<Gavin Newsom is scheduled to ease building restrictions for victims of the Los Angeles wildfires – part of a reconstruction effort that he said on Sunday would need a California version of the Marshall Plan, the US-led effort to rebuild western Europe after the second world war.

The California governor ordered the state’s tough environmental laws and permitting requirements to be suspended to help wildfire victims rebuild their homes and businesses, with costs so far placed at $135bn to $150bn over 10 years, according to AccuWeather.

“I find that strict compliance with various statutes and regulations specified in this Order would prevent, hinder, or delay the mitigation of the effects of these fires and windstorm conditions,” Newsom wrote in the executive order.

“California leads the nation in environmental stewardship. I’m not going to give that up,” he later told NBC’s Meet the Press. “But one thing I won’t give into is delay. Delay is denial for people: lives, traditions, places torn apart, torn asunder.”

The building code suspensions apply only to properties and facilities in “substantially the same location” as before the fires, and whose height and footprint do not exceed 110% of their original size, the order says.

Newsom also called for a California version of the Marshall Plan. “We already have a team looking at reimagining LA 2.0,” he said, “and we are making sure everyone’s included, not just the folks on the coast, people here that were ravaged by this disaster.”

Meanwhile investigators are searching for clues as to why the major fires – Palisades and Eaton – were ignited, even as Santa Ana winds are expected to pick up overnight on Sunday and through Tuesday with no rain anticipated until later in the week.

One theory gaining traction is that overhead transmission and distribution lines, rocked or brought down by the winds, may have sparked, igniting the dry vegetation below. It is routine for utilities to shut off power during “red-flag events” but the power lines were on near the Eaton and Palisades fires started on Tuesday last week.

Power lines and utility equipment have been identified as the cause of California’s 2018 Camp fire, killing 85 people and destroying the town of Paradise, the 2023 Maui fire in Hawaii and a 2021 fire in Otis, Oregon, that began when a utility pole fell and ignited a wildfire, destroying 300 homes.

Los Angeles department of water and power reportedly does not have a program in place to pre-emptively shut off power in urban areas when fire risk is high. Robert McCullough, a electric utility consultant, told the New York Times that the department’s shut-off plan is “woefully inadequate”.

The analyst also said that the utility’s electric grid was designed to withstand wind speeds of up to 56mph, which considered “quite low in today’s climate”. The department has said it did not cut power in advance of the fires in the city despite the wind speeds.

“Impacts to critical city services, including emergency response, the ability to fight fires, traffic and streetlights, as well as impacts to vulnerable people at home, are risks of widespread power outages, as are hospitals, dialysis centers and care centers,” the department explained in a statement to the outlet.

Theories that the power supply could have triggered the blazes have been bolstered by data from Whisker Labs, a tech firm that uses a sensor network to monitor power grids.

Whisker has said some homes in the Altadena area still had power at the time the fire started. Company CEO Bob Marshall said the grid showed considerable stress before the fire erupted, suggesting a power line could have come into contact with vegetation or touched another line.

A spokesperson for Southern California Edison (SCE), the utility that supplies power to Altadena, the area ravaged by the Eaton fire, said it will review “all information available to us as part of our investigation” in the fires.

Insurance companies have asked SCE to preserve evidence, according to a company filing to regulators. SCE has said it had found “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire”.

The Washington Post pointed to photo by a resident close to Eaton Canyon, where the Altadena blaze ignited, showing a transmission tower that it said was still energized when vegetation ignited below.>

<Write a story with the title 'The Neanderthal' that is about an old and grumpy guy who badmouths everyone in a chess forum, without contributing anything valuable.

<ChatGPT>:

Once upon a digital realm, in the obscure corners of an online chess forum, there lurked a curmudgeonly character known only as "The Neanderthal." His real name was lost to the pixels and anonymity of the internet, but his reputation was infamous among the chess enthusiasts who gathered in the virtual space.

The Neanderthal, an elderly man with a penchant for grumpiness, spent his days glued to his computer screen, engaging in the age-old game of chess. However, his moves were not the focus of his fellow forum members; it was his words that made him both notorious and irritating.

The forum, a hub for chess enthusiasts from around the globe, thrived on camaraderie, insightful discussions, and the exchange of strategic ideas. However, The Neanderthal seemed to have missed the memo. He prowled the digital chessboard like a cantankerous ghost, leaving a trail of acerbic comments in his wake.

His posts were filled with disparaging remarks, each more vitriolic than the last. He criticized opponents for their lack of skill, berated beginners for their ignorance, and scoffed at the masters for what he perceived as their overrated prowess. The virtual chessboard became a battleground of words, and The Neanderthal reveled in the chaos he sowed.

Despite his abrasive nature, the forum members, a diverse group of players, tried to reason with him. They offered constructive feedback, shared valuable insights, and attempted to foster a sense of community. Yet, The Neanderthal remained obstinate, dismissing every attempt at reconciliation with a wave of scornful comments.

As weeks turned into months, The Neanderthal's presence cast a shadow over the once vibrant forum. Many members grew weary of the constant negativity and began to question whether the digital chessboard was still a place for enjoyment. Some left, seeking more welcoming communities, while others considered abandoning the online chess world altogether.

It wasn't until a mysterious newcomer, known simply as "The Diplomat," entered the scene that the tides began to turn. The Diplomat, possessing the patience of a saint, engaged The Neanderthal in thoughtful conversations, steering clear of confrontation. Instead of responding to insults with more insults, The Diplomat presented well-reasoned arguments and encouraged a more positive atmosphere.

Surprisingly, The Neanderthal's gruff exterior showed signs of cracking. Perhaps it was the persistence of The Diplomat or the realization that his venomous words were pushing away the very community he claimed to be a part of. Slowly but surely, The Neanderthal's tone shifted. He began to contribute meaningful insights, apologizing for his past behavior.

The forum members, initially skeptical, cautiously embraced the change. The once-toxic atmosphere transformed into a space where chess enthusiasts could once again gather, share ideas, and enjoy the game they loved. The Neanderthal, now reformed, became a testament to the transformative power of diplomacy and patience in the virtual world.

And so, in the digital realm of chess, a grumpy old man known as The Neanderthal learned that even the most hardened players could be checkmated by the power of understanding and kindness.>

<Spies and lovers

The Cambridge spy ring is thought of as an all-male affair. The two women who linked Kim Philby and Donald Maclean to Moscow, acting as their minders and motivators, as well as their intimates, have been ignored or given little importance. And Melinda Maclean is generally dismissed as a dupe in her husband's double life. But it was not so. Natasha Walter pieces together their story

In 1933, Kim Philby, the future spy, was an idealistic young man who had just finished at Cambridge. He set out for Austria, keen to witness the fight against fascism first hand, and a communist friend gave him an introduction to a leftwing Viennese family who were prepared to let out rooms to sympathisers. When Philby went to the house, it was the daughter of the family, Litzi Friedman, who answered the door.

