Latest news with #StephenMiller
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
From LA to Paris, the populist right hates cities – and it's fuelled by a sense of bitter defeat
From Los Angeles to London, Istanbul to Warsaw, cities are making rightwing populists angry. Their liberal elites, immigrants, net zero policies, leftwing activists, globalised businesses, expensive transport infrastructure and outspoken municipal leaders – all are provocations to populist politicians whose support often comes from more conservative, less privileged places. Three years ago the founders of national conservatism, the transatlantic ideology on which much of modern rightwing populism is based, published a statement of principles. One of these, surprisingly little noticed at the time, declared with some menace: 'In those [places] in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.' This month, Donald Trump's administration identified the first American city – and almost certainly not the last – to meet these ominously broad criteria. 'Los Angeles has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens,' he said. It was 'a city of criminals' and 'socialists', said his homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. 'Mob violence' was so disrupting the work of the federal government there, claimed his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, that an 'insurrection' was under way. Trump promised: 'We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean and safe again.' That this 'liberation' involved an ongoing, expanding and legally contentious military occupation – almost unprecedented in American history – is one indicator of how deep the populist animosity towards liberal cities and their leaders runs. Another is the recent imprisonment of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, a challenger to the authoritarian Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the Turkish presidency. Another is the level of security required for London's Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, which is similar to that for Keir Starmer and King Charles. The death threats, public abuse and state aggression endured by such municipal figures in supposedly free democracies – along with slightly more subtle anti-urban interventions, such as Nigel Farage's complaint in 2014 that he could not 'hear English' on an inner London train – reveal much about rightwing populism, its anxieties and fundamental values. Cities are where the future often starts, and populism is often about holding on to the past. While conservative populism reveres, or says it reveres, the nation state, the countryside, community, social continuity and the traditional family, cities are often places of more fluid loyalties. While populism presents politics as a simple battle between 'the people' and their enemies, cities, by gathering so many interest groups in one place, show that politics is in fact a more complex process: involving competition but also cooperation, contests over space and resources, and many social forces, including class, gender, sexuality, local pride and race. More enraging and disorienting still for conservative populists, over the past 30 years many big cities have changed. Trump acknowledges this by describing Los Angeles as 'once great'. As Mike Davis laid out in his pioneering histories of the city, for most of the 20th century Los Angeles was, behind its laid-back image, a highly conservative place: racially segregated, repressively policed, ruled by Republican mayors as much as Democrats. Immigration, radical activism, more progressive administrations and liberal gentrification gradually altered the city so that now, while still often shaped by inequalities, it is a stronghold of the centre left. A similar shift has happened since the 1990s in Paris, London and many other European and North American cities. For the right, the loss of these prestigious places has been a bitter defeat – hence their insistence that they have been ruined by liberals and the left. Khan's centrist mayoralty in London has used its very limited powers to provide free meals for primary schoolchildren and give the capital cleaner air, yet is routinely described by the rightwing press as a dogmatic and disastrous experiment. Such caricatures of cities and their government are all the more unconvincing because they ignore the political complexity of these places. Forty percent of Londoners voted for Brexit, and many of the city's immigrants are social conservatives. Some of its supposedly most rigid leftwing areas have, or have had, well-known rightwingers as residents: Boris Johnson and Paul Dacre, the ferociously illiberal former Daily Mail editor, used to live in Islington, north London. Dominic Cummings still does. At a Turkish greengrocer in the borough, I sometimes see the Tory MP Nick Timothy – who recently told the House of Commons: 'Diversity is not our strength: it is a very serious and difficult challenge' – queueing seemingly quite happily as the shop hums with different languages, before returning to his home in the even more diverse borough of Hackney. For all the aspects of city life that infuriate those on the right, there are others you might expect to please them: the emphasis on work, the entrepreneurialism, huge importance