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While the Trump administration has been busy dismantling the US system of checks and balances at home, and undermining the international rules-based order abroad, many people have been wondering why the official opposition, the Democratic Party, has not been offering more robust resistance.

For weeks a battle has been raging within the party, largely behind the scenes, over how best to handle this moment. Some members want the party to take more forceful action now, given the gravity of the political crisis. Others argue for letting Trump's decisions play out, and then capitalising on the chaos which his policies are causing, to win back voter support in time for the mid-term elections in 2026.

Tensions within the party erupted into broad daylight late last week, when the Democratic leader in the Senate, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, broke with most of his party, to vote in favour of a Republican-drafted bill to extend government funding for another six months.

His rationale was that failure to approve the bill would result in a government shutdown, which would cause federal workers even more pain, and allow Trump and his henchmen, like Elon Musk, even more leeway to slash government agencies and operations, possibly for good. He also worried that the Democrats would take the lion's share of the blame for the disruption in the court of public opinion, since they would be the ones forcing the shutdown.

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His critics, which include most Democrats in the House of Representatives, all bar one of whom voted to block the budget resolution, and influential party bigwigs, like former speaker Nancy Pelosi, believe that Schumer not only destroyed party unity, but also threw away the best tool the Democrats had to resist the administration. This is because the budget bill, unlike most legislative measures, could not be passed by simple majority, but needed 60 votes in the Senate, making it dependent on Democratic votes. They accuse Schumer of folding too easily, and, even worse, without obtaining any concessions in return.

Many grassroots activists seem to share their anger. Self-identified Democrat voters say they want their party to hold the line even if it leads to gridlock. Amidst the frustration, the Democratic party's favorability rating has plunged to a record low. According to an opinion poll conducted by CNN in early March, 54% of surveyed adults currently have an unfavorable opinion of the party, up from 48% in early January. Schumer is now facing calls to step down as leader in the Senate, or face a primary challenge when he next runs for election, in 2028.

The main dilemma for the Democrats appears to be how to push back against the administration, without appearing to defend unpopular policies, which voters rejected in November. Although many Republicans voters are also uneasy about the ruthless, if not to say, lawless, way in which the administration is going about business, most still seem to support Trump's broad aims to reduce the size of government, cut immigration, and end "woke" policies such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.

To help me understand better what is going on inside the party, I recently spoke to former Democratic Member of Congress, Tom Malinowski, who represented New Jersey for two terms in the House of Representatives, between 2019-2023. Prior to entering politics, Malinowski ...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

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Roughly five years ago, the NHS COVID-19 app launched. At the time it seemed as though men were getting the virus more severely than women. It was that which led to the then unprecedented (the word of the pandemic) "sex at birth" question being one of those you had to answer before progressing to other functionality.

After a while it became apparent that estrogen was an important factor in protection from covid. This meant that trans women, who tend to take estrogen, had a diagnostic pattern similar to other women, meaning that the "at birth" part of the question had been rendered redundant.

Trans people generally consider this to be an awful question, mainly because it's saying to us that we aren't really who we say we are. It meant that lots of trans people decided not to use the app. The established and inclusive better way is to ask what gender you are, then is that the same as was recorded at birth. That way you can capture people's different understandings of their own genders.

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The same is true of almost all research, which looks at how someone lives rather than how they were born. In terms of medical or market demand, which is where almost all population statistics end up being used, current lived experience is key if you want to segregate by gender.

But that is not the finding of the recently published Sullivan report into the recording of sex and gender. Sullivan, whose research to date has been largely into literacy rates around the UK, was gifted the accolade of 'gender specialist' by then Secretary of State Michelle Donelan. Despite, or maybe because, her opponent at both the 2017 and 2019 general elections was me, Donelan seems to have bought totally into the Conservative culture wars, and appointed a key player in the gender "critical" movement to head up this review.