For the rest of his life, Philby remembered her sparkiness that afternoon. "A frank and direct person, Litzi, came out and asked me how much money I had," Philby said later. "I replied, one hundred pounds, which I hoped would last me about a year in Vienna. She made some calculations and announced, 'That will leave you an excess of £25. You can give that to the International Organisation for Aid for Revolutionaries. We need it desperately.' I liked her determination."

Philby went on liking Litzi's determination, to such an extent that he went on to work with her, to fall in love with her, and then to marry her and take her to London. It was also Litzi who provided him with an introduction that would shape the rest of his life. This obscure Jewish woman from Vienna became the vital link between the idealistic men of Cambridge and the dark world of Soviet espionage.

Litzi Friedman's story has often been lost or distorted in histories of the Cambridge spies, who are usually seen as a purely masculine elite. All the spies were men, two of them were homosexual, and whether you imagine Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess arguing with one another in smoke-filled rooms in Cambridge, buttering up naive diplomats in the Foreign Office, or sitting with grey-faced Russians on park benches, you are unlikely to imagine any women by their side.

Yet the two most successful spies, Maclean and Philby, were inspired and supported by extraordinary women. Until archives in Moscow were opened after the end of the cold war, we knew very little about them, and many of the biographical sources are bafflingly contradictory. I have pieced together their stories from the sources that had the most access to Soviet archives, but it is still tough trying to work out where certainty lies.

Litzi Friedman stands very far from the usual image we have of the Cambridge spies. A photograph of her in her youth shows a woman who looks as if she is living in the 1960s, rather than the 1930s, with her thick, cropped hair, sleeveless dress and bare legs. The energetic pose she has taken up, turning to look out of the picture, as if listening to someone, is utterly unselfconscious, the pose of an intelligent young woman at ease with herself.

When Friedman and Philby met, she had the emotional and political experience that he signally lacked. She was first married at 18, but was divorced after just 14 months, then joined the Communist party. In Austria at the time, the government was cracking down on all leftwing activity, and in 1932 Friedman was imprisoned for a couple of weeks.

For her, the young Englishman who presented himself at her door in 1933 was, at first, a potentially useful helper and source of funds. But physical desire soon flowered between them. They first made love in the snow on a side street in freezing Vienna, heated by the touch of flesh on flesh. "I know it sounds impossible, but it was actually quite warm once you got used to it," Philby said to a later girlfriend. Male friends have also said that this was Philby's first sexual experience. First physical love, first political involvement; no wonder the affair fired him up as no other relationship in his life was to do.

Philby had already been intellectually convinced by communism, but Friedman radicalised him. He began to work with her - begging people for money, acting as a courier for underground organisations, helping hunted militants to get out of Vienna, and seeing what the fight against fascism meant for people risking their lives because of it. As he himself said later, these experiences crystallised his faith....>

<.....In February 1934, the political tensions in Vienna flared into armed conflict. As socialist leaders were arrested and executed, the rank-and-file blundered around in confusion. Philby and Friedman were at home when the revolt began, and the first they knew about it was when the lights went out, a result of a strike by the power workers. Then the telephone rang and a communist leader asked them to go and wait for him in a cafe. They went. Two hours later, he arrived and asked if they were prepared to set up a machine-gun post within the city. They agreed, and were told to wait for further orders. They spent that day at the cafe, waiting. At night they went home through a city full of patrols and roadblocks, which they passed by relying on Philby's British passport. The next day they waited at the cafe again, but the arms never materialised. In the end, they helped the revolt by collecting clothes and food for the strikers, and enabling some of the leaders to get into hiding.

Given her previous brush with the authorities, once a crackdown on known revolutionaries began, Friedman was in real danger. At first, Philby tried to find her new sanctuaries, but eventually he took the only sure way to protect her. On February 24, in the Vienna town hall, he married her, and then took her with him to London. "Even though the basis of our relationship was political to some extent, I truly loved her and she loved me," he said later.

It was at this point that Friedman played her most important role, as far as the history of 20th-century espionage is concerned. She had a friend in London already working for Soviet intelligence, a woman called Edith Tudor-Hart, a photographer and communist who was born in Vienna. According to Genrikh Borovik, a biographer of Philby's who gained access to the Soviet archives, Tudor-Hart recommended Friedman and Philby to the KGB for recruitment in 1934. Yuri Modin, a Soviet agent who handled the Cambridge spies throughout their careers, agrees that Friedman was undoubtedly the catalyst. "Contrary to received opinion, it was neither Burgess nor one of our own agents who lured Philby into the toils of the Soviet espionage apparatus," he has said. "It was Litzi." Since Philby then recommended his other Cambridge friends for recruitment, Friedman's relationship with Philby was a tipping point not only for him, but for the whole group.

Before Philby could begin his new career, which was to work for British intelligence on behalf of his Soviet controllers, he had to get rid of all his obvious communist affiliations. He did so partly by working as a journalist for the Times, writing reports from Spain that were diligently pro-Franco. But he also had to put distance between himself and Friedman. It has only recently become clear that the two remained in touch for some years after this separation, not as lovers, but as fellow spies.

It was Friedman who, during the purges of the late 1930s, when Philby's handlers were constantly being recalled to Moscow, kept contact going for the Soviets with their precious new recruit. She moved to Paris in the late 1930s, and until at least 1940 was paid by the KGB to maintain this contact with her husband. Although Philby started an affair with another woman in Spain, according to the Russian files, by then "she saw their relationship more as an espionage agreement than a love relationship".

We are accustomed to seeing Philby as he presented himself - unswerving in his dedication to his cause. But in August 1939, the faith of many communists in Europe was shaken when the Soviet Union signed its pact of non-aggression with Nazi Germany. Given Philby's experiences in Austria, where he had seen the terror of facism [sic] first hand, it is hardly surprising that he found this move hard to take. One entry in his files reads, "According to Mary [Litzi's codename], to whom he complained in conversations, he was beginning to experience a certain disillusionment with us. He has never said this to us directly... The signing of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact caused Söhnchen [Philby's codename] to ask puzzled questions such as 'Why was this necessary?' However, after several talks on this subject, Söhnchen seemed to grasp the significance of this pact." So it was Friedman who enabled Philby to remain on board during those dark days at the beginning of the war, when the Soviet Union lost many of its friends in the west....>

<....By odd coincidence, Donald Maclean's faith in the Soviet Union was supported at exactly the same time and in the same place by a secret female companion. In August 1939, he was working at the British embassy in Paris. The KGB officer who was looking after him at the time was a woman called Kitty Harris, with whom he was also having a passionate affair. Just as with Friedman and Philby, Kitty Harris was way more experienced in both her political and personal life than Donald Maclean. For a start, she was 13 years older, and when they met she had already been working for the Soviet Union for 16 years.

