Donald Trump’s proposal for a US takeover of Gaza was met with anger and blunt rejection from regional allies, delight from Israel’s far right and a warning against “ethnic cleansing” from the head of the UN.

The secretary general, António Guterres, planned to tell a UN meeting on Wednesday that “it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing” after the US president said he wanted to “own” Gaza and resettle its Palestinian residents elsewhere.

An unusually broad wave of international outrage and condemnation followed Trump’s shock announcement after a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Germany warned that the plan violated international law and Brazil’s president described it as “incomprehensible”, with China stating it opposed “forced transfer”.

Trump was untouched by hours of global criticism, telling reporters in the Oval Office that “everybody loves [the plan]” at the swearing in of his new attorney general, Pam Bondi.

One place the president’s claim did hold true was among Israel’s far-right circles, where his proposal was embraced as a path to fulfilling a long-held political goal of taking Gaza out of Palestinian control.

Both regional critics and supporters recognised that Trump’s vision for a “Riviera for the Middle East” was novel only in seeking to insert the US directly into the heart of one of the most volatile, long-running conflicts in the world.

It is premised on emptying Gaza of its residents, effectively a call for ethnic cleansing, and follows decades of debates in the Israeli right over whether Palestinians can be forced from the territory or encouraged to leave with economic incentives.

Trump wants neighbouring countries that are heavily dependent on US aid and military support, including Egypt and Jordan, to offer new homes to large numbers of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.

Addressing Trump’s plan on Wednesday, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it “does not mean boots on the ground in Gaza” following Trump’s saying on Tuesday “If it’s necessary, we’ll do that” when asked if it might involve military force.

She also characterised the US president as being committed to “temporarily relocating” Palestinians from Gaza.

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the Trump plan was not meant as a “hostile move”.

Saudi Arabia was among the first countries to reject Trump’s project to reimagine Gaza as a real-estate prospect, and perhaps the most consequential.

A deal establishing diplomatic relations with Israel is a potentially lucrative prize pursued enthusiastically by both Joe Biden and Trump during his first term, and backed by Netanyahu.

Riyadh was quick to announce its “unequivocal rejection” of any attempt to displace Palestinians from their land. The crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has ruled out normalising ties without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Jordan’s King Abdullah, who faces a difficult face-to-face meeting with Trump in Washington next week, also rejected “any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians”.

It was not the first time he had made Jordan’s position clear. The country already hosts more than 2.7 million Palestinian refugees and accepting people from Gaza under duress would have a destabilising effect.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said reconstruction needed to happen “without Palestinians leaving the territory”. It has previously warned any attempt to transfer people out of Gaza to the Sinai would threaten the peace deal.

Late on Wednesday Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, said any “forced displacement” of Gaza’s population would be “unacceptable”.

“It would be a serious violation of international law, an obstacle to the two-state solution and a major destabilising force for Egypt and Jordan,” the two leaders said, according to a statement from the French presidency.

The US president had anticipated and shrugged off these refusals in advance, perhaps confident that both countries are vulnerable because of their reliance on American money and weapons.

“The king in Jordan and the general in Egypt will open their hearts and give us the kind of land we need to get this done,” Trump said at the press conference, after laying out plans for the US takeover.

But the political and security implications of taking in large numbers of people from Gaza under duress will be a powerful counterbalance to even the most aggressive threats from the White House.

Trump’s comments came at the start of negotiations for a second stage of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, and sparked fears that they could threaten talks, although the framework deal defers any long-term planning for Gaza’s future to a third stage.

A spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, a host and key mediator in the last round of talks, said they were focusing on extending the current agreement, due to expire at the end of the month.

“I don’t think it’s a time now to start commenting on specific ideas,” spokesperson Majed al-Ansari told Fox News. “It’s too early to talk about this, because we don’t know how this war will end.”

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, embraced Trump’s comments as vindication of his decision to stay in Netanyahu’s government, despite his fierce opposition to the ceasefire and hostage release deal.

The US plan would “finally bury, with God’s help, the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state”, he said in a triumphant statement, celebrating the prospect of US power deployed to force Palestinians out of Gaza. “Believe me, this is just the beginning.”

Rival far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir suggested Trump’s proposal would effectively negate the need for ceasefire talks, which have been overshadowed from the start by lack of any Israeli plans for post-conflict Gaza.

“The only solution to Gaza is to encourage the migration of Gazans … this is the strategy for the ‘day after’,” Ben-Gvir said.

“I call on the prime minister to announce the adoption of the plan as soon as possible and to begin immediate practical progress.”

One of Netanyahu’s biggest political rivals, Benny Gantz, also backed Trump’s plans to resettle Palestinians outside Gaza as “admirable”, and said Israel has “nothing to lose from it, only something to gain”.

Only politicians from Israel’s relatively small leftwing parties openly opposed Trump’s proposals, with Gilad Kariv from the Democrats party describing it as “a nightmare for Israel” and Ayman Odeh from the Joint List warning that “a transfer will not happen and will not bring security”.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau in Gaza, said Palestinians there had shown their “steadfastness” over 15 months of intense attacks, and any US troops sent to the territory would face the same opposition as the Israeli military.

“What the occupation has failed to do, no American administration or power in the world will succeed in implementing,” he said.

Quique Kierszenbaum contributed reporting

Donald Trump’s remarks that the US will “take over” Gaza and resettle the Palestinian population elsewhere have drawn outrage and criticism from Palestinian and Arab Americans across the US.

A group of Arab Americans that supported Trump during the 2024 election rebranded itself following Trump’s comments on displacing Palestinians, from “Arab Americans for Trump” to “Arab Americans for Peace”.

In a statement, the group said that while they still believed that Trump “is committed to achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East that is satisfactory to ALL parties”, they “take issue with the president’s suggestion of taking over Gaza and removing its Palestinian inhabitants to other parts of the Arab world”.

The group added that they were “adamantly opposed to the notion of transferring Palestinians outside of historic Palestine for ANY reason”.

The 2024 US presidential election marked a shift within communities that had long formed part of the Democratic base, as many Muslim and Arab Americans grew disillusioned over the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Trump actively courted those groups and polls indicate he made significant gains.

Protests against the Biden administration’s stance led to more than 700,000 “uncommitted” votes in the Democratic primaries, an attempt to pressure Joe Biden to shift course.

Layla Elabed, the co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement responded to Trump’s remarks and said that she felt “sad, angry, and scared for our communities”.

The Uncommitted movement opposed a Trump presidency, but ultimately declined to endorse Kamala Harris, citing her “unwillingness to shift” on Biden’s policies.

“For months, we warned about the dangers of Trump at home and abroad but our calls largely went unheard,” Elabed wrote. Harris, she said, “left a vacuum by not visiting Michigan families impacted by US-supplied bombs to help create a permission structure for their trust while Trump visited Dearborn and filled a community in despair with lies”.

She continued: “Trump’s illegal calls for ethnic cleansing are horrific but as on so many other issues, Democrats had a chance to persuade voters they were the better alternative and they blew it.”

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, which conducted an October poll of Arab American voters, noted at the time that in the institute’s 30 years of polling, it had not “witnessed anything like the role that the war on Gaza is having on voter behavior”. Another recent poll found that 29% of 2020 Biden voters who opted for a different candidate than Harris in 2024 cited “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” as their top issue.

On Wednesday, Zogby described Trump’s comments about the US taking Gaza in an interview as “dangerous, provocative, illegal and callously insensitive to Palestinian needs”.

“Anyone who knows the region knows Palestinians are not going to leave,” he said. “And if they want to go anywhere, it’s back to their villages in Israel they were expelled from in 1948.”

Justin Amash, a former Republican congressman from Michigan whose family is of Palestinian origin, compared Trump’s proposal on Tuesday to ethnic cleansing.

“If the United States deploys troops to forcibly remove Muslims and Christians – like my cousins – from Gaza, then not only will the US be mired in another reckless occupation but it will also be guilty of the crime of ethnic cleansing,” he said. “No American of good conscience should stand for this.

