Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer departs 10 Downing Street, London, to attend Prime Minister’s Questions at the Houses of Parliament, February 12, 2025
DOUBLE standards. The Prime Minister vows to close a “loophole” that allowed a Gaza family, whose home was destroyed by Israeli bombing, to claim asylum under a scheme designed for Ukrainian refugees.
There are deserving and undeserving refugees. Ukrainians are white, and fleeing from an army we don’t like, Russia’s. Palestinians aren’t and they are fleeing from an army we advise, fund and equip.
Labour’s anti-immigrant braggadocio won’t shorten NHS waiting lists or lower housing costs. Its zeal for action contrasts with its foot-dragging over employment rights and its indifference to rising energy and water bills. Keir Starmer only punches down: he cowers before the corporate crooks bleeding this country dry but talks tough when it comes to the powerless and penniless.
Most of all he cowers before Donald Trump. British laws can be amended if they offend the US president: an online safety Bill may be reshaped to please Elon Musk, and proper taxation of the digital sector’s huge profits may be permanently shelved.
Protesters rally against U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk outside the Michigan Capitol in Lansing, Michigan on February 5, 2025. (Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)
“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” said one legal expert. “We never have seen anything like this.”
The Trump administration’s defiance of court orders that threaten to hamper the president and unelected billionaire Elon Musk’s assault on federal agencies and basic rights has legal experts and other observers warning of a perilous new phase in the United States’ rolling constitutional crisis.
On Monday, the Revolving Door Project (RDP) launched an effort to track the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with orders from the federal judiciary and detail the impact that obstinance is having across the country.
The watchdog group pointed to several specific examples, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to “disperse already-awarded grants funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, in apparent defiance of” federal judges’ orders against the Trump administration’s sweeping funding freeze.
“NOTHING is more important than civil society pressuring judges to have a spine in the face of Musk and Trump’s intransigence,” Jeff Hauser, RDP’s executive director, wrote on social media late Monday. “Judicial orders must be enforced!”
Journalists Judd Legum and Noel Sims highlighted another example on Tuesday, noting that the administration is “prohibiting National Institutes of Health (NIH) staff from issuing virtually all grant funding” despite two federal court injunctions against the freeze.
David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told Legum and Sims that the Trump administration is “in contempt of court,” calling the continued freeze on NIH grants “completely unlawful.”
“The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent.”
Super is among a growing number of legal experts sounding the alarm about the nation’s descent into a full-blown constitutional emergency.
“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law expert and dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, told The New York Times late last week. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”
“Systematic unconstitutional and illegal acts create a constitutional crisis,” Chemerinsky added.
Both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have levied criticism at the federal judiciary in recent days as it has put up roadblocks that have hindered the new administration’s ability to lawlessly impose its will.
“Certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop,” Trump wrote in a social media post early Tuesday, just days after Musk floated allowing “elected bodies” to terminate “the worst 1% of appointed judges.”
In a statement on Monday, American Bar Association (ABA) president William Bay noted that “in the last 21 days, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed alleging that the administration’s actions violate the rule of law and are contrary to the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
“The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore,” said Bay. “These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent. We must stand up for the values we hold dear. The ABA will do its part and act to protect the rule of law.”
“We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law,” he added. “It is part of the oath we took when we became lawyers. Whatever your political party or your views, change must be made in the right way. Americans expect no less.”
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Protesters rally against Elon Musk-led attacks on civil servants outside the U.S. Capitol on February 11, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump’s latest executive order “gives Elon Musk, an unelected, hyper-partisan billionaire, unfettered authority over this country’s civil service,” warned one advocacy group.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order handing an Elon Musk-led commission sweeping power to oversee federal hiring across non-military departments, entrenching what’s been described as a “shadow government” spearheaded by an unelected billionaire.
The new order states that the leader of each non-military federal agency “shall develop a data-driven plan” in coordination with the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), an advisory body that has infiltrated departments across the U.S. government—and accessed highly sensitive data—as part of an unprecedented effort to gut spending and the federal workforce.
“This hiring plan shall include that new career appointment hiring decisions shall be made in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead, consistent with applicable law,” the order continues. “The agency shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled.”
The order also instructs agency directors to prepare for “large-scale” cuts to the federal workforce.
“It’s a complete takeover of the federal government by Musk,” investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr wrote in response to the executive action.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office with Musk at his side, Trump on Tuesday called the order “very important” and attacked federal judges who “want to try and stop us,” alluding to court orders against DOGE’s attempt to access vital government systems.
Musk, who is leading DOGE while simultaneously heading companies that are benefiting directly from his work inside the Trump administration, insisted he’s not orchestrating a “hostile takeover” of the federal government, declaring that the public voted for “major government reform” and “they are going to get what they voted for.”
The mega-billionaire also falsely claimed DOGE has been transparent as it rampages through the federal government.
“In reality,” The Guardian noted, “Musk has taken great pains to conceal how DOGE has operated, starting with his own involvement in the project. Musk himself is a ‘special government employee,’ which the White House has said means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public. The DOGE team involves about 40 staffers, but the actual number is not known. Staffers have tried to keep their identities private and refused to give their last names to career officials at the agencies they were detailed to.”
Trump’s latest executive order (EO) is poised to supercharge the Musk-led assault on and total dismantling of federal agencies, from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“This new EO signed today appears to create DOGE as a shadow government across the entire federal government,” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo wrote late Wednesday, adding that the order “seems to make Elon as head of DOGE functionally the president or perhaps something more like a prime minister.”