Harris was born in the East End of London, in a working-class Jewish family, but grew up in Canada and then Chicago, where the harsh lives of the workers made her receptive to the arguments of communists - including the man who was to become her husband, a charismatic party organiser called Earl Browder. She spent a couple of years with him in Shanghai, trying to organise the underground Communist party, before leaving him and moving to Europe, where she began to work for Soviet intelligence.

Harris seems to have been a headstrong woman who passionately believed in her cause, but who also found it hard to keep up the life prescribed by the KGB, with its fixed protocols and minimal freedom. No wonder that, when the chance came for an intimate relationship within these constraints, she seized on it. And she obviously felt deeply for Maclean. At the time - before drink and misery ruined his looks - he was a striking man, blond, 6ft tall, absolutely the upper-class diplomat.

In 1937, when one spy ring had been broken by British intelligence, Maclean had been put "on ice" by his Russian contact, and had been turning up to meeting after meeting without finding anyone there. And then, one day, he turned up as usual to find not his usual handler but Kitty Harris, who swiftly gave him the recognition phrase. "You hadn't expected to see a lady, had you?" she said. "No, but it's a pleasant surprise," he replied quickly.

When she was given the task of becoming Maclean's go-between, Harris was told he was the most important spy they had. Cherish him as the apple of your eye, she was told by Moscow. She did. Maclean would visit Harris in her flat in Bayswater twice a week, late in the evening, bringing papers for her to photograph that he had sneaked out of the Foreign Office for the night. From the start, he'd bring flowers and chocolates with those papers, and after a few months they agreed to have a special dinner to celebrate their birthdays, which fell within a few days of each other. One evening in May 1938, Maclean turned up at her flat carrying a huge bunch of roses, a bottle of wine and a box holding a locket on a thin gold chain. Harris wore it for the rest of her life; when she died in 1966, it was still among her paltry possessions. He had ordered dinner from a local restaurant, and they sat eating it and listening to Glenn Miller on the radio. That was the first night they made love, and true to her training she reported the event to her controller, Grigoriy Grafpen, next day.

Harris went on being entirely open in her reports, even telling her controllers that she and Maclean began and ended every meeting with sex. Sometimes this had adverse effects on their work. Telegrams from Moscow complained: "The material in the last two pouches turned out to contain only half of each image. What was the problem? Moreover in the last batch, many of the pages were almost out of focus..." It is rather wonderful to imagine the apparatchiks scratching their heads over photographs that had become blurred in the heat of Harris's passion....>

<....After Maclean was posted to the British embassy in Paris in 1938, he was so crazy about Harris that he asked Moscow if she could come, too; to their surprise, the lovers' request was granted. They went on working together until June 1940, when the Germans broke through the Maginot line and invaded France. In her final report on Maclean, Harris summed up his character for Moscow. "He is politically weak," she wrote, "but there is something fundamentally good and strong in him that I value. He understands and hates the rotten capitalist system and has enormous confidence in the Soviet Union and the working class. Bearing in mind his origins and his past... he is a good and brave comrade."

The Cambridge spies are so often presented to us as loners fuelled only by cold ideology, but the sexual passion and political solidarity that flared between this working-class Jewish woman and the young British diplomat clearly sustained them both.

Kitty Harris wrote such a positive final report on Maclean, even though she knew that, by this time, his sexual interest in her was waning: a friend of Maclean's, Mark Culme-Seymour, had introduced him to a young American woman, Melinda Marling, in a cafe on the Left Bank in January 1940, and he had fallen for her immediately. Until recently, it was assumed that their marriage was founded on Maclean's talent for duplicity, and that Melinda knew nothing about her husband's links to Russia until his defection 11 years later.

But there is another layer to the story of Melinda Maclean. The friend who introduced the couple in the Cafe de Flore in 1940 was not particularly impressed by her then. "She was quite pretty and vivacious, but rather reserved," said Culme-Seymour. "I thought she was a bit prim." That is how many observers saw her - attractive, but also prim and spoiled. She was delicately good-looking, and carefully groomed - her lipstick glossy, her hair always waved, a double row of pearls usually clasped around her neck. She seemed to most people to have little interest in the world beyond family, friends, clothes and Hollywood movies. The success of the blandly conventional veneer she wore in public meant that, when Donald defected, she was easily able to pretend to everyone, even to MI5 and to her mother, that she had no idea that she had been married to a spy for more than a decade.

But in the 1950s, Culme-Seymour tracked down the exiled Macleans in Moscow, and another Melinda emerged. She told him that she knew she would be going to Russia right from the beginning, even before Maclean defected. By this time, he looked terrible and was obviously drinking heavily, but she seemed just fine. And when he said something that implied faint criticism of the Soviet Union, she "jumped down his throat".

Recent revelations from the Soviet archives confirm the existence of this other Melinda, a woman who was the greatest dissembler of them all. From the start, she and Donald had a relationship founded not on duplicity, but on trust. As Donald told Kitty Harris, on the very first evening he met Melinda, he saw another side to the prim American from the one his friends saw. "I was very taken by her views," he told Harris. "She's a liberal, she's in favour of the Popular Front and doesn't mind mixing with communists even though her parents are well-off. There was a White Russian girl, one of her friends, who attacked the Soviet Union and Melinda went for her. We found we spoke the same language."

Soon after they started dating, Melinda broke off the whole thing, apparently bored by the correct English diplomat. It was in order to get her back that Maclean told her the full truth: that he was not only a diplomat, but also a communist and a spy. It was an outrageous risk, one quite out of character for him at that time, but he reassured Harris that Melinda not only reacted positively, but "actually promised to help me to the extent that she can - and she is well connected in the American community".

There is no evidence that Melinda worked alongside Maclean, but it has been revealed that she supported him in his dangerous double life throughout their marriage. It was never an easy relationship: Maclean drank heavily, he expressed homosexual desires, they were often on the verge of splitting up and on one occasion he physically attacked her in public. But they stuck together, even beyond his defection....>

<....They married in June 1940, days before the Germans marched into Paris, and spent the rest of the war being bombed out of one flat after another in London. Then they moved to Washington where, from the Soviet point of view, Maclean did his most valuable spying work in the position of first secretary at the British embassy. In 1948, he was appointed head of the chancery at the British embassy in Cairo. As soon as he arrived, however, Maclean had problems with his KGB contact, who arranged their meetings in the Arab quarter. Yuri Modin, a Soviet agent who has published his reminiscences of the Cambridge spies, says that the tall, blond Briton in immaculate suit and tie felt as inconspicuous "as a swan among geese". Maclean suggested that, instead of these absurdly dangerous games, Melinda should simply pass the information to the wife of the Soviet resident at the hairdresser. "Melinda was quite prepared to do this," Modin reports.