Wa’el Alzayat, the chief executive officer of EmgageUSA, a Muslim American advocacy organization, said that “evicting people from their land is a violation of international law” and that sending US troops to Gaza was not only “deeply problematic” but also, he imagined, “politically very unpopular”.

Alzayat was one of a number of prominent Arab Americans the Guardian spoke with who traced the blame back to Biden.

He said that in his view, “the reason we have Trump contemplating turning the rubble into Miami-style condos that Jared Kushner could probably profit from is because Biden gave those bombs to the Israelis”.

Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic representative of Michigan and the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said in response to Trump’s comments that “Palestinians aren’t going anywhere” and that Trump “can only spew this fanatical bullshit because of bipartisan support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing”.

Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state representative who is Palestinian American, said in a statement on Tuesday that she was “furious with everyone”.

Romman was put forward by the Uncommitted movement to speak at the Democratic national convention, but the request was reportedly denied. She ultimately endorsed Harris.

“Everyone failed,” she said. “Everyone is responsible for the moment that we are in today. The idea that voters do not carry any responsibility is untenable and absurd. The idea that candidates don’t carry any responsibility is untenable and absurd.”

Romman added: “No fascist here or abroad will ever be able to erase Palestinians,” adding that the “harder they try the deeper our roots will grow”.

Hudhayfah Ahmad, the director of media relations for the Abandon Harris campaign, which supported Jill Stein, said in a statement: “The Biden-Harris administration’s full, unobstructed support for Israel’s campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing has failed to remove the Palestinians of Gaza from their land.”

“It is not Trump – just as it was not Biden or Harris – who decides what the Palestinians can or cannot do; that decision belongs solely to the people of Palestine,” Ahmad said.

In response to finger-pointing at voters who turned on Harris, Waleed Shahid, a former organizer for the Uncommitted movement and a Democratic strategist, called for introspection.

“Democratic party elites find it easier to punch down on grieving Palestinian families in Michigan desperate for a basic shift in their party’s policy than to challenge decisions made by Biden and Harris,” Shahid wrote. “But this is why Democrats lose – they don’t listen to voters; they sneer at them.”

Donald Trump’s proposal to permanently move millions of Palestinians out of Gaza to allow its reconstruction under US “ownership” could amount to a war crime or crime against humanity, experts in international law have said.

The experts said the US president’s framing of his plan without any reference to international law set a dangerous precedent that would encourage other world leaders to do similarly and contribute to a global breakdown of peace and security.

“I was shocked as a scholar, a teacher of international law and as a human being,” said Dr Maria Varaki, a lecturer in international law at the department of war studies at King’s College London. “A head of state who makes no reference to international law … That’s very dangerous.”

The two most obvious codes potentially breached by the Trump plan are the Geneva conventions – international treaties agreed in 1949 governing the treatment of civilians and military personnel during conflicts – and the 1998 Rome statute, which established the international criminal court to bring to justice individuals suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide where states either cannot or will not do so themselves.

Under both codes, the arbitrary and permanent forcible transfer of populations is a crime.

The International court of justice, the United Nations’ highest court, which adjudicates disputes between states, said in July that Israel met the definition of an occupying power in Gaza and so was bound by obligations set out under the fourth Geneva convention as well as its obligations under international human rights law.

There is provision, in some very specific circumstances and only when there is either military necessity or an imperative to protect their lives, for the temporary displacement of civilians, but not outside occupied territory and for the shortest time possible, said Sarah Singer, professor of refugee law at London University.

Under the Rome statute, which draws on the Geneva conventions, deportation or forcible transfer of a population is a crime, especially when committed as part of a wider or systematic attack on civilians.

Trump claimed that Palestinians in Gaza would be happy to leave. If true, this would have great legal significance, even if this is unlikely to have been one of the president’s primary concerns. However, the claim is systematically contradicted by Palestinians in the territory and elsewhere.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on Wednesday called for the UN to “protect the Palestinian people and their inalienable rights”, saying that what Trump wanted to do would be “a serious violation of international law”.

In addition, Martin Lemberg-Pedersen, an associate professor at the University of Warwick, said that by describing Gaza as a “demolition site” and so a place where human life could not be sustained, Trump had made an implicit admission that Israel had violated principles of discrimination and proportionality during its offensive in Gaza.

The Israeli offensive reduced swaths of the territory to rubble, destroying schools, homes, roads, clinics, sanitation systems, farms and much more. Huge areas of ruins are contaminated by chemicals and unexploded bombs.

Lemberg-Pedersen said Trump’s vocabulary had been revealing, and historic given his office and the implications of his statement.

“Trump referred to Gaza as a demolition site and said that those who go back there would die … That appears to be an admission that the Israeli offensive has resulted in the destruction of civilian infrastructure to the point where it cannot sustain people,” Lemberg-Pedersen said.

The Geneva conventions and Rome statute forbid attacks which do not distinguish between military targets and civilians or civilian homes and infrastructure, unless absolutely necessary for military operations. Collective punishment, including mass displacement and targeting of entire communities, is strictly prohibited.

Singer said that in the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion, forcible transfer included coercion where civilians had no choice but to leave because to remain would put their lives at risk.

“So you have to leave because you have no options, when the alternative would be starvation, for example,” Singer told the Guardian.

Trump said current residents of Gaza would be moved and resettled “permanently” to be replaced by “the world’s people” who would inhabit an “international, unbelievable place”, though he added that many people including Palestinians would live there.

Volker Türk, UN high commissioner for human rights, said on Wednesday that the right to self-determination was a fundamental principle of international law and must be protected by all states.

Critics have said Trump’s plan “amount[s] to ethnic cleansing”, which the UN has defined as “… rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.”

The term was first used during the 1990s conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, but is not recognised as a crime in itself in international law.

“In legal terms, there is no code or international agreement with the words ethnic cleansing,” said Elena Katselli, of the Newcastle University law school.

But ethnic cleansing frequently includes a collection of criminal practices such as murder, rape, torture, arbitrary arrest or deliberate attacks on civilians, which could be war crimes, crimes against humanity or, in some circumstances, genocide.

“It is clear to me that powerful states want to rewrite the laws,” Katselli said.

Varaki decried Trump’s “absolute silence on the fundamentals of the international order”.

“We have no norms at all, so all the things that have been achieved since the second world war are threatened,” she said.

Planning to “clean out” Palestinians as a real estate money-making scheme is an idea that has long united the Israeli settler movement and some of Donald Trump’s circle of US property developers.

For decades, state-backed settlers have used concrete, steel and brick to build on occupied land in Palestine in a successful effort to use town-building as a means to claim territory and permanently force Palestinians from their homeland.

This method appealed to sections of Trump’s first administration, and not just because it was filled with apocalyptic evangelical Christians, who see a Jewish presence in the Holy Land as a biblical precondition for Armageddon, which they believe will bring the return of Jesus Christ.

It also spoke to the real estate mindset of Trump’s family and associates, most prominently his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the architect of a 2020 “peace” plan for the Middle East that was never implemented but was heavily focused on investments.

Now, Trump has expanded on the idea to its most extreme position, calling for the US to effectively colonise Gaza in what would amount to an ethnic cleansing of the population of about 2 million people. The plan is then to “develop” on the levelled ground, which is still filled with the bodies of tens of thousands people killed by Israel.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too,” he said. “We’ll own it.” It followed remarks last month on Gaza where he told reporters: “You’re talking about a million and a half people … we just clean out that whole thing.”

Israel has long used its occupation to make money. The modern state was built on decades of access to cheap Palestinian labour, as workers had few lucrative options in their own stifled and isolated economy.

West Bank settlements include farms and factories (often run by Israelis but staffed by Palestinians) and many settlements position themselves as cheap commuter satellite towns for Israelis working in Tel Aviv.

