What becomes of Republicans who cross King Donald?
D ONALD TRUMP'S One Big Beautiful Bill act ( BBB ) is a Frankenstein's monster of hand-outs, carve-outs, tax cuts and ideological splurges and purges. Independent analysis suggests it will increase America's deficit, stunt the economy and hit the poorest hardest. A recent poll by YouGov and The Economist found that just over one in three Americans support the bill. Elon Musk, a big Republican donor and a former 'first buddy' of Mr Trump, is so unhappy that he is proposing to create a new political party. Even so, only five Republican members of Congress voted against it—fewer than any budget of Mr Trump's first term.
Donald Trump says they missed an existential threat from Iran. Why should anyone trust their findings now?
The Trump administration has taken aim at the University of Virginia
The president is using emergency cases to expand his power
Coercion and corporate expedience meet in a $16m settlement
New York's mayoral front-runner thinks so
Choked for funds, the Bureau of Labour Statistics is cutting corners
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The National
an hour ago
- The National
UK politicians are in the pockets of the rich. Is that democracy?
At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Keir Starmer responded to a question from Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay about growing calls to introduce a tax on wealth for the super-rich – those with assets above £10 million – by saying he wouldn't 'take advice' from the Greens, and insisting that 'we can't just tax our way to growth'. We can, it seems, cut our way to growth though, as long as it's those already at the greatest risk of poverty who'll bear the brunt. On Wednesday evening, 333 Labour MPs voted to cut disability benefits by £2 billion per year, halving the health element of universal credit for new claimants, and cutting it altogether for new claimants aged under 22. At a certain point, when the faces and the colour of the rosettes change but the glaring injustices remain the same, we have to ask ourselves why. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Image: Yui Mok) A common refrain among politicians is that right-wing policies that make life harder for social security claimants – or immigrants, or any other marginalised group – are popular. So popular that they have no choice but to implement them with gusto, because that's the will of the people, I guess. Meanwhile, I suppose we are to imagine that the average British voter is kept up at night worrying about the prospect of millionaires and billionaires being asked to pay more into our public services. As Tory leader Kemi Badenoch put it at PMQs, a wealth tax would be 'a tax on all of our constituents' savings, their houses, their pensions'. Who among us doesn't know and love someone with more than £10m in assets lying around? And surely we can all agree that they're the real victims? Back in the real world, a YouGov poll last week found that 75% of people in the UK would support introducing a wealth tax of 2% on wealth above £10m. Earlier this year, YouGov conducted another poll on behalf of Oxfam which found that 79% of over 16s in Scotland would rather the government tax the richest than make cuts to public spending. (Image: YouGov) And while it's true that some voters do believe that the welfare system is too generous, and the immigrants are draining the country of resources, it's important to remember that large sections of the British media, with their own vested interests, have spent not years but decades pushing precisely this narrative. It's disingenuous at best to persuade someone of something and then behave as though it was their idea all along. Alongside campaign groups Tax Justice UK and Patriotic Millionaires UK, Oxfam identified that the government could raise up to £24bn per year through a wealth tax which would apply to only 0.04% of the population. At the same time, charities and experts from across the UK and beyond – extending to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – have highlighted the damage that cuts to social security could cause to people's ability to make ends meet or simply live with dignity. So, if it's not the electorate telling politicians which policies to pursue, and it's not the data or the impassioned pleas of experts that persuade them, then what is it that drives them to make these decisions? READ MORE: Mark Brown: Why I plan to join Scotland's new radical left party Surely the answer is obvious by now. Time and again, right-wing and supposedly centrist politicians prove that nothing matters to them than the feelings of their rich donors and supporters – and nothing matters more to those wealthy individuals and large corporations than money. Successive governments' inaction on a range of urgent issues – from climate change, to energy prices, to raising taxes to fund crumbling public services – becomes far easier to understand once you realise that standing up to behemoth corporations and their numerous beneficiaries could cost these politicians dearly. If power for power's sake is the goal, if fuelling the party machine with big donations is a worthwhile end in and of itself, and if securing oneself a cushy position after – or perhaps during – your time in office is the ultimate prize, then making an enemy out of the 1% is a senseless endeavour. The dramatic decline in political party membership numbers over the past several decades mean that parties have become more and more reliant on a small pool of wealthy donors. Analysis by the Electoral Reform Society found that, during the 2024 election campaign, Labour received £6.7m from 'mega-donors', which made up 68.5% of their total donations up to polling day. This equates to 42 times the amount they took from the same type of donors during the 2019 election campaign. David Lammy secured a personal donor a job at the Foreign Office (Image: PA) When we ask ourselves how it is that the Labour Party have sold out on so many