Unsurprisingly Sullivan bases her review on the immutable binary nature of sex. Just to remind readers, this is a statement of belief rather than evidenced fact. Indeed organisations representing over 3,500 scientists said precisely this in response to President Trump's executive order stating that sex is both binary and immutable.

But Sullivan then states boldly that all research should ask about "biological sex" - another term which has no clear definition in science or in law - regardless of whether how you were born is relevant to the topic being investigated. She takes issue with what seems like a perfectly reasonable set of questions in an NHS staff survey, matching a trans-inclusive way of capturing relevant data.

Some of her recommendations touch on NHS protocols and use of data. When someone transitions into a different gender, they get given a new NHS number, because the NHS has viewed 'sex' as immutable for IT purposes. The individual's old NHS record is then added as a note to the new record, but that means it cannot be searched other than visually. The 'sex' marker is used to automatically call you into various screening programmes. F means you get called for cervical and breast cancer screening, while M leads to prostrate checks. These may or may not be relevant for a whole bunch of people, not just trans people.

This has been an issue for as long as I can remember. As a computing professional with experience in managing data, I was involved in conversations with NHS people 15 years ago about the need for more granular ...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

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Almost everything the Trump administration has done since coming into office on 20 January has ticked every box for the growth of an authoritarian state.

The politicisation of the civil service, judiciary, military and academia; the appointment of ideologically-compliant individuals to senior positions; threats against neighbouring countries; the destabilising of international treaties and relationships; attacks on targeted communities and the press, even the banning of lists of words, have been the stuff of weeks - weeks, note; it is not yet two months - since Donald Trump re-entered the White House.

On top of all this, there has been the introduction of the idea into the public domain of classifying opposition to Trump and his agenda as a mental illness. Five Republican Minnesota state senators recently introduced a bill on "Trump Derangement Syndrome" - defined as an acute onset of paranoia regarding the presidencies of Donald Trump.

Psikhushka is coming to America.

It is a Russian slang term from the Soviet era describing psychiatric hospitals used as prisons for political dissenters.

After all, who would be mad enough to oppose the Party? For either you were mad to disagree with the obvious truths and purities of the Party line, or you were mad to oppose the behemoth of state oppression that could crush you by incarcerating you under the made-up diagnostic category of 'sluggish schizophrenia' - defined as 'delusions of reformism' about 'a struggle for truth and justice formed by personalities with a paranoid structure', in the words of the KGB-dominated Serbsky Institute.

The 'cure' for 'sluggish schizophrenics' included electric shocks, restraint, administration of insulin, tranquilisers, narcotics, and beatings.

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One of the symptoms of insanity, Soviet-style, was 'philosophical intoxication' - displayed by anyone who expressed opinions in opposition to Party dogma. 'Dissemination of fabrications, agitation and propaganda which defame the Soviet system' (to paraphrase the various iterations of the relevant articles of the Soviet Criminal Code from Stalin's time onwards) was the catch-all for dissent.

There were prisons and labour camps for sequestering 'ideological criminals', along with all other kinds of criminals. But to discredit the lunatic ideas of dissenters - justice, democracy, human rights - the dissenters had to be broken physically and mentally; forced to recant; and to confess to incorrect thoughts. And for this 'psychiatric treatment' was the method of choice.

How limited and shallow is historical memory.

Not only do we have accounts by people who experienced Psikhushka - such as Valery Tarsis's Ward 7; Joseph Brodsky's Gorbunov and Gorchakov; Tom Stoppard's play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, based on the experiences of Russian human rights campaigner Vladimir Bukovsky who spent 12 years in Psikhushka and labour camps - but official public condemnations of the system by the World Psychiatric Association and a US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 1984 report among many others.

And yet there in 'the land of the free and the home of the brave', how nauseatingly hollow these words now sound - as the very same thing is being proposed. How has the US fallen so far, so rapidly?

It is true that one is driven mad by the encephalitic horrors of Trumpism, and it is because Trump and Trumpism are themselves paradigms of derangement, and busy derang...

