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      Trump executive order on Smithsonian targets funding for ‘improper ideology’

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      Donald Trump revealed his intentions to reshape the Smithsonian Institution with an executive order on Thursday that targets funding to programs with “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology”.The president said there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite US history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth”.He signed an executive order putting JD Vance in charge of an effort to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.Trump’s order specifically names the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Women’s history museum, which is in development.“Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn – not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” the order said.Representatives for the Smithsonian did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. It consists of 21 museums and the National Zoo. Eleven museums are located along the National Mall in Washington.The institution was established with funds from James Smithson, a British scientist who left his estate to the United States to found “at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge”.On Thursday, Trump also created the “DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force” by executive order. It will be chaired by Stephen Miller, the US homeland security adviser.According to the order, the task force will coordinate with local officials on such things as enforcing federal immigration law, including deporting people living illegally in the city, boost the law enforcement presence, and increase the speed and lower the cost of processing applications to carry concealed weapons.The order also calls for removing graffiti and taking other steps to beautify the city.Trump has talked often about his desire to make the city safer and prettier. More

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      Trump is interested in joining the Commonwealth. It’s not up to him – or even the king

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      It seems Britain has one key inducement to offer US President Donald Trump: a state visit hosted by King Charles.

      One can only imagine what the king thinks of this, but he will undoubtedly maintain a stiff upper lip and preside over several lavish dinners.

      Following reports of this offer, which would make Trump the only US president to be twice hosted by a British monarch, stories surfaced that the US might become an associate member of the Commonwealth.

      Read more:
      The king has a tricky diplomatic role to play in inviting Trump for a state visit

      There has been no official confirmation of this, but the story has been floated in several British newspapers.

      What is the Commonwealth?

      The Commonwealth came into existence as a means of retaining links with former British colonies, so there is a certain historical justification for the idea.

      Almost all of Britain’s former colonies are now members of the Commonwealth of Nations, with Ireland and the US notable exceptions.

      The Commonwealth is an organisation that ties together 56 countries, including a few in Africa that have been admitted despite not having been British colonies.

      Of the 56, only a minority recognise the British king as their head of state, a point local monarchists are reluctant to acknowledge.

      Indeed, some members of the Commonwealth, such as Malaysia, Brunei and Tonga, have their own hereditary monarchs.

      In theory, all members are democratic, and several, such as Fiji, have at times been suspended from membership for failing on this count.

      Whatever doubts we might have about the state of US democracy, it is hard to argue the US would fail to meet a bar that allows continued membership to states such as Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

      The Commonwealth is largely seen as less important than other international groupings, and its heads of government meetings are often skipped by leaders of the most significant members.

      Other than turning up to the Commonwealth Games, few recent Australian prime ministers have paid it much attention, compared to our membership of the G20 or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

      Nonetheless, the Commonwealth does include a remarkable range of countries ranging from significant states such as India, Canada and South Africa to the many island states of the Pacific and the Caribbean.

      While its work is largely unreported, it does provide a range of international assistance and linkages that otherwise would be out of reach for its smaller and poorer members.

      Why is Trump interested in joining?

      Trump, it can be assumed, has no interest in the Commonwealth as a means of better working with states such as Namibia and Belize.

      The attraction seems to be linked to his strange reverence for royalty and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the British sovereign.

      King Charles is head of the Commonwealth through agreement of its members, probably in recognition of the extraordinary commitment his mother showed as the Commonwealth developed out of the old British Empire. Indeed, she clashed several times with her British ministers because of her loyalty to the Commonwealth.

      But unlike the king’s British – and Australian – crown, this is not a position that belongs automatically to the British monarch.

      So, while inviting Trump to Windsor Castle may be the gift of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, admission to the Commonwealth would require the agreement of all its members.

      Given Trump’s demands to acquire Canada and to punish South Africa for recent land expropriation law, it is hard to imagine unanimous enthusiasm.