principles in such a short period of time, the answer is in the question. What chance does the average person – or community – stand to have their voice heard and acted upon by those in power while principles and policies are being sold to the highest bidder? Just last week, it was revealed by the Democracy for Sale substack that Foreign Secretary David Lammy gave a taxpayer-funded job in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to the former UK president of multinational PR company WPP after she donated £5000 to his office ahead of the election. This is only the latest in a series of jobs for donors that Labour have been scrutinised over. Under the ideal of democracy which we are encouraged to believe the UK represents, every eligible voter should have an equal say in elections and, by extension, an equal opportunity to have a say in the decisions the elected parliament makes. How far must our political leaders stray from this principle before we recognise that we are no longer ruled by democracy but plutocracy: a society controlled by people with great wealth or income? Consider that the UK's 50 richest families hold more wealth than 50% of the population, according to analysis from the Equality Trust. And while the top 20% hold 63% of the UK's wealth, the bottom fifth have only 0.5% of the wealth. READ MORE: The best way to defeat Reform UK? Expose the gaping holes in their politics Polls might show that the vast majority of the British public want to see the wealthy taxed more, but to imagine that this information would seize the Prime Minister with an urgency to act would be to believe that all views, experiences, voices or lives are equal. You only need to look at how this government – the progressive alternative to the old government – treats the most vulnerable to know that isn't true, not under this system. As long as money talks and those without are silenced, most of us will be out here screaming into the void. In case that seems too bleak a note to end on, a reminder: it doesn't have to be this way. Just look at the growing fervency with which the Tories and now Labour have sought to quash dissent through the criminalisation of peaceful protest, and the proscription of activist groups they don't like as terrorists. Even the frantic efforts of the Government to censor a rap group, Kneecap, over political statements is revealing. These are the actions of power under threat. They are terrified of ordinary people speaking their minds and telling them in no uncertain terms that enough is enough. That, alone, should act as motivation to keep doing just that.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Is ICE the first harbinger of a ‘secret police' in the US?
The Iceman Cometh, the 1939 drama by American writer Eugene O'Neill, has at various times been described by reviewers as set in a stark, ruthless world and a play that 'blisters with intensity'. In the eyes of some, such observations could just as easily apply to today's America, a country where, under the presidency of Donald Trump, there is an almost palpable sense of unease and potency. Today's America too is a country where that phrase 'The Iceman Cometh' has taken on an all too real and equally menacing connotation. For the ICE men of today's America – agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – have become the calling card of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. US president Donald Trump has in effect created a personal army, experts warnThough ICE now occupies a 'noble' place in Trump's hierarchy of law enforcement, its detractors view it very differently. A modern-day 'Gestapo' or 'domestic stormtroopers for the MAGA agenda', say some. 'Trump's de facto private army – his security state within the state and a threat to democracy', say others. What's certainly in no doubt is that Trump has propelled ICE into America's best-funded law enforcement agency. As the Financial Times (FT) US national editor Edward Luce, recently highlighted, Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' (BBB) signed into law by the president on July 4, lifted ICE's budget to an estimated $37.5 billion a year, a sum higher than Italy's entire defence budget and just below Canada's. Writing a message of 'THANK YOU!' to the ICE workforce over the Independence Day holiday, Trump made clear that the BBB spending commitment would give the agency 'ALL of the Funding and Resources that ICE needs to carry out the Largest Mass Deportation Operation in History'. The money set aside for ICE is eyewatering. The $37.5bn a year for operations aside, the spending bill includes a $170bn package for Trump's border-and-immigration crackdown, which includes $45bn for new detention facilities, including hiring thousands more officers and agents. READ MORE: Mhairi Black: Criticising Israel is not religious intolerance. Orange marches are In the eyes of Trump, ICE officers can do no wrong. 'The toughest people you'll ever meet,' he insists. His gushing reverence for ICE is also reflected in what Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, described as 'well-deserved bonuses'. Trump officials have said they'll provide $10,000 annual bonuses for ICE personnel as well as Border Patrol agents, along with $10,000 for new hires. As Nick Miroff, staff writer at The Atlantic magazine who covers immigration issues, recently pointed out, as far as Trump sees it, the '20,000 ICE employees are the unflinching men and women who will restore order. They're the Untouchables in his (Trump's) MAGA crime drama'. So just what is ICE, what exactly does it do, and perhaps more significantly, to what extent are fears over its growing power and perceived threat to democracy justified? Established in 2003, ICE is one of the agencies under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created in 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. Initially, the DHS's focus was counterterrorism. But soon, the presence of certain foreign groups began to be framed as a national security