This article was originally published in the April 2025 print edition of Byline Times

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We've been poisoning ourselves with lead for at least the last 2,000 years.

Lead is easy to extract from its various ores, easy to work, melts at a low temperature (which makes it perfect for solder), and doesn't corrode in air or water.

As a result, from Ancient Rome until the 20th Century, we've used it to store and move liquids and foods, turning it into pipes, pans, cisterns, roofs, and cans.

It's also very bad for us - and can be lethal once levels get over 150 micrograms per ml of blood. Lead attacks us at a cellular level, mimicking the essential role played by calcium, iron, and zinc in key enzyme-driven processes. At high concentrations, this causes serious damage to blood formation, kidney function, our nervous system, and slows down the growth and proper function of the neurons in our brains.

The problem is that building up to this dangerous level can take years, even decades, so the poisoning may not be noticed for a long time. Mild symptoms include abdominal pains, headaches, constipation, anaemia, depression, insomnia, and a general lack of energy - much the same as what we now call 'stress'. More serious symptoms are delusions, convulsions, paralysis, blindness, and eventually death.

The Romans had a particular love for lead.

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It is estimated that, in 500 years, they mined 20 million tons of the metal, much of it in Britain. Every plumber, builder, cook, vintner, coin-maker, and undertaker fell over themselves to find new uses for it. Roman dentists even used lead as fillings for teeth.

The Romans not only kept their food and drink in lead vessels, they ate it too.

The most popular sweetener in Ancient Rome (sugar cane hadn't been discovered yet) was called sapa. It was made from boiling old wine in lead pans. What was left were white crystals of lead acetate that looked and tasted just like sugar (sometimes known as 'sugar of lead'). It was deliciously sweet and helped preserve wine, so the Romans added it to everything. In the famous 5th Century CE cookbook usually attributed to Apicius, sapa appears in a quarter of the 450 recipes.

The average Roman aristocrat was ingesting 250 micrograms of lead per day - five times what we ingest on average today. Some historians have even linked the increasingly bizarre and erratic behaviour of Roman emperors, and the low birthrate among the Roman nobility, to lead poisoning.

Using lead in the kitchen wasn't confined to the Romans.

For centuries, the standard European drinking vessels were glazed mugs or goblets - with as much as 60% of the glaze being made from lead oxide. As they aged and became more pitted and cracked, more lead leached into the drinks they held.

One of the rare examples of lead poisoning being correctly identified occurred in 18th Century Devon. The so-called Devon Colic was first recorded in 1703 and was finally attributed to the effects of lead in 1767.

Thousands of Devonians had fallen victim to the mystery illness, some of them had suffered blindness, fits of madness, paralysis, and several had died, before George Barker, the Queen's physician, declared that it was lead poisoning caused by the local cider.

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Barker tested the cider and found that it contained, on average 5 ppm of lead, enough to build up in a regular drinker's system and cause symptoms of the colic. The culprit turned out to be the lead linings in the apple presses used to make the drink, and the lead pipes that carried the acid juice to the fermentation vat. Some village cider presses used considerably more lead...

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Keir Starmer's Government's plans to fix the dangerous cladding problems left in the wake of the Grenfell fire tragedy are not working and risk leaving three million people trapped in unsafe homes, a new parliamentary report has warned.

MPs on the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee say they are appalled that despite new plans drawn up last year, ministers still do not know how many homes are affected by unsafe cladding, what is the cost of bringing them up to standard and how long it will take to do so. MPs have given the Government until July to come up with the figures.

Their report also reveals that the scale of the problem could derail the Government's promise to build 1.5 million new homes - especially affordable ones - because money to build new homes is being diverted to repair homes affected by the aftermath of Grenfell.

In London this has been particularly dramatic with new affordable housing starts reduced by 88% over the last financial year. Across England it is 39%.