of property and endless hierarchies. These priorities and divides could push cities back to the right. In the 1980s, much of London elected Tory MPs. Paris had a conservative mayor, Jacques Chirac, from 1977 to 1995. Yet a return to urban conservatism feels less likely with the right in populist mode. As the Economist magazine – not usually an ally of the municipal left – recently pointed out, city government needs 'pragmatic politicos who keep … the roads free of potholes … [and] buses running on time'. The broad-brush, administratively chaotic politics of Trump, Farage and Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives don't seem well suited to such tasks. Perhaps that doesn't matter to the populists. They can go on attacking cities, in order to stir up their voters elsewhere, without actually having to run them. Meanwhile, liberal and leftwing municipal politicians keep key economic and tourism hubs functional, leaving populist national politicians such as Trump free to promote less practical policies. He may hate contemporary Los Angeles and California, but the state's economy recently overtook Japan's to become the world's fourth largest – helpful for a president whose own economic plan is misfiring. Yet the urban resistance to rightwing populism shouldn't be written off as just playing into the enemy's hands, as some political pessimists have done during the protests in Los Angeles. Whether on the street or from a grand mayoral office, defying today's intolerant, reactionary populists has a value – as an act in itself and as an encouragement to others. City life can be grim and disappointing. But one of its virtues is that while trends come and go fast, rebellions are rarely forgotten. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
Globe and Mail
a day ago
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
ICE raids and their uncertainty scare off workers and baffle businesses
Farmers, cattle ranchers and hotel and restaurant managers breathed a sigh of relief last week when President Donald Trump ordered a pause to immigration raids that were disrupting those industries and scaring foreign-born workers off the job. 'There was finally a sense of calm,'' said Rebecca Shi, CEO of the American Business Immigration Coalition. That respite didn't last long. On Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin declared, 'There will be no safe spaces for industries who harbor violent criminals or purposely try to undermine (immigration enforcement) efforts. Worksite enforcement remains a cornerstone of our efforts to safeguard public safety, national security and economic stability.'' The flipflop baffled businesses trying to figure out the government's actual policy, and Shi says now 'there's fear and worry once more.' 'That's not a way to run business when your employees are at this level of stress and trauma,' she said. Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the United States illegally – an issue that has long fired up his GOP base. The crackdown intensified a few weeks ago when Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump's second term. Suddenly, ICE seemed to be everywhere. 'We saw ICE agents on farms, pointing assault rifles at cows and removing half the workforce,'' said Shi, whose coalition represents 1,700 employers and supports increased legal immigration. One ICE raid left a New Mexico dairy with just 20 workers, down from 55. 'You can't turn off cows,'' said Beverly Idsinga, the executive director of the Dairy Producers of New Mexico. 'They need to be milked twice a day, fed twice a day.'' Claudio Gonzalez, a chef at Izakaya Gazen in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo district, said many of his Hispanic workers – whether they're in the country legally or not – have been calling out of work recently due to fears that they will be targeted by ICE. His restaurant is a few blocks away from a collection of federal buildings, including an ICE detention center. 'They sometimes are too scared to work their shift,' Gonzalez said. 'They kind of feel like it's based on skin color.' In some places, the problem isn't ICE but rumors of ICE. At cherry-harvesting time in Washington state, many foreign-born workers are staying away from the orchards after hearing reports of impending immigration raids. One operation that usually employs 150 pickers is down to 20. Never mind that there hasn't actually been any sign of ICE in the orchards. 'We've not heard of any real raids,'' said Jon Folden, orchard manager for the farm cooperative Blue Bird in Washington's Wenatchee River Valley. 'We've heard a lot of rumors.'' Jennie Murray, CEO of the advocacy group National Immigration Forum, said some immigrant parents worry that their workplaces will be raided and they'll be hauled off by ICE while their kids are in school. They ask themselves, she said: 'Do I show up and then my second-grader gets off the school bus and doesn't have a parent to raise them? Maybe I shouldn't show up for work.'' The horror stories were conveyed to Trump, members of his administration and lawmakers in Congress by business advocacy and immigration reform groups like Shi's coalition. Last Thursday, the president posted on his Truth Social platform that 'Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.' It was another case of Trump's political agenda slamming smack into economic reality. With U.S. unemployment low at 4.2 per cent, many businesses are desperate for workers, and immigration provides them. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born workers made up less than 19 per cent of employed workers in the United States in 2023. But they accounted for nearly 24 per cent of jobs preparing and serving food and 38 per cent of jobs in farming, fishing and forestry. 'It really is clear to me that the people pushing for these raids that target farms and feed yards and dairies have no idea how farms operate,' Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association, said Tuesday during a virtual press conference. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated in January that undocumented workers account for 13 per cent of U.S. farm jobs and 7 per cent of jobs in hospitality businesses such as hotels, restaurants and bars. The Pew Research Center found last year that 75 per cent of U.S. registered voters – including 59 per cent of Trump supporters – agreed that undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs that American citizens don't want. And an influx of immigrants in 2022 and 2023 allowed the United States to overcome an outbreak of inflation without tipping into recession. In the past, economists estimated that America's employers could add no more than 100,000 jobs a month without overheating the economy and igniting inflation. But economists Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the Brookings Institution calculated that because of the immigrant arrivals, monthly job growth could reach 160,000 to 200,000 without exerting upward pressure on prices. Now Trump's deportation plans – and the uncertainty around them – are weighing on businesses and the economy. 'The reality is, a significant portion of our industry relies on immigrant labor – skilled, hardworking people who've been part of our workforce for years. When there are sudden crackdowns or raids, it slows timelines, drives up costs, and makes it harder to plan ahead,' says Patrick Murphy, chief investment officer at the Florida building firm Coastal Construction and a former Democratic member of Congress. 'We're not sure from one month to the next what the rules are going to be or how they'll be enforced. That uncertainty makes it really hard to operate a forward-looking business.' Adds Douglas Holtz Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now president of the conservative American Action Forum think tank: 'ICE had detained people who are here lawfully and so now lawful immigrants are afraid to go to work ... All of this goes against other economic objectives the administration might have. The immigration policy and the economic policy are not lining up at all.''
American Press
a day ago
- Politics
- American Press
ICE raid nets 84 arrests at Delta Downs
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 84 people allegedly unlawfully in the country during a raid at a southwest Louisiana racetrack, the agency announced Tuesday. ICE said it raided the Delta Downs Racetrack, Hotel and Casino on Monday alongside other state and federal agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Border Patrol. The raid occurred despite a recent Trump administration directive for immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels due to concerns over the economic impact of aggressive enforcement. Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and the main architect of Trump's immigration policies, has pushed ICE to aim for at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump's second term. ICE said authorities had 'received intelligence' that businesses operating at the racetrack's stables employed 'unauthorized workers' who were then targeted in the raid. Of the dozens of workers detained during the raid, 'at least two' had prior criminal records, according to the agency. 'These enforcement operations aim to disrupt illegal employment networks that threaten the integrity of our labor systems, put American jobs at risk and create pathways for exploitation within critical sectors of our economy,' said Steven Stavinoha, U.S. Customs and Border Protection director of field operations in New Orleans, in a written statement. 'Our Company complies fully with federal labor laws, and to our knowledge, no Delta Downs team members were involved in this matter,' said David Strow, a spokesperson for Boyd Gaming Corporation which owns the racetrack, in an emailed statement. 'We will cooperate with law enforcement as requested.' In the past few weeks, ICE has engaged in other large-scale raids across Louisiana. On May 27, the agency raided a federally funded flood-reduction project in New Orleans and reported arresting 15 Central American workers. And the agency said it arrested 10 Chinese nationals working at massage parlors in Baton Rouge during a June 11 raid. Rachel Taber, an organizer with the Louisiana-based immigrant rights group Unión Migrante, criticized the raids. 'Our economy runs on immigrants,' Taber said. 'And when we let ourselves be divided by racial hatred, our economy for everyone suffers.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘It wasn't a drunk tweet': Terry Moran defends Stephen Miller ‘hater' post that led to his ABC News firing