At the same time, Israel’s tourism industry has boomed under a monopoly on access to the holy city of Jerusalem, while tour buses use the main Israel-built highway to the Dead Sea that runs right through occupied land.

Many of Trump’s allies support these settler projects, either politically or financially. The former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who has denied that Palestinians even exist as a people, travelled to Israel during Trump’s first term to physically lay a brick in a settlement in the West Bank. At the time, he said he might “want to purchase a holiday home” there.

And towards the end of Trump’s first term, Mike Pompeo became the first US secretary of state to officially visit a settlement, a deeply provocative move that previous US administrations went to lengths to avoid. He took a trip to a vineyard in the occupied West Bank run by settlers, who blended a red wine that they named in his honour.

Trump’s second time in high office is shaping up to be even more property-focused than his first. His Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, is an American billionaire real estate investor and developer, and Huckabee is expected to be the next US ambassador to Israel.

This time around, the ruins of Gaza are in sharp focus. Last year, Kushner, a former property dealer married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.

Kushner has become increasingly entwined in the Middle East, with his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, sourcing funding from rich Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, which has been looked at as a bankroller for the reconstruction of Gaza.

Israel has promoted several economic plans for the coastal territory over the years, while at the same time besieging Gaza and demanding ultimate overarching control. An old proposal to build an artificial island off the coast of Gaza to house a seaport and airport was re-pitched last year by Israel’s former foreign minister to frustrated EU diplomats looking for a political solution.

Trump’s takeover plan has echoes of this proposal. The US president said Gaza could become “the Riviera of the Middle East”, and Witkoff has backed the idea of transferring Palestinians out of Gaza, saying: “A better life isn’t necessary tied to physical space that you’re in.”

Meanwhile, settler groups who were moved out of Gaza under a 2005 “disengagement plan” want to go back. In December, Harey Zahav, a settler-focused real estate agency, released an image showing sketches of new buildings among the destroyed remains of Gaza. “A house on the beach is not a dream!” it said.

How settlers’ ambitions – or indeed those of the Israeli government – could fit with Trump’s takeover plan is yet to be seen, although they have a history of working together.

Nearly 60 years after Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, it is fighting allegations of apartheid in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza, where it has killed nearly 50,000 people.

But none of that was mentioned when Trump announced his vision for Gaza. Instead, the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, stood quietly and smiled before praising Trump’s idea as something that “could change history”.

Philippine vice-president Sara Duterte has been impeached on a range of accusations that include plotting to assassinate the president, large-scale corruption and failing to strongly denounce China’s aggressive actions against Filipino forces in the disputed South China Sea.

Wednesday’s move by legislators in the House of Representatives, many of them allies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, deepens a bitter political rift between the two highest leaders of one of Asia’s most rambunctious democracies.

Marcos has boosted defence ties with his country’s treaty ally, the US, while the vice-president’s father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, nurtured cosy relations with China and Russia during his stormy term that ended in 2022.

Sara Duterte didn’t immediately comment on her impeachment, but her brother, representative Paolo Duterte, said it was “a clear act of political persecution.” Rival lawmakers manoeuvred to quickly collect signatures and push a “baseless impeachment case” to the Senate, he said.

Duterte has repeatedly accused Marcos, his wife and his cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, of corruption, weak leadership and attempting to muzzle her because of speculation she may seek the presidency in 2028 after Marcos’s six-year term ends.

At least 215 legislators in the lower house signed the complaint, significantly more than the required number to rapidly send the petition to the Senate, which would serve as a tribunal to try the vice-president, House of Representatives secretary-general Reginald Velasco told a plenary House meeting in the body’s last session before a four-month recess.

Among the signatories of the impeachment complaint was the president’s son, representative Sandro Marcos, and Romualdez. The petition urged the Senate to shift itself into an impeachment court to try the vice-president, “render a judgement of conviction,” remove her from office and ban her from holding public office.

“Duterte’s conduct throughout her tenure clearly displays gross faithlessness against public trust and a tyrannical abuse of power that, taken together, showcases her gross unfitness to hold public office and her infidelity to the laws and the 1987 Constitution,” the complaint said.

Duterte ran alongside Marcos in 2022 on a campaign battle cry of unity in a deeply divided Southeast Asian country. Both were scions of strongmen accused of human rights violations, but their strong regional bases of support combined to give them landslide victories.

Marcos is the son and namesake of the late dictator ousted in a 1986 pro-democracy uprising. The vice-president’s father and Marcos’s predecessor, Duterte, led a deadly anti-drug crackdown that is being investigated by the international criminal court as a possible crime against humanity.

The whirlwind political alliance of the campaign rapidly frayed when they took office.

The impeachment complaint against the vice-president focused on a death threat she allegedly made against the president, his wife and the House speaker last year, alleged irregularities in the use of her office’s intelligence funds and her alleged failure to stand up to Chinese aggression in the disputed South China Sea.

She said in an online news conference on 23 November that she had contracted an assassin to kill Marcos, his wife and Romualdez if she were killed, a threat she warned wasn’t a joke.

She later said that she wasn’t threatening him, but was expressing concern for her own safety. However, her statements set off an investigation and national security concerns.

Allegations of graft and corruption against her also emanated from a monthslong and televised House investigation on the alleged misuse of 612.5 million pesos ($10.5m) of confidential and intelligence funds received by Duterte’s offices as vice-president and education secretary. She has since left the education post after her political differences with Marcos deepened.

She has also been accused of unexplained wealth and failure to declare her wealth as required by the law. She has refused to respond to questions in detail in tense televised hearings last year.

The impeachment complaint accused Duterte of undermining the Marcos government’s policies, including her description of the administration’s handling of territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea as a “fiasco.” The complaint also mentioned her silence over China’s increasingly assertive actions in the disputed waters.

“Her sheer evasiveness and silence on the West Philippine Sea issue, an issue that strikes at the core of Philippine sovereignty, is diametrically opposed to her being so loquacious as to other issues,” the impeachment petition said, using the Philippine name for the disputed waters.

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports, the latest in a slew of moves rolling back the rights of trans people.

The order establishes stricter mandates on sports and gender policy, directing federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to interpret federal Title IX rules as the prohibition of transgender girls and women from participating in any female sports categories.

The order is titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”.

The order, which mandates immediate enforcement, directs state attorneys general to identify best practices for enforcement.

“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said on Wednesday. The timing of the order coincided with National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

The order, which is likely to face legal challenges, calls for “immediate enforcement” nationwide. It threatens to cut off federal funding for any school that allows trans women or girls to compete in female-designated sporting competitions.

The order would affect only a small number of athletes. The president of the National Collegiate Athletics Association told a Senate panel in December he was aware of fewer than 10 trans athletes among the 520,000 competing at 1,100 member schools.

Athlete Ally, a non-profit athletic advocacy group, released a statement in response to the order, saying: “Our hearts break for the trans youth who will no longer be able to know the joy of playing sports as their full and authentic selves.

“We’ve known this day was likely to occur for a long time, as this administration continues to pursue simple solutions to complex issues, often resulting in animus towards the most marginalized communities in our country.”

This latest attack on trans rights follows a sequence of controversial mandates by the Trump administration. During his first day in office, Trump signed an order calling for the federal government to define sex as “only male or female” based on reproductive cells and for it to be reflected on all official documents such as passports.

Last week, he signed an executive order prohibiting gender transition for people under the age of 19. It included gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers, the use of hormones such as estrogen or testosterone, and surgical procedures.

Trump has also taken aim at Biden’s orders to combat gender discrimination. Last month, Trump signed an order called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” that instructs the federal government to remove “all radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms”.

The White House expects all sports bodies such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to change their rules in accordance with the latest order.

“We’re a national governing body and we follow federal law,” the NCAA president, Charlie Baker, told Republican senators at a hearing in December. “Clarity on this issue at the federal level would be very helpful.”

The trans community has already seen the effects of the barrage of attacks on their rights. Following Trump’s orders, several hospitals across the US stopped providing care for transgender youth.