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Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: "The Grenfell tower fire will forever be a badge of shame for the nation. Residents were let down by failings at every level. A community was traumatised, and 72 lives were lost. Rightly, all in positions of responsibility have vowed to do everything in our power to prevent such a disaster ever happening again. But eight years after Grenfell, it is still not known how many buildings out there have dangerous cladding, and when it will be removed. That vow remains unkept for every day that is still the case.

"As a chartered surveyor, I take a deep personal interest in building safety. I was utterly appalled by the evidence given to our inquiry, showing residents still mired in the national cladding crisis, with no immediate solutions at hand. Leaseholders with modest financial means can often be left with potentially large financial liabilities, effectively rendering their property unsaleable…

"That crisis shows signs of having a chilling effect on housebuilding overall, with social housing providers forced to divert resources to remediation rather than badly needed new homes. Despite longstanding promises to make industry pay, Government has yet to find a way to secure this outcome."

The report says the Ministry of Housing's programme to deal with this is also being hampered by a lack of skilled fire assessors and cladding workers.

"This is likely to be exacerbated by a wider context of ambitious housebuilding targets and constrained construction sector capacity," the report states.

"Yet MHCLG appears complacent about the risks posed by this lack of capacity. Despite MHCLG's assurances of additional funding and support for local authorities, local authorities may still lack the powers, capability or capacity to undertake the volume of necessary enforcement action."

The committee were given some stark examples of the current problems. One housing association, the Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association, has had to sell off social housing in a high-value area of London to pay for remedial works to one of their buildings.

Darren Paffey, Labour MP for Southampton, Itchen, sent in a dossier showing problems faced by residents with developers carrying out remediation.

Two involve Barratt Homes, one of the Government's partners for the new housebuilding p...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Few observers of world politics and European politics have failed to notice the European Union's recent intense activities in the area of defence and security. The reason for this striking development is not difficult to divine.

The United States has largely abandoned its significant role after World War II as a guarantor of world peace most vividly illustrated by the Trump administration's devastating decisions to revoke its long-standing commitment to military and economic support of Ukraine in a bid to claim friendlier relationships with the Kremlin.

While European countries were largely taken by surprise by these turbulent geopolitical developments, there has been a rarely witnessed determination by the EU Member States and significant allies like the UK and Canada to prepare for a defence of Europe and Ukraine without the contribution of the US.

For most European countries and the EU, the support of Ukraine is also widely considered fundamental and nearly existential for the European integration project as Ukraine's application for EU Membership has been put on a speed track amidst the current war against Russia.

In terms of defence expenditure, Member States reached in 2024 a record investment of €326 billion, but the latest estimates indicate that at least €500 billion will be needed to plug the EU's critical capability gaps over the next decade.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented a five-point plan last week on how to rearm the continent, detailing how to mobilise up to €800 billion over the coming years.

The key technical elements of the Rearm European plan are twofold: to activate the national escape clause and ensure Member States can increase defence expenditure without breaching the EU Stability and Growth Pact. For example: If Member States would increase their defence spending by 1,5% of GDP on average this could create fiscal space of close to EUR 650 billion over a period of four years.

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The second key point of the plan is to launch a new EU instrument which will provide €150 billion of loans to Member States for defence investment addressing specifically pan-European capability domains including air and missile defence, artillery systems, missiles and ammunition drones and anti-drone systems; but also, to address other needs from cyber to military mobility for example.

The thinking behind this this is effective streamlined joint purchase/public procurement of equipment by Member States which could then massively step up military support to Ukraine.

Within these initiatives, as reaffirmed by recent European Council conclusions, contain a commitment by the European Investment Bank to step up its support for Europe's security and defence industry and further measures by the Commission to enhance private investment in the defence industry.

The Commission's White Paper on the Future of European defence, which was presented this week by Von Der Leyen and the EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas, also encourages Member States to spend more, better and European.

The ultimate goal of simplifying rules, cutting red tape, and promoting more joint purchases and production is to create a true European single market for defence, addressing the long-standing fragmentation of a predominantly national-focused market (White Paper).