issue. DHS encompasses two law enforcement directorates: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). ERO is charged with enforcing US immigration laws and has 6100 deportation officers. HSI has about 6500 special agents who conduct transnational criminal investigations and do not usually participate in domestic immigration operations. ICE was also created alongside Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP controls the borders, while ICE operates inside the country and it's this operation across America that has become the focus of controversy. According to the agency's own website, ICE, along with its ERO officials, are tasked with identifying, arresting, detaining, and removing immigrants without authorisation in the US. Back during his 2024 presidential campaign, when outlining his vision for deportations of undocumented migrants, Trump said he would focus on expelling those with criminal records. But since entering office, this has rapidly widened to include anyone without legal status, ICE officers, often masked and not wearing uniforms or displaying badges, have now been arresting people outside courtroom hearings, during traffic stops in workplace sweeps, and even from hospitals. The agency's aggressive tactics are striking terror throughout America's immigrant communities, especially in Democrat-run cities. Just these past weeks, Trump ordered ICE to step up its arrests and deportation efforts in Democratic strongholds, doubling down on a politicised anti-immigration drive after major protests against ICE in Los Angeles. 'We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America's largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,' Trump said on his Truth Social platform. (Image: Win McNamee, Getty Images) 'These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Centre,' Trump claimed, citing debunked right-wing conspiracy theories that undocumented immigrants are voting in US elections in significant numbers. With every week that passes, ICE operation are gathering momentum. For its part, the administration says its moves – which include hundreds of deportation flights, the expansion of third-country removals, and Trump's invocation of the seldom-used 1798 Alien Enemies Act – are necessary to stem unauthorised immigration to the United States. The law is a wartime authority that gives the president sweeping powers to detain or deport noncitizens with little or no due process, and ICE have become its enforcers, much to the disquiet of many Democrat politicians, human rights activists and ordinary citizens. ICE is now arresting four times as many non-criminals as those with criminal convictions each week, according to David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that was cited by the FT. The number of immigrants in detention with no criminal charges or convictions jumped 1300% from January to mid-June, he wrote in an analysis. Numbers matter here, for ICE is under tremendous pressure to make more arrests to meet quotas set by senior White House aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's immigration crackdown. Miller set an aggressive quota of 3000 arrests per day in late May, and the efforts to meet that goal have pushed ICE officers into more communities and businesses. Not everyone within the ranks of ICE are happy with this and other aspects of the policy. According to The Atlantic magazine's immigration writer Nic Miroff, who has interviewed many current and former ICE agents who spoke on condition of anonymity, many described 'a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more'. READ MORE: Patrick Harvie: 'Never again' seems to not apply to Palestinians Some ICE employees according to Miroff 'believe that the shift in priorities is driven by a political preoccupation with deportation numbers rather than keeping communities safe'. With deportations becoming a top domestic priority for the Trump administration, some Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) officers along with those from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have been put on immigration enforcement duties. It's a shift in duties many do not agree with. One veteran HSI agent complained to Miroff that his division which usually focuses on cartel drug-trafficking operations have had agents moved to immigration-enforcement arrests as part of ICE operations. 'No drug cases, no human trafficking, no child exploitation,' the agent told Miroff. 'It's infuriating,' adding that he is thinking of quitting rather than having to continue 'arresting gardeners'. But complain as some ICE agents do, many Americans currently reserve their sympathies for those being targeted by the agents. Stories emerging from detention facilities where those arrested by ICE are being held are only adding to that sympathy as well as a sense of outrage. Earlier this month, Trump held a tour of one facility that's been dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz'. Its name is a reference to both the local reptile population and the former maximum-security Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California. An aerial view of the migrant detention centre dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz' (Image: Chandan Khanna/AFP) Constructed in a little over eight days and meant to accommodate up to 3000 detainees, since then accounts and reports from the facility point to appalling conditions. They suggest too that the design of the site is flawed and will compromise the safety of people being held there. Stories relayed to the Miami Herald by the wives of detainees housed in the makeshift Florida detention centre for migrants in the Everglades made for grim reading about the conditions detainees endure. 