Prisons have likewise isolated transgender women in custody, telling them that they will be transferred to men’s prisons after losing access to gender-affirming medical treatments.

Olivia Hunt, of the group Advocates for Trans Equality, told Britain’s Sky News: “For the past two weeks the trans community across the United States has seen unending attacks from this administration on all aspects of our rights and daily lives. And seeing this attack, like the others, knowing it’s going to be very long on hostile rhetoric and inflammatory language and very short on clear, actionable policies, it’s always very concerning … especially when it’s targeted at a relatively small and already marginalized community across the country.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting

As Donald Trump seeks to block transgender youth healthcare across the country, California’s attorney general has sent a clear message to providers, reminding them of their duty to provide gender-affirming treatment under the state’s nondiscrimination laws.

“The law requires [hospitals] to continue to provide gender-affirming care to our transgender community,” Rob Bonta, a Democrat who heads the California justice department, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “We will have the transgender community’s back. We will fight for their rights, for their protections, for their freedoms.”

His comments come a week after Trump issued an executive order decreeing that medical institutions that receive federal funding and grants do not provide gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy and puberty blockers, to youth under age 19.

In response, some hospitals have paused treatments, which are considered part of the standards of care for gender dysphoria endorsed by all major US medical associations. Trans patients, their families and civil rights groups have said the interruption of care could have dire consequences for patients’ physical and mental health. They’ve also argued that Trump’s order is unlawful, violating patients’ constitutional rights and parental rights, and that hospitals have no legal obligation to preemptively deny care, particularly while the policy is being challenged in court.

More than half of US states have already passed laws in recent years restricting gender-affirming healthcare for youth, but Trump’s order has led institutions in progressive states, including New York and California, to cancel care.

On Tuesday, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), a major local provider, said it was pausing the initiation of hormone treatments for trans youth. The hospital told the LA Times it was not starting new patients’ gender-affirming care while it evaluated Trump’s order “to fully understand its implications”, but said treatment for existing patients would continue.

On Wednesday, Bonta wrote a letter to CHLA warning that “withholding services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria” would violate the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, a longstanding law that prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.

CHLA did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. An official told the Los Angeles Times it was continuing hormone therapy and puberty blockers for cisgender youth prescribed the treatments for other medical needs – a move Bonta said illustrates how the institution was discriminating against trans patients. Some cisgender youth with delayed puberty, for example, are prescribed hormones.

“The Unruh Act does not allow you to provide care to cisgender patients while withholding it from transgender patients,” Bonta said in the interview.

If providers such as CHLA continue to deny care, his office could take legal action, seeking a court injunction that compels institutions to comply with the state’s civil rights laws, he said, noting violations can lead to monetary penalties.

The state previously sued a gym that barred a trans woman from the women’s locker room under the Unruh Act, and in 2021, she won damages.

Withholding gender-affirming care could also violate nondiscrimination protections in the federal Affordable Care Act, he said.

Bonta’s letter further noted that he and 22 other attorneys general sued to block Trump’s order, and that a court ruling has temporarily blocked federal agencies from taking any action to withhold funding from institutions that provide gender-affirming care.

New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, also sent a warning to hospitals earlier this week that the law compels them to provide gender-affirming care.

Institutions and providers who offer gender-affirming treatment and abortion care have been facing immense pressure and scrutiny as Trump and Republican leaders across the country seek to erode their rights. Bonta said California would continue to defend doctors in the face of threats: “We will do everything in our power to use the full force of the law and the full authority of the office to make sure that both providers of gender-affirming care and patients are protected.”

Bonta spoke to the Guardian shortly after Trump announced an executive order seeking to ban trans female athletes from women’s sports and directing state attorneys general to identify enforcement best practices.

“I’m disappointed, but there’s no surprise. We’re ready,” Bonta said of the sports order. He said he would be assessing the impact on the state and what actions could be taken to challenge it, but added that revoking trans athletes’ rights at the federal level would not undo California nondiscrimination regulations: “State laws protecting trans athletes will remain.”

Trump’s efforts to erode trans youth care – part of a series of broad attacks on LGBTQ+ rights in his first weeks in office – have already had far-reaching consequences for families, advocates said. Trans youth and their parents, represented by the ACLU and Lambda Legal, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging Trump’s order, outlining how the abrupt interruption of care had devastated youth who depend on the treatment.

Kristen Chapman, a plaintiff and mother of a 17-year-old trans girl, had moved to Virginia to help her daughter access care after Republican lawmakers in her home state of Tennessee outlawed youth gender-affirming treatment. After a long struggle to schedule an appointment, her daughter was due to be seen on 29 January. But hours before, the hospital canceled, due to Trump’s order signed the day prior, she said in a statement: “I thought Virginia would be a safe place for me and my daughter. Instead, I am heartbroken, tired, and scared.”

Bonta said defending trans youth remained a top priority. He said: “When you see children being harmed, being attacked by federal action, the stakes are high. This is targeting certain communities based on who they are and their ability to live their own authentic lives … This is about their rights and freedoms to seek healthcare based on who they are. These are fundamental protections. That’s why we’re acting urgently and aggressively.”

Alphabet’s Google is scrapping its goal to hire more employees from historically underrepresented groups and is reviewing some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

With this, Google joins a slew of US businesses, particularly in Silicon Valley, that have been scaling back their diversity initiatives, years after pushing for more inclusive policies after protests against the police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

The company issued a statement after the news broke: “We’re committed to creating a workplace where all our employees can succeed and have equal opportunities, and over the last year we’ve been reviewing our programs designed to help us get there. We’ve updated our 10-k language to reflect this, and as a federal contractor, our teams are also evaluating changes required following recent court decisions and executive orders on this topic.”

Alphabet’s annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday showed it omitted a line saying it was “committed to making diversity, equity and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve”. That statement had appeared in annual reports from 2021 to 2023.

Google told employees it was reviewing recent court decisions and executive orders by Donald Trump aimed at curbing DEI in the government and federal contractors.

Google’s head of HR, Fiona Cicconi, said in a memo published by the Verge: “For example, in 2020, we set aspirational hiring goals and focused on growing our offices outside California and New York to improve representation … In the future we will no longer have aspirational goals.”

Earlier this month, Facebook parent Meta Platforms said in an internal memo it was ending its DEI programs, including those for hiring, training and picking suppliers.

Amazon also said it was “winding down outdated programs and materials” related to representation and inclusion, in a memo to its employees, seen by Reuters.

Conservative groups, fortified by a 2023 US supreme court ruling that invalidated affirmative action in university admissions, have condemned DEI programs and have threatened litigation against companies implementing them.

Earlier this month, Elon Musk and other allies of Trump attributed DEI programs as an impediment to the response efforts for the severe wildfires in Los Angeles.

Some Republican senators have begun voicing muted alarm over Elon Musk’s aggressive intrusion into the US federal government, which has triggered Democratic accusations of a coup.

Musk has provoked opposition outrage after forcing access to the government’s payments and personnel system for his self-styled “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a body established by Donald Trump ostensibly to target waste and save money but which lacks congressional authority or oversight.

In his most brazen act, the multibillionaire Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur has gutted and claimed to have abolished USAid, the foreign assistance agency that employs thousands and can supposedly only be closed by an act of Congress.

He and his team – which includes people as young as 19 – have also gained entry to the federal payments system, which shows the spending of trillions of dollars of government money. Critics say this gives Musk the power to cancel or slash public spending, while protecting lucrative contracts his companies have with the government.

While no Republican figure has explicitly denounced Musk, several have questioned his legal authority to shutter a government agency. Others say they would restrain him if he oversteps his authority – though Democrats insist he already has.

“The president is suggesting that [Musk] has authorisation. I think there is more than some question,” Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator for Alaska known as a moderate, told the Hill.

