Closing summary
Another very full day of news from the Trump restoration draws to a close, but your Guardian livebloggers will be back on Thursday to chronicle events as they unfold. Here are some of the main developments from the past few hours:
Donald Trump ordered the US military to detain up to 30,000 undocumented immigrants at Guantánamo Bay, prompting widespread backlash from rights groups, Democrats and the Cuban government.
The Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to federal agencies instructing them to take immediate and far-reaching steps to comply with Trump’s executive order to crack down on “Gender Ideology Extremism”.
A federal judge agreed to issue a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s freeze on federal spending after the White House press secretary undermined the administration’s argument in a tweet.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency celebrated the end of what it called “DEI scholarships in Burma”, which a former diplomat explained was really a bipartisan program to help young people struggling for an end to that country’s sectarian military dictatorship.
Trump’s executive order “to combat antisemitism” asks federal agencies to explore ways to deport pro-Palestinian activists, including student protesters.
Former New Jersey senator Bob Menendez added his name to the list of officials accused or convicted of public corruption hoping for Trump to show them mercy.
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Why is Elon Musk’s Doge picking on young people hoping to end Myanmar’s nightmare autocracy?
The headlong rush to cut government funding for anything that sounds too much like “diversity, equity and inclusion” to the new administration’s shockingly young shock troops appears to have brought an abrupt halt to a program that supported young leaders struggling for a better future for Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma, which is now ruled by a military dictatorship engaged in ethnic conflict.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency boasted on his social media platform that a program to provide what it called “$45m in DEI scholarships in Burma” had been cancelled.
But as the former congressman and veteran diplomat Tom Malinowski pointed out, the funding was for USAid’s Lincoln scholarships, “which help young people struggling for freedom in Burma’s dictatorship – a cause America has supported under Republican & Democratic presidents”.
“What could be ‘woke’ or ‘DEI’ about these scholarships?” Malinowksi asks. “The only clue is that USAID says they’re for students ‘of diverse backgrounds’ (oh no, diversity!). This is essential for Burma, where the military has exploited ethnic and religious divisions to stay in power.”
The program description on the USAid website does indeed say that the aim of investing in “135 young Myanmar leaders from diverse backgrounds” is to help “the next generation of leaders to guide Myanmar along a path of inclusive socio-economic development”.
Given the new administration’s horror at the prospect of young people fleeing conflict zones to build better lives in the United States, wouldn’t a modest investment in helping young people carve out a common future in a country divided by sectarian violence make sense?
Malinowksi added that, in his career as a senator, the new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, supported human rights in Burma and urged the Biden administration to do even more to help the persecuted Rohingya ethnic minority.
“It looks like these geniuses are just going through grant awards and killing anything that uses words like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion,’ even though in countries where ethnic and religious minorities are murdered and persecuted, these have long been American goals,” Malinowski concluded.
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