WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s administration plans to keep fewer than 300 staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development out of the agency’s worldwide total of more than 10,000, four sources told Reuters on Thursday.
“That’s outrageous,” said J. Brian Atwood, who served as head of USAID for more than six years, adding the mass termination of personnel would effectively kill an agency that has helped keep tens of millions of people around the world from dying.
“A lot of people will not survive,” said Atwood, now a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute.
Late Thursday, federal workers associations filed suit asking a federal court to stop the shutdown, arguing that President Donald Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.
I like to watch updating polling averages in different countries. I’ve found the United Kingdom interesting recently with the rise of Nigel Farage and his Reform Party since the 2024 General Election. With 3 different parties currently roughly tied it’s wild to see considering they have first-past-the-post as a voting system. It seems very much like a country that doesn’t want a two party system but is forced with Labour or the Conservatives being the only choices. Luckily for Labour they won a landslide majority with the next election still all the way to 2029 so they can at least play the long game and hope their fortunes improve by then. It’s also hard to see if Reform’s good numbers will amount to anything yet. Will they replace the Conservatives as the new party on the right or is this just a temporary jump in support?
In 2019 for example when Reform was still called the Brexit Party they saw a huge surge in polls only to collapse by the time the general election rolled around. But I’d imagine it’s always possible. Because after all for a long time Labour was a minor party until the Liberals collapsed after WW1 turning the Liberal-Conservative Party system into a Labour-Conservative Party system.
My biggest worry is that in 4 years, 3 months time when the next election happens, we wind up back with either the Tories or a Tory/Reform coalition. Labour just feels like a very cowardly party right now, terrified of alienating the right leaning people who voted them in, who read garbage like The Daily Mail, with little positivity regarding the economy, while happy to ride the anti-immigration train. Not to mention betraying trans people.
I think the biggest problem is Farage, he’s the shining star of the right. The First Past the Post system means it would be hard for his party to get in without the Tory vote collapsing, but with the Tories having a bit of a talent vaccum right now, it is entirely feasible that Farage could become the leader of the Tories, bury Reform, and Labour have to contend with an openly far right, Trump ally candidate.
The only possible ray of light is that the election is in May 2029, which will be after the November 2028 US election, and another full term of Donald Trump. Hopefully Brits will understand the damage a far right leader can do if elected to their country. But then, with how wild the Trump presidency has been in only 3 weeks, it’s hard to really imagine what the political landscape will be in 4 years.
I think the main problem is that Labour is trying to appeal to voters that will likely never vote for them. Labour got 33.7% of the vote in the last General Election. Lower than the 40% they got in 2017 when the Conservatives won a plurality. Only reason they ended up with a landslide majority last year was more because the Conservatives collapsed with Reform splitting the vote in many seats not Labour making inroads with those voters. They’d probably be better off trying to win back historically strong Labour areas that voted for independents MP’s in protest, or new Green voters as they reached a new high of 6.7% last year when they only got 2.6% in 2019. I think that Keir’s main problem is that he has bled lots of voters hoping to make a breakthrough with an entirely different base of voters. I could be wrong and maybe Keir is playing 6D chess but I’d look at the increasing Green vote share and Independent MP’s with more concern of a decay of the regular Labour base.
Yet the increase in support for both of them came from his very unchanging policy of removing as many left-wing figures from the party or positions of power as he can (Corbyn, Jamie Driscoll, Zarah Sultana, Apsana Begum, John Mcdonnell, Louise Haigh… etc etc). With his current system he’s not gaining the support of people but seemingly continuously alienating people who already went “ok, sure” when they voted Labour in the first place.
I’m a bit of a pessimist about how the next election’s going to go, particularly since my constituency had Reform in third behind blue and red Tory and I highly doubt my constituency’s gonna be going Labour next time). If it wasn’t for what was going on beyond their southern border, I’d say Canada’s probably a country I’d much prefer to be in, in 5 years time.
While not collapsed yet it appears that the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel may break down. Netanyahu already pledged to resume fighting in Gaza after 3 Israeli hostages scheduled to be freed on Saturday as part of the ceasefire deal were not returned. As of right now Hamas also announced they would suspend the release of hostages “until further notice.”. Israeli PM Netanyahu gave Hamas until Saturday to return the three hostages or said the ceasefire will be over.
Listen, motherfuckers, in case you don’t remember what happened in December, we don’t really give a flying fuck what you think or how you feel. You exist as a service that is meant to help people, not to make money for yourselves, and so as long as you act like it’s the latter rather than the former, we’re gonna have a problem.
Republicans always have to play victims and act like there’s some higher power or bigger force than them - Even when they run the entire country. They won the election, installed all of their own people, promptly dismantled everything about the last administration, and are still acting like “the regime” has their backs against the wall?
Motherfucker, YOU are the regime.
Apart from you, Matt Gaetz. You fucked up your open goal at attorney general by being a paedophile sex trafficker. Kill yourself