Susan Collins of Maine, another Republican senator considered to be moderate and who is chair of the Senate appropriations committee – which oversees USAid’s funding – said it was “a very legitimate question” to ask if Musk had authority to close the agency.

“There is a requirement in the law for 15 days’ notice of any reorganisation. We clearly did not get that. We got the letter yesterday,” she said.

“[The law] also calls for a detailed explanation of any reorganisations, renaming of bureaus, shifting of centres — and again, we have not received that.”

Thom Tillis, a senator for North Carolina, said shutting down a federal body such as USAid would violate the constitution. “It would be helpful” if Trump or Musk sought congressional approval before ordering such drastic changes, he said.

“At some point, it’s going to require congressional action to have staying power,” he told Semafor, while praising Musk for “coming up with good ideas”.

“I can see things where Musk could go too far. We could say, ‘Great idea. It doesn’t work in a public institution.’”

Musk has called USAid “evil” and “a criminal organisation” while bragging that he had been “feeding [it] to the wood chipper”. Meanwhile, the new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced that he is now the agency’s acting director pending its takeover by the state department.

John Thune, the Republican leader in the Senate, insisted that Musk had not closed the agency but merely paused operations to examine its spending. “I don’t think they’re closing an agency, but I do think they have the right to review funding and how those decisions are made and what priorities are being funded,” he said.

While scepticism about foreign aid is widespread in GOP circles, some argued that abandoning the field entirely would surrender US soft power to China.

“I have felt for a long time that USAid is our way to combat the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, which is China’s effort to really gain influence around the world, including Africa, South America and the western hemisphere,” said Roger Wicker, a Republican senator for Mississippi. “We need an aid program to match the Chinese effort.”

Underpinning Republican disquiet is Congress’s jealously guarded “power of the purse”, the authority given by the US constitution to the Senate and House of Representatives to control budget and spending decisions. Trump has indicated his intention to challenge this by asserting the right to impound congressionally authorised funds – an approach Musk’s actions graphically illustrate.

“We do have to really make sure that the spending and the appropriation and the power of the purse remains with the House and Senate,” said Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican senator for West Virginia. “Any encroachment on that, I think we should, as a body, stand up and resist.”

Democrats have gone much further, accusing Musk of provoking a “constitutional crisis”.

Chuck Schumer, the party’s leader in the Senate, vowed to introduce legislation to prevent “unlawful meddling” by Musk and his Doge cohort in the country’s payment system.

“Whatever Doge is doing, it is certainly not what democracy looks like, or has ever looked like in the grand history of this country, because democracy does not work in the shadows, democracy does not skirt the rule of law,” he said in a Senate floor speech.

The director of Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard, has responded to the controversial unearthed tweets of his Oscar-nominated star Karla Sofía Gascón, branding them “hateful”.

The French film-maker, who is also nominated for the best director Oscar, has expressed disappointment over the social media behaviour of Gascón, who had shown bigoted views towards people of colour, Muslims and increased diversity at the Oscars.

“It’s very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla Sofía,” he said in an interview with Deadline. “The trust we shared, the exceptional atmosphere that we had on the set that was indeed based on trust. And when you have that kind of relationship and suddenly you read something that that person has said, things that are absolutely hateful and worthy of being hated, of course that relationship is affected. It’s as if you fall into a hole. Because what Karla Sofía said is inexcusable.”

When asked if he has spoken to her since, he responded: “I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to. She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing.”

Since the tweets were discovered last week, Gascón has been on the attack with multiple statements and an hour-long interview. While she has admitted to being “deeply sorry” she has also called out a “campaign of hate and misinformation” that has led to her being “harassed”.

“She’s really playing the victim,” Audiard said. “She’s talking about herself as a victim, which is surprising. It’s as if she thought that words don’t hurt.”

After its Cannes premiere, the crime musical Emilia Pérez was picked up by Netflix and since became the most nominated non-English language film of all time at the Oscars, scoring 13 nods including for Gascón as best actress. She became the first out transgender actor to be nominated.

While Netflix has yet to make an official comment, it has been reported that the streamer is trying to push Gascón out of any remaining campaign advertising and event appearances.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg has claimed that “tensions are said to be high” between the actor and Netflix and that she will not be flying to Los Angeles for a long list of events and ceremonies this week anymore.

Audiard has said that while he will still participate in events, “there is a sadness” now attached to proceedings.

In the same interview, he also spoke again about criticisms from many in Mexico over the film being viewed as an inauthentic depiction made by foreigners. “What shocked me is that either people haven’t seen the film properly, or they haven’t seen it at all and are acting in bad faith,” he said before later adding: “This is an opera, not a criticism of anything about Mexico.”

Gascón’s co-star Zoe Saldaña, who is the favourite to win best supporting actress for her performance, has also since addressed Gascón’s tweets. “It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group,” she said at an event last week. “I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that was a part, that is a part, of this film, and my experience and my interactions with them was about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural and gender equity. And it just saddens me.”

In some of the many tweets that were unearthed, Gascón called Islam “a hotbed for infection for humanity that urgently need to be cured” and spoke of diversity turning the Oscars into an “ugly” cross between “an Afro-Korean festival” and a “Black Lives Matter demonstration”.

The Oscars will take place on 2 March.

The director of Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard, has responded to the controversial unearthed tweets of his Oscar-nominated star Karla Sofía Gascón, branding them “hateful”.

The French film-maker, who is also nominated for the best director Oscar, has expressed disappointment over the social media behaviour of Gascón, who had shown bigoted views towards people of colour, Muslims and increased diversity at the Oscars.

“It’s very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla Sofía,” he said in an interview with Deadline. “The trust we shared, the exceptional atmosphere that we had on the set that was indeed based on trust. And when you have that kind of relationship and suddenly you read something that that person has said, things that are absolutely hateful and worthy of being hated, of course that relationship is affected. It’s as if you fall into a hole. Because what Karla Sofía said is inexcusable.”

When asked if he has spoken to her since, he responded: “I haven’t spoken to her, and I don’t want to. She is in a self-destructive approach that I can’t interfere in, and I really don’t understand why she’s continuing.”

Since the tweets were discovered last week, Gascón has been on the attack with multiple statements and an hour-long interview. While she has admitted to being “deeply sorry” she has also called out a “campaign of hate and misinformation” that has led to her being “harassed”.

“She’s really playing the victim,” Audiard said. “She’s talking about herself as a victim, which is surprising. It’s as if she thought that words don’t hurt.”

After its Cannes premiere, the crime musical Emilia Pérez was picked up by Netflix and since became the most nominated non-English language film of all time at the Oscars, scoring 13 nods including for Gascón as best actress. She became the first out transgender actor to be nominated.

While Netflix has yet to make an official comment, it has been reported that the streamer is trying to push Gascón out of any remaining campaign advertising and event appearances.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg has claimed that “tensions are said to be high” between the actor and Netflix and that she will not be flying to Los Angeles for a long list of events and ceremonies this week anymore.

Audiard has said that while he will still participate in events, “there is a sadness” now attached to proceedings.

In the same interview, he also spoke again about criticisms from many in Mexico over the film being viewed as an inauthentic depiction made by foreigners. “What shocked me is that either people haven’t seen the film properly, or they haven’t seen it at all and are acting in bad faith,” he said before later adding: “This is an opera, not a criticism of anything about Mexico.”

Gascón’s co-star Zoe Saldaña, who is the favourite to win best supporting actress for her performance, has also since addressed Gascón’s tweets. “It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric towards people of any group,” she said at an event last week. “I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that was a part, that is a part, of this film, and my experience and my interactions with them was about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural and gender equity. And it just saddens me.”

In some of the many tweets that were unearthed, Gascón called Islam “a hotbed for infection for humanity that urgently need to be cured” and spoke of diversity turning the Oscars into an “ugly” cross between “an Afro-Korean festival” and a “Black Lives Matter demonstration”.

The Oscars will take place on 2 March.

