I quit when it sank in that pushing back at my routine embassy job felt less like resistance than complicity

When I began working as a consular officer at the US embassy in Ankara, Turkey, I was at the beginning of what was supposed to be a 20-year diplomatic career. Maybe I didn’t love all of US foreign policy, but in my routine visa assignment I was deeply committed to treating everybody I interviewed fairly and playing my part in facilitating the American immigrant dream. Then, on 27 June 2017, Donald Trump issued orders to begin implementing the “Muslim ban” . My routine job had suddenly become deeply morally fraught and instead of blandly facilitating the American dream, I was denying it to people based on their faith.

My first instinct was to draft a resignation letter, but I didn’t immediately send it because it felt at the time like I was part of a nigh-unanimous institutional rejection of an illiberal policy. More than 1,000 US diplomats put their signatures on an internal dissent cable against the Muslim ban when it was proclaimed. My boss hated the ban, my boss’ boss hated the ban, and the dozens of US ambassadors summoned to the foreign ministries of Muslim-majority countries to explain the policy tried to disown it as much as they possibly could. When I pushed back as much as I could, I did so with the full support of my bosses and colleagues. But, and this is the most important part, we always did so within the regulations.

Josef Burton is a former US diplomat who served in Turkey, India and Washington DC

Republican presumptive nominee struggles to articulate position on divisive issue after meeting with House speaker

Facing the press alongside the House speaker, fellow Republican Mike Johnson, Donald Trump bragged: “We broke Roe v Wade.”

The former president made the stark admission about his dominant role in attacks on abortion rights at the end of a week in which the rightwing Arizona state supreme court ruled that an 1864 law imposing a near-total ban could go back into effect.

Planned bill to ban already illegal practice is latest Republican step to spread falsehoods about immigration and voter fraud

Donald Trump and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, plan to push for a bill to ban non-citizens from voting, the latest step by Republicans to falsely claim migrants are coming to the country and casting ballots.

Voting when a person is not eligible – for instance if they lack US citizenship – is already illegal under federal law. It is unclear what the bill Johnson and the former president will discuss in their Friday press conference at Mar-a-Lago will do to alter that. But it is one more way for the former president to focus on election security and to ding the Biden administration over the situation at the US-Mexico border, a key issue for likely Republican voters this November.

About 50 people sent to island in 2022 in DeSantis’s ‘relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations’

A group of migrants who were sent to Martha’s Vineyard in 2022 by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, can sue the plane company that transported them, a federal judge has ruled.

In a ruling issued last Friday, the US district judge Allison Burroughs said that the migrants who were shuttled from Texas to the wealthy liberal island in Massachusetts can proceed with their legal claims against Vertol Systems, the plane company which was contracted by Florida to carry out the flights.

Judge rules children in makeshift camps along US-Mexico border are in custody of government and subject to treatment standards

Children who wait in makeshift migrant camps along the US-Mexico border for border patrol to process them are in the agency’s custody and are subject to a longstanding court-supervised agreement that set standards for their treatment, a judge ruled.

The issue of when the children are officially in border patrol custody is particularly important because of the 1997 court settlement on how migrant children in US government custody must be treated. Those standards include a time limit on how long the children can be held and services such as toilets, sinks and temperature controls.

Ex-president’s description of meeting relatives of Ruby Garcia to spin anti-immigration narrative is ‘shocking’, sister says

Donald Trump used a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to describe meeting the family of a woman killed by an immigrant in order to spin a narrative about what he calls “Biden’s border bloodbath” – except Ruby Garcia’s family now say he never did.

Garcia, 25, was found shot to death on highway US-131 on 22 March of this year. Court records later showed that her boyfriend confessed to killing her and dumping her body.

Wire barrier installed under governor’s border security program breached as migrants say they were forcefully pushed back

A group of migrants clashed with Texas national guard troops over a breach of barbed wire fencing in El Paso on Thursday as they waited to turn themselves in to federal border agents – underscoring the power struggle between the state and federal government over immigration law enforcement.

Video posted on social media showed migrants dragging away a temporary concertina wire barrier which was installed as part of Texas governor Greg Abbott’s controversial Operation Lone Star publicly-funded state border security program.

Residents and activists say no one is safe if law allowing police to arrest people for suspected illegal entry goes into effect

At the Sweet Co coffee shop in downtown Brownsville, the last city at the eastern end of the Texas border before you reach the ocean and Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket base or cross into Mexico, the vibe was chill but the mood was chilly.

Customers were as downcast as the wet weather outside on Wednesday, the day of a court hearing after contrasting legal rulings were made about a new law that will affect people in Brownsville, whether new migrants, US citizens, undocumented residents or others.

Appeals court blocks sweeping arrest powers for Texas police, ending – for now – what could have sparked confusion along US border

Good morning, US politics blog readers. It was only a few hours ago when the supreme court cleared the way for a potential upending of US immigration enforcement by allowing a Texas law that gave state police the power to arrest people suspected of crossing the border illegally to go into effect. But hours after the top court’s Tuesday afternoon order, a federal appeals court once again blocked the law – at least for now. The decision prevents what could have become a confusing and unprecedented situation from playing out in the massive, Republican-governed state along the border with Mexico. Texas’s police would have been able to arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally – a task reserved for federal law enforcement.

Texas enacted its law as Republicans nationwide attack Joe Biden over the surge in undocumented migrants that has played out since he took office. In Congress, the GOP continues to demand the president support tougher border policies, though they blocked a compromise that would impose those and approve new aid for Ukraine and Israel. The White House views the Texas law as “harmful and unconstitutional”, and the legal wrangling over it is unlikely to end anytime soon.

Congress is working on a final batch of government spending bills ahead of a Friday deadline to pass them and prevent a partial government shutdown. Party leaders yesterday announced a deal on the funding, but it still needs to be approved by the full Senate and House of Representatives.

Benjamin Netanyahu , the Israeli prime minister, will reportedly address Senate Republicans at their lunch. Last week, the chamber’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer , called for new elections to be held.

The Federal Reserve will decide whether or not to keep interest rates at their high level when their regular policy meeting concludes at 2pm ET.