Terry Moran is speaking out not only on the fateful tweets that resulted in ABC News firing him after 28 years of service, but he's also pushing back on the network's claim that his contract was set to expire and therefore made it easier for the news outlet to release him. In Monday interviews with both The New York Times and The Bulwark, the veteran correspondent was unapologetic over the social media post in which he called Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, a 'world-class hater,' claiming it was an 'accurate and true' observation. He also swatted away suggestions that he was intoxicated when he sent out his late-night screed about Miller and Trump. 'It wasn't a drunk tweet,' he told the Times while flashing what they described as a 'lopsided grin' during their Zoom call. According to Moran, who was quickly suspended by ABC News over the since-deleted tweet, the post came about during a 'normal family night' after he took a 'meditative' stroll through the woods with the family dog. 'I was thinking about our country, and what's happening, and just turning it over in my mind,' he said, adding that he decided to send out the tweet following a family dinner and movie. 'I wrote it, and I said, 'That's true.'' Within hours of the post, the White House demanded that the network take action over the 'absolutely vile smear,' urging ABC News to suspend or fire Moran. With right-wing media jumping on board the outrage train, the network announced that it had placed the longtime anchor and reporter on suspension. Two days later, citing what it said 'was a clear violation of ABC News policies,' the network announced that Moran was out. At the same time, a network spokesperson asserted that Moran was at the end of his contract, and 'based on his recent post' ABC News 'made the decision not to renew.' Moran, however, is disputing that characterization. Telling the Times it was 'incorrect,' he claimed that the network was 'bailing' on an oral agreement to extend his contract for another three years. 'We had a deal,' he added. Moran said that his lawyers are now in discussions with the network over the terms of his exit and severance package. A representative for ABC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Moran, who announced shortly after his termination that he had joined Substack, said that he's already surpassed 90,000 new subscribers. This also includes thousands who have purchased paid subscriptions, which run $5 a month or $50 annually. With many of his old ABC News colleagues reportedly shocked and outraged over his tweets, which Miller described as a 'full public meltdown,' Moran didn't directly address whether he felt that his social media posts made it more difficult for them to report on the administration. 'If they want to reach out, I'm happy to talk about that, but I'm not going to speak in the abstract,' he told the Times. In a separate conversation with The Bulwark's Tim Miller, which was livestreamed Monday morning, Moran continued to defend the post that resulted in his termination while also pushing back on the notion of 'both-sides' journalism. Specifically, he said that journalists shouldn't feel that they have to give up their roles as citizens. 'Your job is not to be objective,' he told Miller. 'What you have to be is fair and accurate. I would say that, while very hot, is an observation that is accurate and true.' With attention being placed on his political affiliation amid the fiery tweets about the Trump administration, Moran described himself as a 'Hubert Humphrey Democrat' before addressing the backlash to his posts. 'I was rocked, clearly, and full of fear and I realized that this was going to be a very serious situation and had to stand up and deal with it,' he said. In his conversation with the Times, Moran noted that while he 'thought it would hit a nerve,' he was still surprised that it quickly snowballed to him being fired. 'I wrote it because I thought it was true,' he declared to Miller. He also observed that his termination 'looked like a business decision' and he had become 'bad business,' prompting him to contemplate about the network's past capitulation to the president. Saying that he wasn't initially worried when ABC's parent company Disney paid Trump $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit involving anchor George Stephanopoulos, he conceded he 'should have been' concerned at the time. Meanwhile, Moran also discussed his high-profile and newsmaking interview with Trump, which took place just six weeks before the network fired him. According to the former Nightline anchor, his selection was 'accidental,' and it was apparent that the administration refused to sit down with other journalists at the network. 'I was kind of low man on the totem pole, and some of the others were knocked off,' he said. 'It was clear that I was not the first choice there.'During that interview, which featured the president demanding that Moran agree with his false assertion that Kilmar Abrego Garcia literally has 'MS-13' tattooed on his hand, Trump repeatedly suggested that he 'chose' Moran in hopes that he wouldn't challenge the president. 'They're giving you the big break of a lifetime, you know, you're doing the interview,' Trump said at one point. 'I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that's OK… but you're not being very nice.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Stephen Miller's wife ordered Social Security workers to cover up a lie from her new boss Elon Musk: report