Rebels of the M23 armed group and allied Rwandan forces have launched a new offensive in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), days before the Rwandan and Congolese presidents are due to attend a crisis summit.

The UN said the battle for the key city of Goma, which M23 and Rwandan troops seized last week, had left at least 2,900 people dead – far higher than the previous death toll of 900.

Breaking a ceasefire they had declared unilaterally – and which had been due to come into effect on Tuesday – M23 fighters and Rwandan troops seized a mining town in South Kivu province, resuming their advance towards the provincial capital, Bukavu.

Intense clashes broke out at dawn on Wednesday around Nyabibwe, about 100km (60 miles) from Bukavu and 70km from the province’s airport.

The M23 had said in declaring the ceasefire that it had “no intention of taking control of Bukavu or other localities”.

“This is proof that the unilateral ceasefire that has been declared was, as usual, a ploy,” Patrick Muyaya, the Congolese government spokesperson told AFP.

In more than three years of fighting between the Rwanda-backed group and the Congolese army, half a dozen ceasefires and truces have been declared, but all have been unceremoniously broken.

Local and military sources said in recent days that all sides were reinforcing troops and equipment in the region.

Last week’s capture of Goma was a major escalation in the mineral-rich region, which has been scarred by relentless conflict involving dozens of armed groups over three decades.

As Goma counted its dead, Vivian van de Perre, the deputy chief of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), gave an updated toll from the battle for the city.

“So far, 2,000 bodies have been collected from the Goma streets in recent days, and 900 bodies remain in the morgues of the Goma hospitals,” she told a video news conference, saying the toll could still rise.

International criminal court prosecutors said in a statement they were “closely following” events in the eastern DRC, “including the grave escalation of violence over the past weeks”.

In Bukavu, a city of one million people that residents fear will become the next battleground, a crowd gathered for an ecumenical prayer service for peace, organised by local women.

“We are tired of the non-stop wars. We want peace,” Jacqueline Ngengele, one of those who attended, told AFP.

The president of DRC, Félix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, are due to attend a joint summit of the eight-country East African Community and 16-member Southern African Development Community in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam on Saturday.

A day earlier, the UN Human Rights Council will convene a special session on the crisis, at the DRC’s request.

Fears the violence could lead to a wider conflict have galvanised regional bodies, mediators such as Angola and Kenya, as well as the UN, EU and other countries in diplomatic efforts for a peaceful resolution.

But the DRC’s top diplomat accused the international community of being all talk and no action on the conflict.

“We see a lot of declarations but we don’t see actions,” foreign minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner told journalists in Brussels.

Wary of the crisis spilling over,several neighbouring countries have already said they are bolstering their defences.

A UN expert report said last year that Rwanda had up to 4,000 troops in the DRC, seeking to profit from its vast mineral wealth, and that Rwanda has “de facto” control over the M23.

The eastern DRC has deposits of coltan, a metallic ore that is vital in making phones and laptops, as well as gold and other minerals.

Rwanda has never explicitly admitted to military involvement in support of the M23 and alleges that the DRC supports and shelters the FDLR, an armed group created by ethnic Hutus who massacred Tutsis during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s party appears poised to win Delhi state elections, a victory that would end a 27-year drought, according to voter exit polls.

If the projections hold, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is set to end the reformist Aam Aadmi party’s (AAP) nearly decade-long rule in the national capital region and reclaim the Delhi assembly.

A composite “poll of polls” placed the pro-Hindu BJP party at 43 seats, with AAP trailing at 26. The secular Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, was projected to win just one seat in a state that was once a stronghold for it. Some individual polls, though, suggested a much tighter contest and the AAP insisted the exit polls were wrong.

“Exit polls have never been right about the AAP. Every time, the AAP has stormed to power with a massive mandate, and this time will be no different,” AAP spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar said. In 2020, the AAP won 62 of the 70 assembly seats with the BJP capturing the remaining eight.

A defeat for the AAP would mark a massive setback for the anti-establishment party and its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, an activist whose anti-corruption drive helped sweep him to power in 2015 in Delhi and who has been seeking to extend the party’s presence nationally.

Kejriwal founded the party in 2012, presenting it as a crusade for the aam aadmi, or common man, and promising to improve basic services from health and electricity to water and education.

Kejriwal, whose party’s symbol is a broom, has been a vociferous critic of Modi, who has been equally scathing in return. The prime minister campaigned hard against the AAP ahead of the Delhi election, speaking at many rallies.

The BJP’s forecast win would be another fillip for the party after a relatively underwhelming performance in the May 2024 general elections, where it fell short of winning an outright majority in parliament. It formed a government with coalition partners.

Now, after scoring victories in the states of Maharashtra and Haryana since the national elections, the BJP’s fortunes could be decisively on the upswing. The official results are due on Saturday.

During the campaign, all three parties aggressively wooed voters with promises of freebies – from free water and electricity to cash incentives.

The AAP’s governance model is based on popular public welfare schemes that won wide support. The AAP also promoted itself as a “squeaky clean” political alternative to the BJP and Congress.

But its second term was thrown into turmoil by corruption allegations that saw Kejriwal, who was chief minister, and his two closest ministers jailed for long stretches.

The arrests stemmed from a so-called liquor scam in which the AAP was accused of accepting kickbacks in a now-scrapped excise policy. India’s central government investigation agencies alleged liquor businesses funnelled bribes to AAP leaders.

AAP denied the charges and said the BJP was waging a political vendetta. But the allegations, along with the construction of a lavish chief minister’s residence that the BJP dubbed the Sheeshmahal – Palace of Mirrors – dented the party’s standing with voters.

Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has followed Donald Trump’s example and announced that Argentina will also leave the World Health Organization (WHO).

Milei attributed his decision to the WHO’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic, which he described as a “caveman quarantine that involved … one of the most outlandish crimes against humanity in history”.

The decision on Wednesday prompted immediate criticism from the opposition and health organisations who fear that withdrawing from the WHO will reduce the country’s access to funding.

A self-declared “anarcho-capitalist”, Milei is a prominent fan of Trump, who within hours of his 20 January inauguration signed an order for the United States to withdraw from the WHO, which he also has criticized for its handling of the pandemic.

“We have decided to leave such a harmful organisation, which was the executing arm of what was the largest social-control experiment in history,” wrote Milei on social media.

But critics said that the decision was not Milei’s to make, as such a move would require approval by congress. “In Argentina, the relationship with the WHO is part of a law, and therefore, in order to withdraw, another law should be approved,” said Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, professor of international relations at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Milei’s spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, argued that the decision would not result in a loss of funding for the country.

But health institutions such as the NGO Soberanía Sanitaria, which works to improve public access to healthcare services, said the move would directly “impact access to revolving and strategic funds for the purchase of essential medical technologies and supplies”.

Also on Wednesday, the presidential office announced that Milei had taken the decision to ban gender change treatments and surgeries for minors, as well as impose limits on trans women being housed inside women’s prisons.

In a press conference, presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni said the ban would include hormone therapy and followed similar pushbacks in legislation on trans rights in countries such as the UK, Sweden, Finland and the US, and sought to protect children’s mental health.

The announcement comes days after thousands of Argentines protested in favour of LGBTQ+ rights after Milei made a speech in Davos, Switzerland, in which he questioned “feminism, diversity, inclusion, abortion, environmentalism and gender ideology”, calling progressive policies a “cancer that must be extirpated.”

Trump has also launched a slew of moves rolling back the rights of trans people, including banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports and signing an executive order calling for the federal government to define sex as “only male or female” based on reproductive cells.

Milei has frequently voiced criticism of international bodies, but many critics interpreted Wednesday’s decision to withdraw from the WHO as an attempt to align himself even more closely with the US president.

“With Argentina’s departure from the WHO, Milei becomes Trump’s total puppet,” wrote congressman Gabriel Solano on social media.

“Milei wants to imitate Trump and do what the US does,” said Alejandro Frenkel, professor of international relations at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires.

