Peace in his time
Was he always so lucky? Yes. Was wealth an aphrodisiac? No. In October 1980, Donald Trump, 34 years old, slender and soft-spoken, had answered a series of such questions from the gossip columnist Rona Barrett when he suddenly shifted the conversation onto a very different plane. When Ms Barrett asked about his destruction of some celebrated Art Deco reliefs as he made room for a new apartment building—he would name it Trump Tower—he praised himself for making a hard decision, and then went on to say the country could use such leadership. He said it would earn America the respect it lacked in the world.
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The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Parenting is not just for pronatalists: the progressive case for raising kids
A few months ago, I was at a playground just a couple of blocks from our home in Washington DC, when a mom I barely knew turned to me mid-conversation and said: 'I think I might be the deep state.' The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. It was mid-March. Doge was tearing through the city, dismantling federal agencies at dizzying speed. Donald Trump, re-elected on a promise to 'shatter the deep state', had fired thousands of longtime civil servants in his first weeks back in office. The job cuts have been top of mind in Washington. Most of my kids' playdates these days begin with nap schedule updates and end in quiet dread. It isn't just jobs. International students are being deported. Measles outbreaks are creeping closer. The climate crisis is at our doorstep: blizzards one week, wildfires the next. Every day brings fresh threats to public safety, democracy and the planet itself. 'It makes you wonder,' she said as we pushed our daughters on the swings, 'what kind of world did we bring our kids into?' It's a question I can't stop thinking about. I've lived in and reported on parenting across five continents, and what continues to astonish me is how uniquely punishing early parenthood is in the west, especially for those most committed to building a fairer world. Progressives are rightly vocal about how hard it is to raise kids, but too often, we forget to make the case for why it's still worth it. In the face of so many overlapping crises, the decision to have children can feel reckless, or worse, like an act of denial. But parenting can also be something else entirely: a stubborn act of hope. Raising children offers a crash course in progressive values. It's a way of tying ourselves more deeply to the future, of feeling the stakes of climate change, inequality and injustice – not as distant headlines, but as urgent matters affecting someone whose lunch you just packed. By failing to make a case for children and families, the left has surrendered these issues to the pronatalist right. We've handed over the 'family values' agenda, allowing it to be defined by a rigid, exclusionary vision of parenthood. Project 2025, the policy blueprint shaping much of Trump's current agenda, pledges to 'restore' a Christian nationalist view of the family unit as 'the centerpiece of American life'. Figures such as JD Vance and Elon Musk, as well as the conservative Heritage Foundation, have declared childbearing a moral and civic duty. Some have even proposed medals and cash for mothers. At this year's March for Life, Vance called for 'more babies in the United States of America' and more 'beautiful young men and women' to raise them. When we see child rearing as a private project, we forget that many of the movements that shaped the left – civil rights, labour, climate justice – were powered by people who looked at the next generation and decided they were worth fighting for. In his most well-known speech, Martin Luther King Jr didn't just dream of a better world for himself, he dreamed that his four little children would grow up in a nation where they would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. His vision was rooted in legacy. That's what parenting does. It gives shape to our politics. It puts flesh on our ideals. It forces us to ask: what are we building and who is it for? Raising children doesn't distract from that work; it clarifies it. Of course, parenthood isn't the only path to caring about the future – but it makes it harder to look away. It compels us to feel the weight of policy decisions in our bones. It blows open our empathy and softens the edges of individualism. Suddenly, every child becomes your child. Every policy becomes personal. You start noticing the stroller-unfriendly sidewalks, the unaffordable summer camps, the lack of paid leave – not just for yourself, but for all parents. There's science behind this shift. Researchers have found that becoming a parent activates a 'parental caregiving network' in the brain, lighting up areas tied to empathy, emotional processing and social understanding. It happens in both mothers and fathers. For dads especially, the extent of this neurological change is closely tied to how much hands-on caregiving they do. In other words, caregiving rewires our brains to connect more, care more and notice the needs of others. At its best, parenting strengthens the very instincts progressives say they want to build society around. I've seen this empathy in action. Before I had kids, I was reporting on the Rio Olympics and walking the beach one night with a colleague, a mother of two, when we were approached by a group of children begging for money. I clutched my purse and walked faster. But my co-worker slowed down, took off her blazer and wrapped it around a shivering child about her son's age. 'Get home,' she said gently. 