'Toilets that didn't flush. Temperatures that went from freezing to sweltering. Giant bugs. And little or no access to showers or toothbrushes, much less confidential calls with attorneys,' were among some of the accounts detailed by the Miami Herald. The newspaper also told of lights being left on inside the facility 24 hours a day, with detainees saying there are no clocks and there is scant sunlight coming through the heavy-duty tents, making it difficult for them to know whether it is day or night. Currently, ICE is holding nearly 60,000 people in custody, the highest number ever, even though funding until the latest boost was available for only 41,000 detention beds. This means that processing centres are packed with people sleeping on floors in short-term holding cells. Worrying as such reports are, it's the growth of ICE, its increasingly politicised role and the fact that it appears beyond accountability that concerns many Americans. Earlier this year, ICE's in-house watchdog was scrapped and for the time being, America's lower courts are hamstrung in their efforts to rein it in. As the FT's national editor Edward Luce recently observed, given that the Supreme Court last year gave Trump sweeping immunity from 'official' acts he takes as president … 'that makes ICE Trump's de facto private army – his security state within the state'. Though ICE is ostensibly still bound by constitutional limits, the way it has been operating bears the hallmarks of a secret police force in the making, insist some experts on authoritarian regimes. Lee Morgenbesser is an associate professor with the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Brisbane, and fellow with the Australian Research Council. Having studied historical and contemporary secret police forces, Morgenbesser says they typically meet five criteria. First, they're a police force targeting political opponents and dissidents. Second, they're not controlled by other security agencies and answer directly to the dictator. Third, the identity of their members and their operations are secret. Fourth, they specialise in political intelligence and surveillance operations. And finally, they carry out arbitrary searches, arrests, interrogations, indefinite detentions, disappearances and torture. In a recent article in the online platform The Conversation, and using these criteria to assess how close ICE is to becoming a secret police force, Morgenbesser concludes that 'overall, the evidence shows ICE meets most of the criteria". While ICE has yet to target political opponents, which Morgenbesser defines narrowly as members of the Democratic Party, and it is not directly controlled by Trump, he maintains that ICE's 'current structure provides him with plausible deniability.' In short, he says that while ICE is 'far from resembling history's most feared secret police forces, there have so far been few constraints on how it operates'. 'When combined with a potential shift towards targeting US citizens for dissent and disobedience, ICE is fast becoming a key piece in the repressive apparatus of American authoritarianism,' Morgenbesser warns. As ICE makes its presence felt in a growing number of American communities, the controversy over its role is likewise certain to escalate. While a majority of Americans support deporting violent criminals, they also back allowing migrants who came to the country as children or who arrived many years ago to stay. Americans polled by The Economist and YouGov in mid-June showed that only 42% viewed ICE favourably – an eight percentage-point drop from February and the start of Trump's term. For now, the ICE men continue to cometh and America, a nation of immigrants, faces an altogether different reckoning over its future democratic credentials.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The six shocking questions that remain about the Trump assassination attempt in Butler one year later
A year after a historic assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, there are still scores of questions left unanswered, including why Thomas Matthew Crooks shot the president-to-be. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, which left Trump with a bloody ear, two men with life-altering injuries and the death of father and firefighter Corey Comperatore, investigations began into how such a deadly lapse could've occurred. The House of Representatives launched a task force to probe the shooting, but their report published late last year did not focus at all on Crooks or his motive, instead it highlighted the failures of the Secret Service which led to the disaster. The FBI similarly began a probe, but the agency has yet to deliver a public update on the case. The last press FBI press release on the matter came last August, nearly 11 months ago. On year on, America is still in the dark and left to wonder how such a brazen attack was so nearly able to kill the most identifiable U.S. politician. Here the Daily Mail breaks down the top questions that remain about Trump's Butler shooting. What was Thomas Matthew Crooks' motive? The FBI has still to determine why 20-year-old Crooks, a young man from the Pittsburgh suburbs decided to shoot the Republican. 'The FBI has not identified a motive for the shooter's actions, but we are working to determine the sequence of events and the shooter's movements prior to the shooting, collecting and reviewing evidence, conducting interviews, and following up on all leads,' the agency wrote in a press release on July 14, 2024. Since then, there has been no public update about Crooks' motive. When pressed on how little is known about the shooter during a May interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, FBI Director Kash Patel poured cold water on the host's question. 'I don't know that there's more to know, but you're going to know everything we know,' he responded, downplaying the existence of additional information on Crooks and his motivation. 'We take assassination attempts, especially of the president of the United States, extremely seriously,' Patel said in the interview. 'And we don't feel that the American people have been given the information they need on that. And we're digging through the files, and we're getting them a more robust picture of what happened and whether or not there were any connections.' Lawmakers have been irked by the lack of new information, too. 