Following Trump’s lead, the libertarian has also announced plans to leave the Paris climate agreement and build a 200m wire fence along the border with Bolivia to curb immigration.

Frenkel believes there are risks in “trying to do the same as a world’s leading power when Argentina is a peripheral country on the global stage … The US has other resources that might allow it to be self-sufficient in some areas, which countries like Argentina do not have,” he said.

In November, Milei visited Palm Beach, Florida, and became the first foreign leader to meet with Trump after his election victory. The Argentinian was one of three Latin American presidents to attend Trump’s inauguration at the Capitol, alongside El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa.

Tokatlian cautioned that Milei might be overestimating what Trump has to offer in return. “Argentina has so many vulnerabilities. Does this government think it will solve them by getting closer to Washington? Washington has shown it doesn’t care much whether it’s a friend, an enemy, a partner, or not,” he said.

“It’s worth remembering that, in his first term, Trump imposed tariffs on Argentina for steel and aluminium … He doesn’t care if you’re an ally or an opponent. Trump will continue with his style,” said Tokatlian.

Since taking office, Milei has implemented a series of austerity measures in state healthcare, the latest of which included 1,400 layoffs at the ministry of health in January – among them, 30% of the vaccine directorate staff, and 40% of the HIV, hepatitis and tuberculosis response directorate team.

Reuters contributed to this story

Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has followed Donald Trump’s example and announced that Argentina will also leave the World Health Organization (WHO).

Milei attributed his decision to the WHO’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic, which he described as a “caveman quarantine that involved … one of the most outlandish crimes against humanity in history”.

The decision on Wednesday prompted immediate criticism from the opposition and health organisations who fear that withdrawing from the WHO will reduce the country’s access to funding.

A self-declared “anarcho-capitalist”, Milei is a prominent fan of Trump, who within hours of his 20 January inauguration signed an order for the United States to withdraw from the WHO, which he also has criticized for its handling of the pandemic.

“We have decided to leave such a harmful organisation, which was the executing arm of what was the largest social-control experiment in history,” wrote Milei on social media.

But critics said that the decision was not Milei’s to make, as such a move would require approval by congress. “In Argentina, the relationship with the WHO is part of a law, and therefore, in order to withdraw, another law should be approved,” said Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, professor of international relations at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Milei’s spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, argued that the decision would not result in a loss of funding for the country.

But health institutions such as the NGO Soberanía Sanitaria, which works to improve public access to healthcare services, said the move would directly “impact access to revolving and strategic funds for the purchase of essential medical technologies and supplies”.

Also on Wednesday, the presidential office announced that Milei had taken the decision to ban gender change treatments and surgeries for minors, as well as impose limits on trans women being housed inside women’s prisons.

In a press conference, presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni said the ban would include hormone therapy and followed similar pushbacks in legislation on trans rights in countries such as the UK, Sweden, Finland and the US, and sought to protect children’s mental health.

The announcement comes days after thousands of Argentines protested in favour of LGBTQ+ rights after Milei made a speech in Davos, Switzerland, in which he questioned “feminism, diversity, inclusion, abortion, environmentalism and gender ideology”, calling progressive policies a “cancer that must be extirpated.”

Trump has also launched a slew of moves rolling back the rights of trans people, including banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports and signing an executive order calling for the federal government to define sex as “only male or female” based on reproductive cells.

Milei has frequently voiced criticism of international bodies, but many critics interpreted Wednesday’s decision to withdraw from the WHO as an attempt to align himself even more closely with the US president.

“With Argentina’s departure from the WHO, Milei becomes Trump’s total puppet,” wrote congressman Gabriel Solano on social media.

“Milei wants to imitate Trump and do what the US does,” said Alejandro Frenkel, professor of international relations at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires.

Following Trump’s lead, the libertarian has also announced plans to leave the Paris climate agreement and build a 200m wire fence along the border with Bolivia to curb immigration.

Frenkel believes there are risks in “trying to do the same as a world’s leading power when Argentina is a peripheral country on the global stage … The US has other resources that might allow it to be self-sufficient in some areas, which countries like Argentina do not have,” he said.

In November, Milei visited Palm Beach, Florida, and became the first foreign leader to meet with Trump after his election victory. The Argentinian was one of three Latin American presidents to attend Trump’s inauguration at the Capitol, alongside El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa.

Tokatlian cautioned that Milei might be overestimating what Trump has to offer in return. “Argentina has so many vulnerabilities. Does this government think it will solve them by getting closer to Washington? Washington has shown it doesn’t care much whether it’s a friend, an enemy, a partner, or not,” he said.

“It’s worth remembering that, in his first term, Trump imposed tariffs on Argentina for steel and aluminium … He doesn’t care if you’re an ally or an opponent. Trump will continue with his style,” said Tokatlian.

Since taking office, Milei has implemented a series of austerity measures in state healthcare, the latest of which included 1,400 layoffs at the ministry of health in January – among them, 30% of the vaccine directorate staff, and 40% of the HIV, hepatitis and tuberculosis response directorate team.

Reuters contributed to this story

Grenfell Tower is to be demolished, bereaved families are understood to have been told by Angela Rayner.

Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, met relatives and survivors on Wednesday evening and “announced the decision that the tower will have to be carefully deconstructed”, according to a spokesperson for Grenfell Next of Kin.

More details are expected to be given by the government this week. Previously, it said there would be no changes to the site before the eighth anniversary of the disaster, which claimed 72 lives in June 2017.

Concerns have been raised over how many loved ones were spoken to before the new decision was taken. Many families have said that the structure should remain in place until there are criminal prosecutions over the failings that led to the fire. The near decade-long wait for justice has been described as “unbearable” by some.

Grenfell United, which represents some of the survivors and bereaved families of the disaster, said on Wednesday evening that the voices of the bereaved were being ignored.

“We’ve said this to every secretary of state for housing since the very beginning: consult the bereaved and survivors meaningfully before reaching a decision on the tower,” the group said.

“Angela Rayner could not give a reason for her decision to demolish the tower.”

What remains of the tower has stood in place since 2017, with a covering on the building featuring a large green heart accompanied by the words “forever in our hearts”.

A government spokesperson said: “The priority for the deputy prime minister is to meet with and write to the bereaved, survivors and the immediate community to let them know her decision on the future of the Grenfell Tower.

“This is a deeply personal matter for all those affected, and the deputy prime minister is committed to keeping their voice at the heart of this.”

The final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, published in September, concluded the disaster was the result of “decades of failure” by the government and the construction industry to act on the dangers of flammable materials on high-rise buildings.

The west London tower block was covered in combustible products because of the “systematic dishonesty” of firms that made and sold the cladding and insulation, the inquiry chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, said.

The “simple truth” was that all the deaths were avoidable and that those who lived in the tower were “badly failed” by authorities, Moore-Bick said. “In most cases through incompetence but, in some cases, through dishonesty and greed,” he added.

In May 2024, prosecutors and police said investigators would need until the end of 2025 to complete their inquiry, with final decisions on potential criminal charges by the end of 2026.

Separately to the inquiry, the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission has been consulting on plans for a permanent memorial in the area of the tower. It set out recommendations for a “sacred space”, designed to be a “peaceful place for remembering and reflecting”, in a 2023 report.

The commission said it expects the memorial design to be sufficiently developed to enable a planning application to be submitted in late 2026, with a shortlist of five potential designs for it being drawn last month.

Rahim al-Hussaini, 53, has been named the new Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of millions of Ismaili Muslims, after the death of his father, the Ismaili community has announced.

The Aga Khan V, the 50th hereditary imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, was designated in his father’s will “in accordance with historical Shia Imami Ismaili Muslim tradition and practice”, the community said on its website.

His father, Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV, known for his fabulous wealth and development work around the world, died on Tuesday in Lisbon at the age of 88.

The Aga Khan is considered by his followers to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad and is treated as a head of state and accorded nearly divine status by the Ismaili community, whose website says it numbers 12 to 15 million people.