The wife of one of President Donald Trump's closest and most trusted advisers, Stephen Miller, served in the White House for only a brief time, but in that period used her position to pressure the Social Security Administration to lie on behalf of the White House and its then-special government employee, Elon Musk, according to a new report. Katie Miller allegedly instructed the head of the SSA to tell reporters that 40 percent of all calls placed to SSA phone lines were linked to fraudulent Social Security claims — a number the president and Musk plucked out of thin air as the White House and Musk's DOGE effort set about making cuts to a wide range of federal agencies this year, the New York Times reported. 'The number is 40 percent,' Katie Miller reportedly told the acting SSA Administrator Leland Dudek in an April 1 call, the Times reported. 'Do not contradict the president.' 'Mr. Musk's team mobilized dozens of Social Security employees to affirm their views about fraud and began a project to ensure dead people were properly classified so they weren't mistakenly paid — even though DOGE officials acknowledged in an internal memo that payments were not being made in those cases,' the Times wrote. While Miller left the government in late May alongside Musk, the new head of the SSA refuted that figure directly in a statement to the Times. 'We're going to be a fact-based, rule-based organization that can count,' said Frank Bisignano, who joined the agency as commissioner in early May. Bisignano's predecessor, Dudek, did not back up Musk's claims either. According to the Times, the DOGE cuts at SSA — driven by Musk's fixation on Social Security as a major source of waste and fraud — were badly mismanaged and resulted in many newly open basic customer service roles being replaced by 'specialized professionals like lawyers, human resources staff and technologists' who are paid higher rates than colleagues who exited those roles or retired after being offered buyouts earlier this year. A staffing shortfall at the agency is now compounded by a growing backlog of Social Security claims. Miller followed Musk out the door and now works with him on his various business ventures, despite a massive, public blowup between the Tesla chief and Trump earlier this month. In now-deleted posts, Musk alleged that Trump, for whom her husband retains fervent loyalty, was linked to the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and further claimed that Trump was responsible, through his own alleged inclusion in them, for the Epstein flight logs and other files being hidden from the public. Katie's fence-sitting between the two was the subject of its own CNN profile earlier this month. Dudek, who led the agency when Katie Miller ordered it to parrot the White House line, is apparently out of a job after his time as acting commissioner came to an end. In a statement, he fought back against criticism that he was unqualified — a claim stemming from the fact that he got the job after being placed on leave from his mid-level position at the SSA for going beyond the scope of his duties to help the fledgling DOGE effort make headway at the agency. That punishment prompted him to pen a LinkedIn post 'confessing' his efforts to help DOGE. 'I confess. I helped DOGE understand SSA. I mailed myself publically accessible documents and explained them DOGE,' he wrote in a February LinkedIn post first reported by CNN. 'I confess. I moved contractor money around to add data science resources to my anti-fraud team to examine Direct Deposit Fraud.' 'I confess. I bullied agency executives, shared executive contact information, and circumvented the chain of command to connect DOGE with the people who get stuff done,' he added at the time. That post caught the eye of Musk, who at the time still enjoyed a close relationship with Trump. In a tweet, the former DOGE-er-in-chief said that Dudek 'was brought back right away [by Trump] and now HE is upper management.' Upon his departure, Dudek thanked the president for his time at the agency. But privately, according to the Times, he has expressed 'deep misgivings about the effect of DOGE's oversight,' to his confidantes. 'Thank you President Trump for the opportunity to serve. Thank you DOGE team for your trust. Thank you SSA for all you do,' wrote Dudek in May. Bisignano, after taking over the agency, assured agency staffers that he was not planning the same kind of large-scale layoff policies that DOGE was pledging earlier this year at many federal agencies, some of which had to rehire workes who were sent home. 'I have no intent to RIF people,' he said during a 90-minute address to agency managers last month, according to the Federal News Network. But in his statement to the Times, Bisignano made clear that he knows how to play by the Trump White House's expectations, as he pushed back against the assertion that DOGE had messed up by claiming 40 percent of all Social Security help line callers to be linked to fraudulent claims. 'The work that DOGE did was 100 percent accurate,' he insisted.