The EU's rearmament plan is imp...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

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Reform UK took a donation from a company with ties to tax havens, newly released data reveals, as the party seeks out donations from Brits living overseas who are disgruntled with the current UK tax regime.

Nick Candy, Reform UK's treasurer told the New York Times "We are going to have fund-raisers all over the world, in every part of the world where there are British nationals.

"We will have fund-raisers in the US, in Monaco, and we will have huge fund-raisers in the UAE, where we have an expat community there who are unhappy with the amount of regulation and tax in the UK."

Newly released date reveals that Reform UK received £50,000 from JB Honore Drax, a brokerage firm specialising in foreign exchange trades, derivatives and swaps.

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JB Honore Drax has a subsidiary in Singapore and is owned by a parent company based in Luxembourg according to a brokercheck report by the company Finra. Filings with the Paris business court also suggest that the French branch of the firm is owned by the company in Luxembourg and the firm's Dubai branch is listed as active on the Legal Entity Identifier in Luxembourg.

Although JB Honore Drax is primarily owned by its directors Benn Shepherd and Jonathan Glassberg, the Australian investment bank Macquarie is a minority shareholder. Macquarie was named in a 2014 leak of tax deals from companies operating in Luxembourg and the firm has come under fire for its role in the privatisation of Thames Water after it loaded the company with debt during the period of its partial ownership. The firm is also among a consortium of lenders to Thames Water's parent company.

One of the firm's co-CEOs, Benn Shepherd, is also the director of Cadrela, a firm domiciled in Malta.

This is not the first time Reform UK has taken donations from firms linked to offshore entities. In 2024 Good Law Project revealed that 73.5% of Reform's donations since 2019 were linked to nine companies and individuals with offshore interests. The continued reliance on donors with links to offshore tax havens calls into question Reform UK's presentation as a patriotic party.

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Another of Reform's donations from the last quarter of 2024 came from Roger Nagioff, a former Conservative donor based out of Monaco, which is a tax haven.

Although he now runs JRJ group, a private investment firm, the former derivatives trader once headed up the European division of Lehman brothers, the bank whose collapse triggered the financial crisis between 1997 and 2008.

A report in the Guardian in 2008 notes that Nagioff's appointment as global head of the firm's fixed income division in 2007 signalled the dominance of the freewheeling attitude to derivatives trading that would later blow up the financial system. Nagioff replaced Michael Gelband who was ousted from Lehman for opposing the purchase of a huge collection of subprime mortgage lenders - the kind that caused the crash.

"Dick Fuld, the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers, told his PR minders to portray the appointment as a sign of how his booming empire had broadened into a truly global operation" the Guardian reported. Nagioff gave Reform U...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

The head of one of the country's biggest domestic abuse charities has compared the actions of Cheshire East Council with that of a "domestic abuse perpetrator".

The council told the charity in mid-January that it plans to stop funding MyCWA - Cheshire Without Abuse - after nine years.

"The council has been very bullying," Saskia Lightburn-Ritchie claimed to Byline Times, adding: "It's the same approach as a domestic abuse perpetrator: monopolising people's perspective of us by sharing misinformation, removing our access to data, refusing to speak to us, and going behind our back."

At the forefront of Lightburn-Ritchie's concerns are the 14 adults and seven children in the charity's refuge accommodation receiving intensive support, who she fears will be forced into hostels.

"I'm terrified what will happen if we're not there. The people with us at the moment are settled. It'll be a terrible disruption to families that don't need extra trauma," she says.

Lightburn-Ritchie, who lived in a refuge when she was a young parent, says it can be "really devastating" to live in a hostel - but this is often the only option for women fleeing abusive partners. An estimated 2.3 million adults (1.6 million women and 712,000 men) suffered domestic abuse in the UK last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Along with its emergency refuge - one of the 5% across the country that allows pets - many of the charity's other services were instantly put at risk, including crisis support, adult and child survivor recovery programmes, behaviour change interventions, and practical support, by the council's funding move. The charity is the primary provider of non-statutory domestic abuse support in Cheshire East, and supported 4,00 adults and children last year.