'Your mom is probably looking for you.' I could tell right away we were operating on different levels of empathy. She saw that child as an extension of her own kids. I wasn't there yet. But eventually, I got there, too. When I finally became a mother, I began to see stories I covered differently. Now, when I interview parents who've lost children to gun violence in Brazil's favelas, I understand their grief in a new way. I report with deeper urgency and deeper care, seeing myself in their shoes, and my children in theirs. This rewiring of the brain creates a political opening. It expands our sense of who counts as 'us'. It softens the boundary between self and other. In doing so, it changes how we interpret harm, not as something happening 'out there', but as something personal, urgent and unacceptable. Yet, the demands of caregiving can pull us away from political life. A 2022 UK study found that parenthood temporarily reduces political participation among mothers. The reason is obvious: we're exhausted. Calling your representatives between diaper changes feels impossible. I get it. Some days, I fantasize about deleting all my news apps, retreating into a cozy, apocalypse-adjacent bubble with my kids, and calling it a day. 'Generally, I think parents are the worst at advocating for themselves because they are just too damn tired. It's one more thing in the lives of people who already have too much expected of them,' Jennifer Glass, professor at the University of Texas's department of sociology and Population Research Center and an expert on parental happiness, told me. But parenting doesn't have to distract from political work. It can fuel it. When we do organize, our sharpened parental empathy can translate into political power. Around the world, it's progressive movements, often driven by the demands of parents, that have expanded what family support can look like. In Sweden, it was working mothers who pushed for what became the world's most generous parental leave system, eventually adding incentives for men to take their fair share. In Singapore, multigenerational bonds are built into policy: the government gives housing grants to families who live near grandparents and tax breaks to elders who help with childcare. In France, parents helped lead the 1968 protests that birthed a cooperative childcare system. But when progressives step back from family values, conservatives fill the void. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon. According to the United Nations, the share of countries with explicit pronatalist policies has nearly tripled since 1976. But these visions often center on traditional gender roles and narrow definitions of family, excluding anyone who doesn't fit the mold. We shouldn't let the only cultural narrative around parenting come from those who see it as a tool for enforcing hierarchy and control. Progressives must also fight for a say in the values shaping the next generation. A 2023 Pew survey found that 89% of teenagers raised by Democratic parents identify with or lean toward the Democratic party. For Republican parents, the number is nearly as high, at 81%. That suggests political identity is often passed down through environment and lived experience: what kids hear at the dinner table, what they see modeled at home and which communities shape their worldview. From there, each new generation brings fresh ideas about justice. Social progress doesn't only happen by changing the minds of the old; it happens through generational renewal. Throughout the country, youth raised in the shadow of mass shootings are leading the charge for gun reform. In Montana, young people took the government to court over climate change and won. In Sweden, Greta Thunberg sparked a global climate movement at 15. These movements exist because someone raised those children to believe they had not just the right, but the responsibility, to shape the world around them. But if we step back from parenting, or treat it as apolitical, we leave that space wide open. The right is more than ready to fill it. That's why they're fighting so hard to control what children are taught, which books they read, whose families are visible in their classrooms and which identities are allowed to exist. This is the moment for the left to reclaim family as a public good. Progressives shouldn't just defend the right to abortion, we must fight for people's ability to have families and raise them with dignity. That means paid leave, universal childcare, affordable healthcare and a livable planet. It also means rejecting the caricature that progressives are a party of 'childless cat ladies' while conservatives corner the market on family values. We are, and always have been, the natural home of pro-family policy. After all, children tether us to the future, but also to each other. Progressive values thrive in that space of interdependence, where no one is expected to go it alone. Caring for kids – whether as parents, educators, neighbors or policymakers – demands a communal ethic of care. I've seen this ethic in action across the world. While writing my book, Please Yell at My Kids, I spent years studying how families around the world raise children in community. In the Netherlands, children as young as eight walk themselves to school. Parents trust that if they need help, a community member will step in. In Denmark, babies nap unattended in strollers outside cafes – not because parents are careless, but because they trust the society around them. In Mozambique, where formal support systems often fail, mothers rely on each other for food, childcare and safety, transforming neighborhoods into extended families. These cultures aren't perfect, but they understand that raising a child isn't a private endeavor. It's a collective one. Some understandably hesitate to bring children into a world on fire. Others worry that parenting means stepping back from activism or ambition. But for many, becoming a parent doesn't dilute that drive; it crystallizes it. Climate change isn't just a policy failure – it's the air your child will breathe. Gun violence isn't abstract – it's a possibility you carry every time you drop them off at school. The broken systems you tolerated suddenly become intolerable when your child has to navigate them, too. This isn't about idealizing parenthood. It's about refusing to surrender this human experience to those who would use it to divide us. So yes, the world is on fire. But refusing to bring children into it won't put the flames out. What may, perhaps, is raising a generation bold enough to rebuild it. Marina Lopes is the author of Please Yell at My Kids: What Cultures Around the World Can Teach You About Parenting in Community, Raising Independent Kids, and Not Losing Your Mind, out now