By now, the game of duplicity was telling on Maclean. He began drinking, brawling and even telling acquaintances about his life as a spy - confessions that they discounted as the talk of a dreamer. Cyril Connolly described him vividly as he struck him in London in 1951. "He had lost his serenity, his hands would tremble, his face was usually a livid yellow ... he was miserable and in a very bad way. In conversation, a kind of shutter would fall as if he had returned to some basic and incommunicable anxiety."

At this point, Philby, who was then based in Washington, discovered that MI5 had broken Maclean's cover and was planning to interrogate him. Philby passed this information to the Soviets, and they were desperate for Maclean to get out, fearful that, in his current state, he would crack immediately under interrogation. Maclean shilly shallied, afraid of staying, afraid of going, until he sounded out Melinda about the defection. According to Modin, she responded: "They're quite right - go as soon as you can, don't waste a single moment."

The day eventually earmarked for Maclean to make his escape happened to be his 38th birthday: May 25 1951. He came home by train from the Foreign Office to their house in Kent as usual that evening, and soon after Guy Burgess, who had just been persuaded to get out, too, turned up. After eating the birthday supper that Melinda had prepared, Maclean said goodbye to his wife and children, got into Burgess's car and left. They drove to Southampton, took a ferry to France, then disappeared from view, sparking a media and intelligence furore. It was all of five years before Krushchev finally admitted that they were in the Soviet Union.

The following Monday, Melinda Maclean telephoned the Foreign Office to ask coolly if her husband was around. Her pose of total ignorance convinced them; MI5 put off interviewing her for nearly a week, and the Maclean house was never searched. No doubt their readiness to see her merely as the ignorant wife was enhanced by the fact that she was heavily pregnant at the time - three weeks after Donald left, she gave birth to a daughter, their third child.

The evening of his defection, Donald had taken a cliché straight from an Eric Ambler novel, tearing a postcard in two, giving Melinda half, and telling her not to trust anyone who did not produce the other half as a sign. He later passed his half to Modin. More than a year later, Modin intercepted Melinda on her way home from school, just after she had dropped off the boys. He followed her Rover, then passed her and pulled up, signalling her to do likewise. "This she did, but not quite in the way we had expected. She burst out of the car like a deer breaking cover, yelling abuse at us for our bad driving." When Modin had recovered, he drew the half postcard from his pocket. Melinda immediately fell silent, reached across for her bag in the car, and produced the other half.

It was another year before Melinda finally slipped the net of British intelligence and press interest. Her secret life during that last year in the west must have become a terrible burden. She knew the dangers if she had been implicated in her husband's treachery; two months before she left, an American couple, the Rosenbergs, were sent to the electric chair for spying for the Soviet Union. But, unlike her husband, Melinda always hid her feelings under a bland veneer that people often read as stupidity. "I will not admit that my husband, the father of my children, is a traitor to his country," she told everyone in outraged tones. She seemed to be settling into a directionless but comfortable life, wandering with her mother and children as the seasons changed from beach villa in Majorca to skiing holiday in the Alps. But in Geneva on the evening of September 10 1953, she told her mother that she was going to stay with friends for the weekend, got into her black Chevrolet car with her three children, drove to Lausanne and disappeared....>

<....She prepared for her great flight in the way you might expect of a bourgeois American, rather than a closet Red. The day before, she spent hours at a salon having her hair and nails done. That morning she had gone shopping, then returned to tell her mother that she had bumped into an old friend who had invited her to spend the weekend with the children at his villa at Territet. After lunch, at which she seemed no more than preoccupied, she got the children and herself ready, throwing an electric blue Schiaparelli coat over a black skirt and white blouse.

When Melinda did not return on Monday morning, her mother telephoned the British embassy. Intelligence agents tracked reports of a woman with a bright coat and three pretty children on the train to Austria, where the trail went cold. Weeks later, Melinda's mother received a letter, postmarked Cairo. In it, Melinda said, "Please believe, darling, in my heart I could not have done otherwise than I have done." Later, it transpired that Melinda had been met by KGB officials in Austria and flown to Moscow.

In the late 1960s, Eleanor Philby, Kim's third wife, brought a rare glimpse of the Macleans back to the west. Melinda hadn't quite accepted the Soviet way of life: she and her children cut incongruously elegant figures in Moscow, dressed out of the parcels of American clothes sent by her mother and sister. But when the Philbys and Macleans sat in their Moscow apartments of an evening, getting toweringly drunk on Soviet champagne, Melinda joined in the dreaming. "In moments of nostalgia," Eleanor said, "Donald and Melinda would talk of the good times they would have in Italy and Paris 'when the revolution comes'. I found this world of fantasy slightly unnerving."

Melinda's marriage did not long survive the constraints of life in Moscow, and when it broke down she began a brief affair with Philby, who had arrived there in 1963. Given their practised secrecy, it's not surprising that their relationship remains rather obscure. After that relationship, too, broke down, it seems that the day-to-day reality of life in the Soviet Union told on Melinda. Finally, in 1979, she returned to the west, to be with her mother and sisters, and her children soon followed her. She is still alive in New York, but she has never said a single word to the press.

One thing is for sure: all three of these women who were close to the Cambridge spies were just as good as the men at keeping secrets. Litzi Friedman never spoke of how Kim Philby had been recruited through her; the archives spoke for her. She settled in East Germany, marrying again and making a decent career for herself in the film industry. Phillip Knightley, the last journalist to speak to her, said that she seemed entirely satisfied with her life.

Kitty Harris had a very different end. She had spent the rest of the war continuing her career as a successful intelligence agent in Mexico, and in 1946 was brought to the Soviet Union, where she stayed until her death in 1966. But once she reached Russia, she found that the society for which she had worked so tirelessly and at such risk to her own safety fell far short of her dreams. "The only thing I know is that I am terribly lonely," she wrote in her diary during her last years. "My life is in pieces."

Melinda Maclean, still preserving her glacial silence, is the most mysterious of them all. Some experts believe her final return to the US was allowed by western intelligence only on the grounds that she did not reveal anything about her husband's (amazingly successful) career as a spy. She may indeed be living under such a constraint. Or she may have chosen to remain silent for her own reasons; perhaps she cannot bear to revisit Donald's descent into disillusion, and her own corroded ideals. Her secrets remain, finally, her own.>

<The helicopter blades beat through the smoldering air no more than a couple hundred feet above my head. At ground level, the scent of fire brings back memories of fire pits I’d seen at “Cement City” during the Gulf War. As the helicopter passes overhead on the way to the nearby fire, my middle son, his wife, their son and daughter, hurry to pack the car and leave their home near West Hills, California, after the outbreak of the Kenneth Fire. Neighbors pack up and move out as well. Traffic in the area is at a standstill.