'I'm mostly unsatisfied,' Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Dave McCormick told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview. 'Motive is just one part of the many questions I think that we still have.' Crooks did not leave behind notes or social media posts explaining his decision to shoot at the president and rally attendees. Did Crooks have a handler or accomplice? Authorities have yet to state publicly whether they have determined if Crooks had any co-conspirators. 'While the investigation to date indicates the shooter acted alone, the FBI continues to conduct logical investigative activity to determine if there were any co-conspirators associated with this attack,' the FBI's July 14 release stated. Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who oversees the House's Task Force on Declassification of Government Secrets, wrote this week she still wonders who Crooks was talking to at the time of the shooting. 'Our president was nearly assassinated. We still don't know what happened to the shooter's burner phones. Who was he corresponding with? Did he have a handler?' she posted on X. 'After investigating the corrupt handling of the JFK assassination with my Task Force, there are far too many questions that still need answers about Trump's assassination attempt.' What was Crooks's mental condition at the time? Reports indicate that the 20-year-old's parents, Matthew and Mary Crooks, are licensed professional counselors. Just before the shooting occurred on July 13, the parents reportedly called authorities worrying about the whereabouts of their son. In their call they expressed concern about their son's wellbeing, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News in the days after the assassination attempt. In the year before Crooks shot Trump, his father noticed his son exhibiting strange behaviors, like talking to himself while waving his arms and dancing late into the evening, the New York Times reported. His father noted that mental health issues run in the family, and before the shooting Crooks had searched 'major depressive disorder' and 'depression crisis' online. Matthew and Mary Crooks have not spoken publicly about their son and what led to his decision to open fire. What was found on Crooks's phones? The FBI discovered the gunman had two phones at the time of the shooting, but exactly what is on those devices remains a mystery. In the days following the Butler shooting FBI agents briefed members of Congress on some of the contents of the devices. Federal agents found searches of President Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden and more on the shooter's devices. Reports indicate Crooks also looked up former FBI Director Chritopher Wray, information on the Republican and Democratic national conventions and the Oxford High School shooting, including a photograph of the shooter Ethan Crumbley on his phone. What happened to Crooks's body? A member of the House task force to investigate the Butler shooting, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., a former sheriff, expressed dismay at how quickly the shooter's body was cremated. Some of his biggest concerns have centered on Crooks' autopsy and the swift release of his body to the family for cremation - just 10 days after he was shot dead by snipers. Kelly's report noted that the postmortem came up negative in tests for alcohol, illegal drugs and other controlled substances. But Higgins says he still wants to know why tests weren't carried out to test for prescription drugs in Crooks's system. 'It's reasonable to suspect some kind of psychotic break. There are many longstanding studies worldwide that connect the dots between antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs and bizarre behaviors that develop after someone has started ingesting these drugs,' he told the Daily Mail earlier this year. 'My effort to examine Crooks' body on Monday, August 5, caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact… the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after J13,' Higgins's independent report reveals. 'On J23, Crooks was gone. Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc.' Why are federal agencies stonewalling? The last update from the FBI on the investigation into Crooks was on August, 28, 2024, according to records on their website's press release portal. The FBI did not respond to the Daily Mail's request for an update on the case. Speaking to Fox News earlier this year in a joint interview FBI Director Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino shared that there are four cases related to the Butler attack, noting that two of them are closed due to the individuals being deceased. 'Two of the investigations are obviously closed because the individuals are dead, but there's two live prosecutions,' Patel said. 'And so the we can't get ahead of the federal court case.' 'A lot of that information will come out in the federal court cases, but we have personally invested our time in making sure that we have looked at all the any possible international connections to terrorism and adversaries alike.' 'And we've both been down to Quantico. We've both done the laboratory testing, we've both seen the explosives analysis, we've both seen the firearm physically held, and we are all in on these investigations,' the FBI director shared. In the interview Bongino also doused hopes for an explosive development in the cases. 'I'm not going to tell people what they want to hear. I'm going to tell you the truth. And whether you, whether you like it or not, is up to you. If there was a big explosive there, there, right? Given my history as a secret service agent and my personal friendship as a director does with the President, give me one logical, sensible reason we would not have,' he disclosed. 'If you can think of one there, isn't there, isn't there in some of these cases, that there you're looking for is not there.'
