ed in her university newspaper describing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide. That was the full extent of her activism, yet despite having all her documentation in order, she was taken abruptly…