And while the residents packed and fled, firefighters scrambled to give those fleeing extra time to do so even as the fierce winds whipped up the fire in a drought-stricken land, making any effort to contain it problematic at best and futile at worst. Those in LA spearheading the effort to put out half a dozen wildfires apparently diverted some of the air resources from the Palisades and Eaton fires to assist, slowing the growth of the West Hills fire which still grew from five acres to nearly 1000 acres in a matter of hours. After burning more than 1,000 acres in the San Fernando Valley since Jan. 10, the Kenneth Fire has now been 100% contained.

The day before, the Pacific Palisades fire had prompted the evacuation of my oldest son and his fiancée from their home in Santa Monica. This monstrous fire, which began Monday and reached nearly 24,000 acres by Sunday evening, had destroyed some of the most expensive and picturesque residential real estate in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As the sun set Thursday, the fire's eerie red glow and thick acrid smoke smell permeated everything from Malibu east through the Palisades and Santa Monica. Ash fell in Santa Monica which contained burned paper and rubbish and looked like snow on a cool winter night.

The Santa Monica police were in tactical mode — every officer worked 12 hours on and 12 hours off. Police and fire fighters worked around the clock, not only trying to stifle the growing conflagration but keeping watch for potential looters. I spotted one man with a hammer and a flashlight looking furtively around my son’s neighborhood. Another man approached my son’s open car when he went inside to grab more clothes. The man looked inside the car and didn’t see me standing nearby or my son when he walked out of his apartment. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked. The man stopped. My son, walking out of his apartment, captured the man’s attention. After looking at us both, he turned and walked away without saying anything.

Police in the street told me looting was quickly becoming a problem and they cautioned against staying in the area. “The atmosphere is toxic and it’s a wildfire. Right now, we have no way of knowing where it will go.”

With the Santa Ana winds reaching hurricane force, the fires that began last Monday have not only proved difficult to control but difficult to predict. It is taxing infrastructure, personnel and patience. Frustrated and angry, denizens of Los Angeles have taken to accusations and speculation about the cause of the fires and the effectiveness of the firefighting efforts.

Ross Palumbo, a former White House reporter now reporting for KCAL in LA, asked Mayor Karen Bass Thursday night during a news conference about accusations that she had bungled the efforts and calls for her to resign. She chuckled and said she would do a “deep dive” into the efforts after the fires were extinguished but was pushing forward with relief efforts in the interim.

That has not stopped idle speculation that the Palisades had been targeted by arsonists to bring down the area’s richest neighborhoods, or that angry arsonists had started all the fires. Rumors are thick and furious, with some claiming they saw undocumented immigrants with blow torches, and even President-elect Donald Trump claiming that Governor Gavin Newsom is somehow omnipotent, or an arsonist, and is responsible for the fires.

“It’s too perfect. It’s like someone’s following a script,” Tony, a baseball coach at a local community college, told me. “It’s too much of a coincidence, fires don’t just start like that spontaneously.” Actually, they can and do.

Officials with the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water said hurricane-force winds, combined with electric wires and swaying trees produced more than two dozen disruptions of the power grid in the Palisades last Monday when the fires began. “Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by reality and facts,” I was told.....>

<....No kidding. The reality is that parts of Los Angeles today look like Dresden after being bombed in World War II. It is difficult to fully understand the scope of the conflagration without driving through the affected areas (and access is severely limited) or without talking with people who’ve suffered. What you can read in the press and see on television is just a pale shadow of the reality people are facing. And the fact is that, as is often the case these days, that type of suffering is fertile ground for politicians to take advantage of and manipulate.

The numbers don’t tell the whole story — and political affiliation cannot explain it away either.

Friday morning Donald Trump was sentenced for his conviction of 34 felonies in Manhattan. Judge Juan Merchan unconditionally discharged the case saying it was the only thing to do out of respect to the office of the President of the United States. Not the man. The office. At the same time, Trump made a rambling statement about the tiniest slap on the wrist he received by the only court to hold him accountable for any of his alleged illegal actions over a long lifetime of grifting as a case of “lawfare” against him. In rambling, typical Trump fashion, the president-elect referenced the deadly southern California fires as a reason the legal actions taken against him were ridiculous.

Many others have politicized the fires while forgetting that wildfires just don’t care what your politics are. The fire burns Republicans, Democrats, Christians, atheists, blacks, whites, members of the LGBTQ and straight community without prejudice.

As I helped my son evacuate, I thought about that; how we have more in common with each other than we realize. In times of crisis, I often think of the Trump supporters and detractors who have suffered. Nobody cares what your religion is when you’re in the foxhole. Everyone in LA is in that foxhole now.

And that brings me to last week’s funeral for former President Jimmy Carter. He was eulogized by President Joe Biden. “Now, it’s not about being perfect, because none of us are perfect. We’re all fallible. But it’s about asking ourselves: Are we striving to do things, the right things? What values? What are the values that animate our spirit? To operate from fear or hope, ego or generosity? Do we show grace? Do we keep the faith when it’s most tested?”

Biden continued: “For keeping the faith with the best of humankind and the best of America is the story, in my view, from my perspective, of Jimmy Carter’s life.”

If we were all battle-tested and kept our faith, if not in God at least in each other, you have to wonder what position we’d be in today as a nation. We certainly would not be as divided as we are now. Perhaps we’d be a little bit closer.

The fires in LA this week have highlighted the best and the worst of us. How little do you think of yourself and other people to walk through a disaster zone and steal from people who’ve lost their homes and perhaps loved ones? Then again, you can be brought to tears watching ordinary citizens of different races, creeds, political persuasions and religions join with police and firefighters, including currently incarcerated inmates, to help people they don’t know.

Local firefighters in the Eaton Fire even helped residents, when it was obvious their homes couldn’t be saved, pack up some of their belongings and furniture. “Just to ease their pain a little,” a firefighter said. Overall I’ve seen the best of humanity far outweigh the worst in this disaster. To paraphrase Jimmy Carter, they were doing what they could with what they had for as long as they could. As the smoke plumes resembling volcanic eruptions rose to the north, east and south of the San Fernando Valley, it was painfully clear what mattered....>

<....President Joe Biden showing up and vowing to help definitely mattered. You could tell he was moved by what he saw. His speeches didn’t matter. It was the action. Donald Trump’s speeches don’t matter. His actions will, and here is where I truly hope he learns from the past — if he is capable of doing so. I have hope, but it is tempered by reality — Donald Trump doesn’t care.

He is already manipulating the fire in a horrible political stunt and giving rise to conspiracy theorists like Mel Gibson who sounds more and more like his character Jerry Fletcher in the movie “Conspiracy Theory.” He went on Joe Rogan’s show spouting his latest brand of bad baloney and I waited for him to quote himself from the movie; “A good conspiracy is unprovable. I mean, if you can prove it, it means they screwed up somewhere along the line.”