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Wreckers, money woes and mutirão: 10 things we learned about Cop30 from Bonn climate talks
Two weeks of negotiations on the climate crisis have just concluded in Bonn in preparation for the Cop30 summit taking place in Brazil this November. What did we learn? Limiting global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels is vital for a healthy planet, but hopes of doing so are rapidly vanishing as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and temperatures soar. The main task for Cop30 in Belém this November is for every country to submit a national plan, required under the 2015 Paris agreement, to cut carbon as far as necessary to hold to the 1.5C limit. Few countries have submitted their plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which set out a target on emissions to 2035 and an indication of the measures that will be taken to meet them. They were due in February, but the presidency of Donald Trump, his vacillations over tariffs and the prospect of a global trade war led many to adopt a 'wait and see' approach. Military conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran have further frightened governments and taken attention away from the climate. Brazil is urging all countries to come forward with their NDCs in September, in time for the UN to assess them before Cop30 begins. Even if they meet the deadline, however, it was abundantly clear from the preliminary negotiations in Bonn that the NDCs will not add up to the emissions cuts needed to stay within 1.5C, assuming that is still possible. That leaves Brazil with a dilemma. The Cop host has no control over how countries set their NDCs, as that is done by national governments before they arrive in Belém. No country is likely to revise its NDC at the Cop. But a summit that ends with inadequate NDCs that would lead to global heating far in excess of 1.5C or even 2C will be labelled a failure. Brazil must find a way to show how NDCs that come up short can be improved or remedied, or how countries can collaborate to make faster and deeper cuts, if it is to keep the goals of Paris alive. Work at Bonn was held up for two days because countries could not agree on the agenda for the meeting, and by the end they had little progress to show on key issues. This was just a foretaste of the fights and recriminations that Brazil can expect in earnest at Cop30. As well as the withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement, and the dangerous geopolitical circumstances, Brazil will have to contend with a cadre of countries and vested interests that want to stymie the talks. Developed countries are widely, and reasonably, blamed for their failures to cut emissions fast enough and to provide the finance needed by the poor world. But behind the scenes many fossil fuel producers and their allies that are supposed to be on the side of the developing world are also happy to hold up negotiations, exploiting the complexity of the talks to cover their actions. If Bonn was frustrating, Cop30 could be far worse. For developing countries, the key question remains: how can they gain access to the resources they need to protect their citizens against the impacts of climate breakdown? Many are already experiencing 'loss and damage' from extreme weather, in the form of droughts, floods, heatwaves and encroaching seas. But the funding that developed countries promised has been slow to arrive. Richard Sherman, a South African delegate, told the Bonn conference: 'There is no money. The funds that we have are not able to support the need.' At Cop29, developed countries promised that $1.3tn a year would flow to the poor world by 2035, made up of at least $300bn from public sources and the rest from innovative forms of finance such as levies on polluting activities, carbon trading and private investment. Only the broad outlines were agreed, however. There is not yet a blueprint showing how the money can be delivered and distributed over the next decade. Last year's hosts, Azerbaijan, are collaborating with Brazil to produce a roadmap with more detail. Delegates warn it must set out a clear timetable of concrete actions, rather than more vague promises. At recent Cops, hosts have taken to having special meetings based on traditional formats. This began at Durban in 2011, when as the negotiations stretched long past their official deadline, heads of delegation moved into special 'indaba' meetings, named after a traditional Zulu gathering of tribal elders. Since then, Cop28 in Dubai had its 'majlis', and Cop29 in Baku had a 'qurultay', modelled on a Turkic chieftains' gathering. At Cop30, delegates will be invited to a 'mutirão', a Portuguese word derived from the Indigenous Tupi-Guarani language that refers to a group coming together to work on a shared task. Carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels is the main greenhouse gas affecting the planet, but increasingly scientists and activists are focusing on another gas: methane. Far more potent, it escapes from fossil fuel extraction sites and is produced by livestock and farming. Methane breaks down in the atmosphere much faster than carbon dioxide, but warms the planet about 80 times as much while it lasts, so cutting methane gives more bang for the emissions reduction buck. Given its smaller number of sources, plugging emissions of methane should also be easier than cutting carbon. Governments have tended to ignore the potential for methane cuts, but pressure is growing for the gas to be included prominently in countries' NDCs at Cop30. At Cop28 in Dubai, countries agreed for the first time to 'transition away from fossil fuels', a historic commitment that should have signalled a dramatic shift in the global economy. No sooner was that conference over, however, than some countries were seeking to unpick the resolution. Last year, at Cop29, attempts to reinforce the language on the transition, and to set out clearer plans on how it could be brought about, met fierce – though sometimes covert – opposition, and came to nothing. Many campaigners want to bring the subject back at Cop30. But Brazil is resisting having a 'cover decision' – a wide-ranging text that would incorporate all sorts of resolutions, arguing that the resolutions of previous Cops need not be revisited. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Bonn ended without a clear path forward on the issue, but it is unlikely to disappear before Cop30. Every Cop generates its own baggage – presidents and host countries want to put their own stamp on proceedings, and so bring forward pet projects that focus on one aspect of the climate crisis, such as electric vehicles, or coal, or aspects of food or forestry. Over the years, these initiatives have proliferated so that now there are scores of them, some still useful but others in effect left orphaned as the ministers who invented them have faded into political obscurity and the money behind them has been spent. Brazil is aiming to tackle some of this bloat. But the wider and more radical reforms to the Cop process that some have called for will not be on the programme. Belém, a rainforest city and port, lies near the mouth of the Amazon River. While charming, it has never been a tourist mecca and to have an estimated 60,000 people, and perhaps many more, land on its shores will be a major strain. It seemed as if every conversation in Bonn, whether it started on NDCs, climate finance or the substantive issues of climate governance, always ended up on the same subject: logistics. With just four months to go, most people have yet to secure anywhere to stay in Belém. Brazil has promised that 29,000 rooms and 55,000 beds will be made available, but so far these have yet to materialise. Cruise ships are being pressed into service, supplying more than 3,000 cabins, and some people are gratefully looking forward to spending a fortnight in shipping containers. But the prices being asked in advance are astronomical, and beyond the reach of most developing country delegations and climate activist charities. Without them, the Cop will be skewed towards moneyed interests, will reinforce global inequalities and will fail the most vulnerable. Choosing Belém for Cop30 has created a logistical conundrum that the hosts have yet to solve. The choice of Belém was meant to highlight the plight of the Amazon rainforest, one of the world's greatest carbon sinks and vital to the health of the planet – and which is under threat, not just from deforestation, but from the climate crisis itself, as rapidly rising temperatures could push the Amazon over a tipping point that would transform it from rainforest into a savannah-like state. That would be catastrophic for the planet, potentially leading to further rapid escalations in temperature from which there could be no return. But the spotlight on Belém has also brought into focus Brazil's own adventures with fossil fuels. Oil and gas deposits discovered in and around the Amazon, and off the coast not far from Belém, are being considered for exploitation. Brazil's oil sector regulator, ANP, will auction the exploration rights to 172 oil and gas blocks spanning 56,000 sq miles (146,000 sq km), an area more than twice the size of Scotland, most of it offshore. The 'doomsday auction', as campaigners have called it, includes 47 blocks in the Amazon basin, in a sensitive area near the mouth of the river that fossil fuel companies consider a promising new oil frontier. Brazil has argued that developing countries should be allowed to exploit their fossil fuel reserves while developed nations, many of which have grown rich over centuries of exploiting their own resources, must take the lead in closing down operations. Ana Toni, the chief executive of Cop30, said: 'Transitioning away is a responsibility of everyone, not only producing countries, consumer countries – many countries in the north don't produce fossil fuel, but they consume fossil fuel. We've gone to this era of finger pointing on countries. We need to find solutions for producer countries that depend financially on that income.' One of the many tasks at which Bonn failed was to broker an agreement on who should host the Cop31 summit. Australia and Turkey are vying for the presidency of next year's meeting. Neither is willing to concede to the other, and the obscure process for choosing future presidencies tends to rely on consensus candidates emerging and a system of gentlemen's agreements, rather than a real competition or vote. Australia's newly re-elected government wants to showcase its commitment to climate action, despite being one of the world's biggest fossil fuel exporters, as climate policy was one of its key battlegrounds in the recent elections. Turkey has long been unhappy with its status at the talks – in 1992, when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed, Turkey was lumped in with developed countries, which have clear obligations to cut emissions and provide climate finance to the poor world, but has since argued it should have been aligned with the developing world. There are hints that Turkey could be persuaded to drop its bid if its status were reconsidered. But opening up the parent treaty to the Paris agreement would be legally difficult and stir up much wider issues: for if Turkey's status has changed since 1992, what of countries such as China, now the world's second-biggest economy with a GDP per capita comparable to some EU member states, and wealthy Gulf petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates?