Born in October 1971, the new Aga Khan is the eldest son and the second of three children born to his father and Sarah Croker Poole, a British model. The couple divorced in 1995 and the Aga Khan IV later married Gabriele Thyssen, a German singer.

Prince Rahim grew up between Geneva and Paris, spent his winters in Saint-Moritz and summers in Sardinia, studied literature at Brown University in the US and business in Barcelona, and then joined the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN).

The AKDN, the Aga Khan’s main philanthropic organisation, deals mainly with issues of healthcare, housing, education and rural economic development, working in more than 30 countries with an annual budget of about $1bn for nonprofit development.

Founded in 1967, the group of international development agencies employs 80,000 people and has helped to build schools and hospitals and provide electricity for millions of people in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia.

Prince Rahim serves on the boards of several of the network’s agencies, reportedly following particularly the work of the Institute of Ismaili Studies and the Ismaili community’s social governance institutions.

He married Kendra Spears, a model, in 2013, with whom he had two sons born in 2015 and 2017. The couple divorced in 2022. He inherits a fortune that is hard to measure, with some reports estimating his father’s personal wealth in the billions.

The Ismailis, a sect originally predominant in India but which expanded to large communities in east Africa, central and south Asia and the Middle East, consider it a duty to tithe up to 12.5% of their income to the Aga Khan.

• A person died setting off an explosion at an army recruitment centre in western Ukraine on Wednesday, officials said, amid a string of attacks against the mobilisation effort. The explosion at the Kamianets-Podilsky recruitment centre wounded four other people, said Sergiy Tyurin, the regional administrator. Ukrainian police said it was the ninth such attack on a recruitment centre this year, and alleged the perpetrator had been recruited by Russian agents. In all cases, the perpetrators had been detained. A person who set off a blast on Saturday at a draft centre in Rivne, north-west Ukraine, was also killed in the explosion, with six others wounded, police said. Also on Saturday, a man with a hunting rifle shot dead a Ukrainian army recruitment soldier and escaped with a conscript before both were caught by police.

• Russia and Ukraine each said on Wednesday that 150 of their captured soldiers had been returned in a prisoner-of-war exchange. “Some of the guys had been in captivity for more than two years,” said the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russia confirmed the swap, mediated by the United Arab Emirates, which has helped broker many such exchanges.

• Ukraine’s military will create robotic vehicle units to deploy at the front, the defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said on Wednesday. “Our goal is to create a military where innovative technologies help perform the most dangerous tasks, saving the lives of our defenders,” he said. The ministry published a photograph of a robotic vehicle with a gun mounted on it. With both sides deploying tens of thousands of airborne drones each month, a race is on to replace as many soldiers on the ground as possible with unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), officials say.

• Russian attacks on Wednesday killed two people near the frontline in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and one near the Black Sea port of Odesa, officials said.
  Emergency services said a house was shelled in the town of Druzhkivka, south of the city of Kramatorsk in Donetsk region, killing two people. The Odesa regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said a missile attack killed one man and badly injured another outside an unfinished building near the port.

• Germany is investigating whether vandalism aimed at hundreds of cars that was widely blamed on climate activists may have been a Russian pre-election campaign seeking to smear the Greens party. No German prosecutors or officials have confirmed that Russia is thought to be behind the campaign, but the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, a Green, said: “Whoever stands against Russia’s illegal war of aggression comes into the crosshairs of the Kremlin and its henchmen.” Prosecutors in the southern city of Ulm said four people aged between 17 and 29, from countries including Romania, Serbia and Bosnia were suspected of involvement in more than 100 incidents in which car exhaust pipes were blocked with self-hardening industrial spray foam.

• The US vice-president, JD Vance, will be at the Munich security conference next week where discussions will be held focused on national security issues, including Russia’s war in Ukraine.

• The leading French newspaper Le Monde on Wednesday denounced the “disguised expulsion” of its Moscow correspondent Benjamin Quenelle, after his press accreditation was revoked. Since starting the war, the Kremlin has thrown domestic journalists and several western reporters in jail and severely restricted war coverage. Le Monde’s editorial director, Jerome Fenoglio, said: “This arbitrary decision constitutes a new obstacle to the freedom of the press in the country … Even in the tensest moments of the cold war, Le Monde pursued its work in Moscow and beyond.” Russia’s foreign ministry said it was in retaliation for France’s refusal to issue press visas to journalists from Komsomolskaya Pravda whom Paris accuses of being Russian agents.

Thousands gathered at the US Capitol on Wednesday after the shock announcement on Tuesday evening that the US Agency for International Development (USAid) was putting nearly all of its employees on leave and recalling thousands of officers from their postings abroad.

The news came only days after nearly a thousand contractors were laid off or furloughed, the USAid website was taken down, and its X account was deleted.

Protesters gathered near the Capitol under chilly, overcast skies and chanted: “Let us work!” and “USAid! USAid!”

“We are in a very, very dire place,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a top USAid health official under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, told the crowd. “The attempt to kill USAid will kill people.”

Competitors such as Russia and China were cheering this decision, he added.

His voice rose as he addressed members of Congress in the halls behind him – especially lawmakers, he said, who had supported the agency and its work for years.

“You know that what is being said about USAid is not true,” Konyndyk said. “Speak up! Where are you?”

“This is a dictatorship in the making,” Ed Markey, a senator from Massachusetts, told the crowd. “This is an example” of what the Trump administration can do to agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), he said.

“We are the moral force of the world,” Markey said. “The only way to take back our government is to take to the streets by the millions to demand justice, not just for our country but for people around the world.”

Nearly all of USAid’s work, which includes preventing HIV and famine as well as rebuilding nations after conflict and improving education, was halted unexpectedly on 24 January for a 90-day review.

Experts say the erasure of the agency is a test run for the Trump administration, which has also put agencies such as the Department of Education and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in its crosshairs.

“This is showing that you can do a slash-and-burn to the American governmental apparatus, including foreign aid,” Joia Mukherjee, chief medical officer of the non-profit Partners in Health, told the Guardian.

While USAid has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past, it’s now a target for conservatives. But Mukherjee said that nothing about aid work had changed in Washington.

“I think the fidelity to Trump changed,” she said. Members of Congress are “afraid of Trump”, she added. “This is just a loyalty test.”

Pete Marocco, who was allegedly photographed and filmed at the January 6 riots, appeared to threaten aid workers with military action if they didn’t comply with evacuation orders, according to a source at USAid who read the recall letter.

Marocco was named deputy administrator of USAid on Monday by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio. That position needs confirmation by the US Senate before being filled.

Rubio seized control of the agency to fold it into the state department after alleging that officials at the agency had been too “independent”, Rubio told reporters on Monday.

The aid agency was founded in 1961, but was enshrined into law as an independent agency by Congress in 1998. Only lawmakers have the power to dismantle or move it.

“What’s happening is unconstitutional and illegal,” said Sharon Baker, who worked on grants and contracts for USAid for 11 years before retiring.

“It’s enormous – it affects all Americans,” she said, before adding of USAid staff: “In global emergencies, they’re the first responders. [After earthquakes and tsunamis], they’re the ones who are there first. You see airplanes offloading supplies that say ‘from the American people’.”

The move to stop work and dissolve the agency into the state department without direction from Congress is unprecedented, said one contractor who worked for USAid for 20 years before being furloughed last week.

“It puts us and the world in danger in a way it never has before,” said the contractor, who requested anonymity to protect their job.

“I think this is Project 2025 in action. They’re doing what they said they would do.”

The stop-work order is “the most catastrophic thing we’ve seen in foreign aid since we started working on famine in Ethiopia in the 80s”, said Crickett Nicovich, who works for the non-profit Results.

“Congress needs to stand up and defend USAid. Conservatives have told us that they care about these issues for years,” Nicovich said.

“Without them pushing back, this dismantling of programs is costing hundreds of thousands of lives around the world.”