Make no mistake; this was a natural disaster. But there is a huge human component. It wasn’t Gavin Newsom’s fault. It isn’t Joe Biden’s and it isn’t Donald Trump’s. It is the industrial revolution that led to climate change, the oligarchs who do not care if in pursuit of fistfuls of sweaty cash they rape the planet and the average person who denies the science and reality. Climate extremes which include stronger hurricanes, more intense winter and summer storms, horrifying wildfires, droughts and floods were all predicted 30 years ago by scientists. Some of the results have come later than predicted and some sooner than predicted.

There is another human component as well, one that is more sinister and gives rise to conspiracy theorists. It is represented by the looters and unfortunately by suspected arsonists. There is no need for any dark conspiracy though politicians and others who want to manipulate the events have suggested several. It is distasteful and disgusting and speaks to the worst part of humanity — but there need be no evil cabal behind it, just well-meaning bureaucrats who screwed up, ineffective infrastructure that broke down, climate change that exacerbated the weather conditions which caused the fires, people who panicked, people who kept their calm, people who wanted to take advantage of the situation and ultimately a spark that brought it all together.

Thus, the fires in Los Angeles are a harbinger of our own doom on this planet if we do not learn to work together. As it turns out humans are the existential threat to humanity. Our inability to work together will ultimately be our undoing, and the fires in Los Angeles remind us that politics as usual doesn’t fly when the flames are that high. No lives matter. The Universe doesn’t care about us. But we should care about all of us.

Look around at the devastation and witness it firsthand. Your mind might be changed. As the state motto of Kentucky reminds us: “United We Stand. Divided We Fall.”>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyl...

Put away your thesaurus and never-ending negativity <perfidubious>. It's of no use when hiding from the fact that Carlsen has avoided the world's premier classical chess tournament two years in a row....>

Come and get it, <pigshit fredfradiavolo>. You insist on ranting of 'truth' when all you do is lie and spread misinformation and disinformation on behalf of your Far Right extremist friends, all of whom should be quarantined in places such as Florence, Colorado. Bet that would give you a swift thrill.

< President Joe Biden never mentioned his successor by name in his goodbye speech to the nation Wednesday, but nevertheless made it clear he believes that American democracy is at risk.

“I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern,” Biden said in a 16-minute address from the Oval Office. He then ticked off allusions to Trump and his wealthy advisers as threats to Americans’ freedom.

The outgoing president referred to Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961, when he spoke of a “military-industrial complex” that was consolidating power in Washington. Biden said the new threat was a “tech-industrial” complex.

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit,” he said. “We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy.”

Some of the richest men in the world — Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX and Tesla and owns the social media platform once known as Twitter; Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg; and Amazon head Jeff Bezos — have taken pains to demonstrate their support for Trump before and since his November election. The three are reportedly planning to sit together in a VIP section at Trump’s coming inaugural.

Biden further called for reforms to the Supreme Court, to Congress, to campaign finance laws and to the presidency itself.

“We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president ― no president ― is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office,” he said, clearly referring to a Supreme Court ruling last July that declared that presidents do have such immunity.

The decision helped Trump delay federal prosecution against him, making a trial impossible before the election. Both federal cases were subsequently dismissed under longstanding Department of Justice policy not to prosecute sitting presidents.

Biden in his speech evoked the Statue of Liberty as a metaphor: its construction in New York Harbor after the Civil War, its endurance through more than a century of storms (“She sways a few inches, but she never falls into the current below”) and the workers charged with keeping the windows on its torch polished.

“He was known as the Keeper of the Flame,” Biden said. “Now it’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the Keeper of the Flame.”

Biden’s term ends Monday at noon, when Trump is to begin his second term. Voters chose him by a narrow margin over Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, despite Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Biden and a variety of criminal charges and convictions.

Biden frequently spoke of Trump’s efforts to remain in power in speeches throughout his term as a threat to democracy. He alluded to the dangers of “abuse of power” during his eulogy at President Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week.

Trump will be the first convicted felon in American history to take the presidential oath of office. A jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star just ahead of the 2016 election.

Wednesday night’s speech, though, will not be the final time Biden speaks publicly as president. He is scheduled to address the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Friday, and then visit South Carolina on Sunday, his final full day in office. South Carolina was the state whose voters put Biden in a commanding lead for the 2020 presidential nomination after he finished poorly in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada in the previous weeks.>

<1. They’re Altruistic Without Losing Themselves

2. They Offer To Help Before You Even Ask

3. They Forgive, Even When It Feels Impossible

4. They Listen Because They Truly Care

5. They Find Positivity, Even in the Toughest Situations

6. They’re Deeply Empathetic, And It Shows

7. They Give Without Any Expectation

8. They Stay Authentic And Humble

9. They Stand Up for What’s Right

10. They Make You Feel At Ease Instantly

11. They’re Incredibly Calm And Patient

12. They Believe in Second Chances

13. They Show Up When It Counts

14. They Respect Your Boundaries

15. They Never Take Themselves Too Seriously

16. They Keep Going, Even When It’s Hard>

Responses for <fredthefrontrunner>:

1. Altruism for him is always expecting a quid pro quo.

2. Offers of help are made only as in 1.

3. Forgiveness does not exist for <fredthejackal>.

4. He only pretends to care.

5. The world is filled with nothing but negativity.

6. Empathy is a foreign country to <fredthebore>.

7. There are always implicit expectations, at the very least.

8. <fredfradiavolo> is as fake as they come, not to mention a massive blowhard and braggart.

9. He is utterly amoral, same as the <felon> he worships.

10. <fredpigshit> loathes social situations and especially dislikes seeing others happy, given his own misery, so cannot possibly put others at ease.

11. He is a raging <bore> and has less than no patience for anything which does not benefit him in some way.

12. Forgiveness is yet another foreign land for <fredthestalker>.

13. He is a situational friend; don't count on him when everything is on the line.

14. He has nor respect for himself, so how can he possibly have any for himself?

15. <fredfilthmerchant> is a humourless prig, even worse than some I have met on the Left who take themselves with relentless, tedious seriousness.

The coup de gracie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9x...

< Even if President-elect Donald Trump offers assurances, companies like Apple, Google, and Oracle would be risking major financial penalties by not complying with the TikTok ban that goes into effect Sunday.

The law, which the Supreme Court upheld Friday, requires TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok's American assets if the app wants to keep operating in the U.S. Congress passed the law out of concern that TikTok's ownership structure could allow the Chinese government to get sensitive personal information on Americans and manipulate the information Americans receive.

Trump, who takes office Monday, has expressed interest in finding a solution that would keep the popular social media app available in the U.S. while addressing national security concerns.

"My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!" Trump posted on Truth Social Friday.

Legal experts told USA TODAY that keeping the app afloat on Sunday is a risky move, no matter what promises Trump gives.

"The companies, Apple, Google, etc., have to essentially decide – likely, in conjunction with their CEOs, in conjunction with their boards – whether they want to take this risk in violating the law, despite President Trump's assurances," Wayne Unger, a Quinnipiac University law professor, told USA TODAY. "Because his assurances only go so far."