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Trump news at a glance: No mention of ‘big beautiful bill' July 4 deadline in president's final pitch
Just two days ago, Donald Trump told Republican members of Congress to cancel their vacation plans until his 'big beautiful bill' is sewn up and ready for his signature on 4 July. But in his final pitch to congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday, he made no mention of deadlines, as his marquee tax-and-spending bill develops a logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate. Trump stood before an assembly composed of police and fire officers, working parents and the mother and father of a woman he said died at the hands of an undocumented immigrant to argue that Americans like them would benefit from the bill, which includes new tax cuts and the extension of lower rates enacted during his first term, as well as an infusion of funds for immigration enforcement. 'There are hundreds of things here. It's so good,' he said. The bill is highly divisive and deeply unpopular with segments of the country. Democrats have dubbed the bill the 'big, ugly betrayal', and railed against what would be the biggest funding cut to Medicaid since it was created in 1965, and cost an estimated 16 million people their insurance. It would also slash funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps Americans afford food. Republicans intended to circumvent the filibuster in the Senate by using the budget reconciliation procedure, under which they can pass legislation with just a majority vote, provided it only affects spending, revenue and the debt limit. But on Thursday, the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, ruled that a change to taxes that states use to pay for Medicaid was not allowed under the rules. Democrats took credit for MacDonough's ruling, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer saying the party 'successfully fought a noxious provision that would've decimated America's healthcare system and hurt millions of Americans. This win saves hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans to get healthcare, rather than funding tax cuts to billionaires.' Read the full story The US supreme court has paved the way for South Carolina to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program over its status as an abortion provider, a decision that could embolden red states across the country to effectively 'defund' the reproductive healthcare organization. Read the full story The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, defended the US strikes on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities and said that Trump had 'decimated … obliterated' the country's nuclear program despite initial intelligence assessments that last week's strikes had failed to destroy key enrichment facilities and they could resume operations within just months. But he and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, largely based that assessment on AI modeling, showing test videos of the bunker buster bombs used in the strikes and referred questions on a battle damage assessment of Fordow to the intelligence community. Read the full story The US state department has been advised to terminate grants to nearly all remaining programs awarded under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which would effectively end the department's role in funding pro-democracy programming in some of the world's most hostile totalitarian nations. Read the full story A critical federal vaccine panel has recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative – a change likely to send shock through the global medical and scientific community and possibly impact future vaccine availability. Read the full story Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's reconstituted vaccine advisory panel recommended a new treatment to prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants. The treatment, a new monoclonal antibody called clesrovimab, was recommended by the powerful committee after being approved by the Food and Drug Administration roughly two weeks ago. The tortured vote took place a day late and after rounds of questions from the panel's seven new members – all ideological allies of Kennedy, who views 'overmedicalization' as one of the greatest threats to American children. Read the full story A US army veteran who lived in the country for nearly 50 years – and earned a prestigious military citation for being wounded in combat – has left for South Korea after he says past struggles with drug addiction left him targeted by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. 'I can't believe this is happening in America,' Sae Joon Park, who held legal permanent residency, told National Public Radio in an interview before his departure Monday from Hawaii. 'That blows me away – like [it is] a country that I fought for.' Read the full story The dollar has fallen to a three-year low following a report that Trump is considering soon announcing his choice to succeed the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell. The US justice department sued the Maryland federal judiciary over an order that bars deporting undocumented immigrants for at least one day after filing a challenge. Clothing prices are starting to rise in the US as Trump's tariffs on imported goods start to have an effect, according to the CEO of H&M. Catching up? Here's what happened on 25 June 2025.