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the advocacy group Democracy Forward, warned in a statement that “this latest attack on public service gives Elon Musk, an unelected, hyper-partisan billionaire, unfettered authority over this country’s civil service.”
“People and communities across the nation depend on a non-partisan, committed civil service,” said Perryman. “Democracy Forward will pursue all legal options available to protect our civil service and the American people from harms that would stem from this executive order.”
Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) attends a Senate hearing on January 29, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“Does anyone really think that the oligarchs give a damn about ordinary Americans?” the senator asked. “Trust me, they don’t.”
As U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday continued their effort to gut the federal government, Sen. Bernie Sanders warned that “the oligarchs, with their unlimited amounts of money, are waging a war on the working class of our country, and it is a war that they are intent on winning.”
A week after delivering a speech that sounded the alarm about “America’s dangerous movement toward oligarchy, authoritarianism, and kleptocracy,” Sanders (I-Vt.) took the Senate floor again to target the world’s three richest people—Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—and the politicians who serve them.
“We are living in an extremely dangerous time,” the seantor said Tuesday. “Future generations will look back at this moment—what we do right now—and remember whether we had the courage to defend our democracy against the growing threats of oligarchy and authoritarianism.”
“As we speak, right now, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, is attempting to dismantle major agencies of the federal government which are designed to protect the needs of working families and the disadvantaged,” said Sanders. “These agencies were created by the U.S. Congress and it is Congress’ responsibility to maintain them, to reform them, or to end them. It is not Mr. Musk’s responsibility. What Mr. Musk is doing is patently illegal and unconstitutional—and must be ended.”
Sanders also detailed Trump and his allies’ attacks on the federal judiciary, which has delivered a series of blows to the Republican president’s agenda since he took office last month.
“Mr. Trump and his friends are not just trying to undermine two of the three pillars of our constitutional government—Congress and the courts—they are also going after the media, in a way that we have never seen in the modern history of this country,” the senator said. While recognizing that the media “makes mistakes every day,” he added that “I do hope that every member of Congress understands that you cannot have a functioning democracy, you cannot have a free flow of information, you cannot have the pursuit of truth, without an independent press.”
The senator also how the top three billionaires impact what information reaches people by buying news outlets and social media platforms—as Musk did with Twitter, which he rebranded X, and Bezos did with The Washington Post and Twitch. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has made his money through Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
“They will use the enormous media operations they own to deflect attention away from the impact of their policies while they ‘entertain us to death,'” Sanders warns. “They and their fellow oligarchs will continue within our corrupt campaign finance system to spend huge amounts of money to buy politicians in both major political parties.”
“Does anyone really think that the oligarchs give a damn about ordinary Americans?” he asked. “Trust me, they don’t.”
Sanders warned that “if we do not stop them, they will soon be going after the healthcare, nutrition, housing, and educational programs that protect the most vulnerable people in our country—all so that they can raise they money they need to provide huge tax breaks for themselves and for others billionaires. As modern-day kings who believe they have the absolute right to rule, they will sacrifice, without hesitation, the well-being of working people in order to protect their power and their privileges.”
However, he also stressed that “the worst fear of the ruling class of our country is that the American people—whether they are Black or white or Latino, whether they are urban or rural, whether they are young or old, gay or straight, whatever—the fear of the ruling class is that the American people come together to demand a government that represents all of us, not just the people on top.”
“The oligarch’s nightmare is that we will not allow ourselves to be divided up by race, religion, sexual orientation, or country of origin and will come together and have the courage to take them on,” he declared. “If we stand together, we’re gonna win this fight, and not only will we save American democracy, we’re gonna create the kind of nation that I think most of us know we should become.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
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Minister of Justice and Correctional Services of South Africa Ronald Lamola answers the questions of press members related to the public hearings of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands on January 11, 2024 [Dursun Aydemir – Anadolu Agency]
South Africa has vowed not to withdraw its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), despite the Trump administration’s threats and aid cut.
There is “no chance” South Africa could withdraw the case it filed in December 2023, Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told the Financial Times.
“Standing by our principles sometimes has consequences, but we remain firm that this is important for the world, and the rule of law,” he added.
South Africa was the first nation to drag Israel to the ICJ over its genocidal war on Gaza that has claimed more than 48,000 lives and reduced the enclave to rubble. A ceasefire that took hold on 19 January is currently in place.
Last week, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting financial aid to South Africa in retaliation for a new land appropriation law it claims seizes property from the country’s White minority, as well as the ICJ case against Israel.
The US also alleges that South Africa is working with Iran to “develop commercial, military and nuclear arrangements.”
“The United States cannot support the government of South Africa’s commission of rights violations in its country or its ‘undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation, our allies, our African partners, and our interests,” the order read.
“While we do have a good relationship with Iran, we don’t have any nuclear programmes with them, nor any trade to speak of,” Lamola said.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently signed the expropriation bill into law, which will allow the state to expropriate land without compensation if it is “just, equitable and in the public interest.”
The government says the law aims to address apartheid’s past injustices, and that Trump’s accusations are lies, distortions and misinformation.
According to Ramaphosa, the country was only receiving HIV/AIDS prevention funding from the US.
After South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel alleging violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention in the Gaza Strip, several countries joined the case including Nicaragua, Colombia, Cuba, Libya, Mexico, Spain, Belize and Turkiye.
The International Criminal Court has separately issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Trump has also sanctioned the ICC for investing Israeli officials.
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Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