Apple, Google, and Oracle didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on whether they plan to stop offering services related to TikTok once the ban goes into effect. Before publication, a spokesperson for TikTok referred USA TODAY to a video statement from TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, who suggested the company is hoping Trump will come to its rescue.

"I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States," Chew said. "Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to ensure our platform thrives."

After publication, TikTok said in a statement that it "will be forced to go dark on January 19" unless the Biden administration immediately assures the company's service providers that the administration won't enforce the law.

The TikTok ban works by pressuring companies to stop helping TikTok operate in the U.S. That includes companies like Apple and Google that provide access and updates to the app, as well as companies like Oracle that offer internet hosting services.

Those companies could be hit with $5,000 fines for each user they help access TikTok. For Google and Apple, that could mean a $5,000 fine for each user that downloads or updates the app through the companies' services, and for a company like Oracle, it could mean $5,000 for each user that simply accesses the app using its services.

Companies like Oracle "would very quickly owe a lot of money, whereas with Apple and Google, the fines would accrue more slowly," Alan Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota law professor, told USA TODAY.

"Tiktok would shut down by everyone else having to turn them off, essentially," Unger told USA TODAY....>

<.... The law authorizes the U.S. attorney general to sue companies to exact the fines for each user over the previous five years – meaning an attorney general could even sue after Trump's upcoming presidency to get fines imposed for user access during his presidency.

The law allows a president to extend the deadline by 90 days, but only if TikTok is moving towards selling off its U.S. assets and there are legally-binding agreements in place for that.

"This 90-day extension is meant to not ban Tiktok if we're in the middle of that process, but we're not in the middle of that process," Rozenshtein said.

CNN and the Washington Post reported Wednesday that Trump was considering issuing an executive order to halt the ban to give him time to try to negotiate a solution. The media outlets cited anonymous sources.

However, an executive order – as opposed to a new law – wouldn't actually have the power to halt the law, according to Rozenshtein. The sell-or-ban law was passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April.

"A presidential declaration, executive order, Truth Social, Tweet – doesn't matter what form it takes. It would not have any legal effect," Rozenshtein told USA TODAY. Executive orders "are just press releases with nicer stationary."

That doesn't mean a promise from Trump would necessarily be meaningless, from a legal perspective. If Trump promised companies he wouldn't enforce the law and then an attorney general sued the company to impose fines for the time period covered by Trump's promise, the company could argue in court that it relied on the promise and so shouldn't have to pay.

However, whether that argument would work in court is uncertain, according to Rozenshtein.

"The question is, if you're Apple, 'Does that give you enough comfort?' And I just have no idea what the answer is," he said.

The Justice Department could also simply decide not to enforce the law.

Biden's deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, said in a statement following the Supreme Court's Friday decision upholding the law that implementing it and ensuring compliance after Sunday "will be a process that plays out over time."

Trump's attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, declined to say whether she would enforce the ban at her confirmation hearing Wednesday.

But given the law's five-year window for enforcement, the Justice Department's failure to enforce the law today could be cold comfort.

Justin Hurwitz, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's law school, told USA TODAY in an email that it's "very unlikely" Apple and Google would take the risk of not complying given the hefty penalties that could follow.

"In reality, there is very little that President Trump can do on his own to prevent the law from going into effect," Hurwitz said.

Even if TikTok goes dark after Sunday, it could come back to life very quickly. The sell-or-ban law allows the restrictions to be lifted as soon as there is a qualified sale, and U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar predicted earlier this month that something like that may well happen.

"I think Congress expected we might see something like a game of chicken – ByteDance saying we can't do it, China will never let us do it," Prelogar said as she defended the law in arguments at the high court Jan. 10.

"But, when push comes to shove and these restrictions take effect, I think it will fundamentally change the landscape with respect to what ByteDance is willing to consider, and it might be just the jolt that Congress expected the company would need to actually move forward with the divestiture process," she said.>

<Monday's inauguration is a "dark day," a Trump family member said Sunday.

Mary Trump, a trained psychologist and Donald Trump's niece, weighed in on the upcoming ceremony on her blog on Substack.

Mary Trump began by quoting some of President Joe Biden's parting words: "Only in America do we believe anything is possible. Like a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, sitting behind this desk in the Oval Office as president of the United States."

Replying to those words, Mary Trump said, "It was also possible in 21st century America for a creature like Donald Trump to ascend to the presidency. In 2016 he did so despite a long, sordid history of failure, a stunning lack of experience, and the kind of bigotry and cruelty that should have been, but never was, disqualifying."

"It was possible for him to get elected, after he committed unspeakable crimes against the American people and the Constitution during his first term, and then assaulted the very institutions and values of this country during the intervening four years when he was out of office but so very obviously not out of power," Mary Trump added.

She went on to argue, "The reality of Donald’s arc was in tension with the picture Biden clearly wanted to paint—that democracy has 'held strong'—and the realities of how weakened this nation has been by those benighted accomplices who have, relentlessly and maliciously, assailed (this) nation at every turn for the sake of power, personal gain, and a thirst for division that is the specialty of the man they elevated, protected, and for whom they sold what little was left of their souls."

In conclusion, Mary Trump pointed to a small "comfort" in what is happening.

"Tomorrow will be a very dark day—there is no pretending otherwise. But I do take comfort in the knowledge that so much of what they intend is already out in the open. They no longer feel the need to hide their criminal intent. They plan to strip America for parts and they will do so in broad daylight. And we will be watching. We will counter corporate media’s grotesque assumption that all of it—the racism, the criminality, the greed, the breathtaking cruelty, the fascism—are already baked in and therefore of no consequence," she wrote. "We know this is not true. We will be the keepers of the flame and, as Emma Lazarus’ poem says of the Statue of Liberty, we (will) lift our lamps—as a beacon to those who feel lost, betrayed, and frightened, yes. But also to shine our light, continually, on what they try to get away with. We will keep the flame burning as long as it takes. I take comfort in that, too.">

<President Donald Trump used his second inaugural address on Monday to paint a grim picture of the country he now leads. And then he upped the ante by marching over to supporters nearby to give the speech he said his aides wouldn’t let him deliver: a rambling series of grievances, gimmicks, and gloating.

“I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs,” Trump said as he circled for a much overdue closing. “I gave you the A-plus treatment.”

Only an hour into his second term as President, Trump used his unscripted appearances to renew his claims about having won the 2016 election, his denials about what actually unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, and his barbs against political foes Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger, whom he branded “a super-cryer. I never saw the guy not crying.”

Everything old is new again in Trump’s Washington, but that doesn’t mean it stands to be any less acrid. If anything, all signs point to a darker, more aggressive agenda.

When Trump arrived in Washington eight years ago, he shocked the establishment with a speech now short-handed as “American Carnage.” This sequel was similar in its angry, bleak tone but amped up with little of the polish that some in Washington had hoped would signal Trump’s second term might be less spiteful than the first go-around. The caustic posture made it clear that the second Trump term would not be constrained in any meaningful way.