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MyCWA was already supplementing its funding from the council and, over the past year, spent £300,000 delivering services. For every £1 invested, MyCWA saves the public purse £8.37, a Women's Aid report previously found.

Two years ago, Cheshire East Council said that ending its contract with MyCWA - the only commissioned domestic abuse refuge in the area - would put women and girls at greater risk of domestic abuse, and potentially cause more women to be murdered and die by suicide.

It recommended working with MyCWA for another five years - and gave the charity two successive six-month extensions while it figured out its domestic abuse strategy, Lightburn-Ritchie says.

The council's decision to stop funding MyCWA is part of a national pattern of refuges closing or turning women away due to chronic underfunding.

Many hostels around the country are at breaking point after years of underfunding, says Abigail Ampofo, interim chief executive of Refuge. And many councils, she adds, are reducing or freezing budgets for VAWG services, which, she says, are essential in supporting the Government's mission to halve VAWG within the next decade.

Refuge is concerned that without ringfenced provisions for specialist services, these will continue to be at risk of decommissioning in favour of generic services, which cannot meet the needs of survivors in the same way

Abigail Ampofo, interim chief executive of Refuge

In response to findings that cases of domestic violence are rising, the National Police Chief's Council, in July 2024, emphasised the importance of services suppo...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

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A Conservative peer, who was tasked by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson to lead the Government's personal protective equipment (PPE) programme during the pandemic, helped a company he had financial interests in secure a Government contract worth tens of millions of pounds, newly released correspondence from the Covid Inquiry has revealed.

Back in 2020, a report by the New York Times revealed that Lord Deighton, he had financial or personal connections to seven companies awarded PPE contracts.

One of these was Honeywell Safety Products, which secured a £58 million contract from the Department of Health and Social Care to provide PPE in May 2020.

Lord Deighton held shares in the firm's parent company - Honeywell International Inc.

It has now been revealed that Lord Deighton held a meeting with "senior" representatives from Honeywell to discuss the firm's facemask deal on the 27 April 2020. Just 10 days later Honeywell secured a £58million contract to supply the same masks. The deal was awarded without any formal competitive tending process.

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Lord Deighton confirmed in his witness statement issued to the Covid Inquiry that "on 27 April 2020, I held a senior meeting with Honeywell to discuss the high-level plans which were then passed to procurement teams for review".

The statement also confirms that Deighton was involved in correspondence regarding the "price comparison" of the masks being offered by Honeywell. The Conservative Peer did discuss his investment in Honeywell with senior civil servants, but it was concluded "there would be no conflict, given the relatively small contracts would not move the share price of such a large company".

Deighton also denied any involvement in approving the contract to Honeywell.

Lord Deighton Helped "Generous and Loyal Supporter" of the Conservative Party

Correspondence released by the Inquiry also reveals that Deighton stepped into help a "generous and loyal supporter" of the Conservative party secure a £93 million contract to supply face masks.

An email chain published on Tuesday also reveals that Conservative Peer and party donors Lord Stuart Marks and Haraldur Agustsson lobbied Lord Deighton in the weeks prior to Augustsson's company Globus (Shetland) UK being awarded a huge PPE contract.

In a remarkable email sent to Lord Deighton by Lord Marks on the 17 May 2020, Marks pleads with Deighton to contact Globus, stating:

"I would be grateful if you could take a look at this. Heraldry is a generous and loyal supporter of the Party and as you will read from his email is making a big commitment to supporting UK manufacturing of PPE".

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Lord Deighton responds within ten minutes and thanks Marks and simply states "will do".

Six weeks later, in July 2020, Globus (Shetland) UK secured a £93 million contract from the DHSC to supply FFP3 face masks - another contract awarded without an...