“From this moment on, America’s decline is over,” Trump said in the vetted speech as his predecessor looked on.

Even so, Trump said Vice President J.D. Vance and First Lady Melania Trump convinced him to tone down the main event. But after he took the oath and saw President Joe Biden leave the Capitol for one last flight on Marine One, Trump made his way to the Capitol Visitors Center to give the uncensored rough cut that sounded even more like the disjointed vamp he delivered a night earlier in a sports arena.

“They said, ‘Please don’t bring that up right now. You can bring it up tomorrow.’ I said, ‘How ’bout now?’” Trump said during his do-over inaugural, mentioning looming pardons for those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

It was a fitting end to a campaign season that included four indictments, one conviction, and two assassination attempts.

The hype machine around Trump is hitting its high-water mark. In coordinated comments in recent weeks, those close to Trump have made clear anything resembling business as usual was too much to hope for after Monday at noon.

“It’s goodbye, Joe Biden. Goodbye, Kamala Harris. Goodbye, Democrats. And hello to the golden age of America,” Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Sunday evening at that campaign rally.

Elsewhere in the event, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly used her turn at the podium to mock Jennifer Lopez, Meryl Streep, and Oprah Winfrey.

“In America, we have the right to free speech, we have the right to offend, to provoke, to annoy, and to stand up for what we believe in even if you find it controversial,” she said. “We have the right not to use the words you try to force on us, like your preferred pronouns, or words like anti-racist or chest-beating.”

That hostile default is one that pervaded all of the welcome-home events for Trump. As the crowds around Washington gathered, it was clear that much of the empowered political movement was ready for its time in control. It was a fighting spirit that stands to upend Washington in ways that are still unknown.

Trump rode back to office with promises of cutting taxes, ending inflation, slashing prices, raising wages, and reopening domestic factories. Abroad, he pledged to end the war in Ukraine, tumult in the Middle East, and act as a stronger check on China. While he has since walked back some of those promises, they proved sufficient to mobilize voters to side with him over Kamala Harris, who sat in the front row Monday and watched her rival claim the prize she sought as he pledged to plant a U.S. flag on the surface of Mars.

“This is what victory feels like,” the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, told a crowd Monday afternoon at a rally that followed the formal transfer of power. “I’m so excited for the future.”

The promises of retribution were at the fore, too, including for former health czar Anthony Fauci, who received a preemptive pardon from Biden in his final hours.

"I never met anybody in prison who did as bad stuff as those people,” former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro said, referring to Fauci and others. “Time for a little accountability perhaps.”

That muscular threat started from the top with Trump pumping himself—and his supporters—up. “Here I am. The American people have spoken,” Trump said in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday.

<U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order that he said aims to restore freedom of speech and end censorship, drawing fire from critics who point to his past actions threatening and suing journalists, critics and political opponents.

Trump and his Republican allies have accused the administration of Democratic former President Joe Biden of encouraging suppression of free speech on online platforms.

Many of the accusations against the previous administration, however, have centered on government efforts against false claims about vaccines and elections.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the Biden administration's contacts with social media companies did not violate America's First Amendment protections around free speech.

Trump, who took office on Monday, himself faced social media restrictions after an attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, following his loss in the 2020 election to Biden.

Trump has over several decades, however, threatened and sued his critics over comments they have made about him. In 2022, he unsuccessfully sued his former presidential campaign foe Hillary Clinton over her comments about his campaign's links to Russia. The judge who threw out the case called it a misuse of the courts.

Trump has also referred to journalists as the "enemy of the people" and has sued five media companies, including the CNN, ABC News, CBS News, publisher Simon & Schuster and the Des Moines Register. The CNN suit was dismissed, ABC settled, and the other lawsuits are ongoing.

University of California, Irvine, Professor David Kaye said the federal government is already barred from interfering with its citizens' First Amendment rights, so the order would not stop behavior that is already prohibited.

He criticised the the order as a "deeply cynical" public relations exercise.

The White House said on Monday after Trump's inauguration: "Over the last four years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans' speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, de-platform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve".

Kaye, a former United Nations Special Rapporteur on free speech issues, said: "You cannot on the one hand say, 'The media is the enemy of the people,' and at the same time say, 'It's the policy of the United States to secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech.' Those two things don't fit together".>

<Among the enemies targeted by US President Donald Trump in his inaugural speech was a foe familiar to anyone who has ever been shopping.

“I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices,” the president said.

The White House issued a statement that “all agencies will take emergency measures to reduce the cost of living”.

It was perhaps a response to mounting warnings that the bulk of the president’s flagship policies of tariffs and tax cuts are widely expected to push up inflation and pose a hammer blow to hopes of interest rate cuts.

As far as many analysts are concerned, Trump’s plans are more likely to put a rocket under price rises than bring them under control.

The new US president released a bombardment of executive orders within hours of entering the White House on Monday. Policy on tax, energy, climate, regulation, immigration and trade will change rapidly, with significant repercussions not just for the US but the world.

The president’s campaign promises to introduce blanket tariffs on goods will drive up the cost of imports, while an immigration crackdown will constrain the labour supply, just as tax cuts and deregulation provide major stimulus.

Here are the prices of everyday groceries as Trump takes office

James Egelhof, chief US economist at BNP Paribas, said in a note sent to clients ahead of Trump’s inauguration that the Federal Reserve would likely not cut interest rates at all this year in response to Trump. In fact, increases were “possible”.

Iain Stealey, of JP Morgan Asset Management, similarly said: “The primary risk lies in the potential for additional fiscal stimulus, such as expanded tax cuts, which could trigger a resurgence in inflation.”

Here’s what the new president has announced so far and what it means for the economy.

Tariffs

Trump campaigned heavily on a promise to introduce tariffs of up to 60pc on goods from China, plus blanket tariffs of 10pc to 20pc on goods from all countries.

In late November last year, however, he announced surprise plans to use his first day in office to introduce an extra levy of only 10pc on goods from China, but also to introduce tariffs of 25pc on all goods coming from both Mexico and Canada – America’s largest trading partners.

On Monday, the messaging changed again, several times.

In his inaugural address, Trump said “we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens”, and announced he would establish an External Revenue Service to collect duties.

“It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury, coming from foreign sources,” Trump said.

But when it came to actual action, Trump dialled down. Instead of using his first day in office to introduce blanket tariffs or major charges on any one nation, he said that his trade officials would “undertake a review of, and identify, any unfair trade practices by other countries”. This will focus particularly on China, Mexico and Canada.

The dollar fell as markets dialled back bets on an all-out trade war. But then Trump said in an Oval Office signing ceremony that he would impose 25pc tariffs on Mexico and Canada on Feb 1....>