      Read more:
      Donald Trump is picking fights with leaders around the world. What exactly is his foreign policy approach?

      Most member states are cautious about being too closely linked to either the US or China, although Australia might end up the last true believer in US alliances. Others, such as Ghana and Pakistan, depend considerably on Chinese aid.

      In a world dominated by increasingly autocratic leaders, a middle power like Australia needs as wide a range of friends as possible. Most of us have only a vague sense of what the Commonwealth entails.

      Like all international institutions, the Commonwealth often seems more concerned with grand statements than actual commitment.

      But there is value in a global organisation whose members claim to be committed to:

      democracy and democratic processes, including free and fair elections and representative legislatures; the rule of law and independence of the judiciary; good governance, including a well-trained public service and transparent public accounts; and protection of human rights, freedom of expression, and equality of opportunity.

      Would Trump’s America meet those demands? More

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      Pete Hegseth’s Arabic tattoo stirs controversy: ‘clear symbol of Islamophobia’

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      The US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth has a tattoo that appears to read “infidel” or “non-believer” in Arabic, according to recently posted photos on his social media account.In photos posted on Tuesday on X, the Fox News host turned US defense secretary had what appears to be a tattoo that says “kafir”, an Arabic term used within Islam to describe an unbeliever. Hegseth appears to have also had the tattoo in another Instagram photo posted in July 2024.Some people on social media criticized Hegseth for getting a tattoo that could be considered offensive to Muslims, especially as the US military seeks to represent a diverse pool of faiths. It is estimated that upwards of 5,000 to 6,000 US military members practice Islam.“This isn’t just a personal choice; it’s a clear symbol of Islamophobia from the man overseeing U.S. wars,” posted Nerdeen Kiswani, a pro-Palestinian activist in New York.She added: “‘Kafir’ has been weaponized by far-right Islamophobes to mock and vilify Muslims. It’s not about his personal beliefs. It’s about how these beliefs translate into policy – how they shape military decisions, surveillance programs, and foreign interventions targeting Muslim countries.”A former leader of the far-right Proud Boys, Joe Biggs, also has a similar tattoo.“Tattooing the Arabic word kafir – which refers to someone who knowingly denies or conceals fundamental divine truths – on his body is a display of both anti-Muslim hostility and personal insecurity,” Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), told Newsweek.This is not the first time Hegseth has been involved in a tattoo-related controversy. The defense secretary has previously shown off tattoos that indicate a fascination with “crusader aesthetics”, an increasing trend among the far right.His prior contentious tattoo is located on his right biceps – right next to the new one. It reads “Deus Vult”, which translates to “God Wills It” in Latin, believed to be a Crusader battle cry. Hegseth also has a tattoo on his chest of the Jerusalem cross, also known as the Crusader’s cross due to being popularized during the Christian Crusades.The criticism of the tattoo comes at a time of increased scrutiny for the defense secretary. Members of Congress in the US are calling for an investigation into Hegseth and the other officials involved in the Signal leak that inadvertently exposed operational details of US plans to bomb Yemen. Several representatives have called for Hegseth to resign. More

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      Trump withdraws Elise Stefanik’s UN nomination to protect GOP House majority

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      Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he was pulling US House representative Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, a stunning turnaround for his cabinet pick after her confirmation had been stalled over concerns about Republicans’ tight margins in the House.Trump confirmed he was withdrawing the New York Republican’s nomination in a Truth Social post, saying that it was “essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress”.“We must be unified to accomplish our Mission, and Elise Stefanik has been a vital part of our efforts from the very beginning. I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress,” the president said, without mentioning who he would nominate as a replacement for his last remaining cabinet seat.Stefanik’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Trump had tapped Stefanik to represent the US at the international body shortly after winning re-election in November. She was seen as among the least controversial cabinet picks, and her nomination advanced out of committee in late January, but House Republicans’ razor-thin majority kept her ultimate confirmation in a state of purgatory for the last several months.In recent weeks, it had seemed as if Stefanik’s nomination would advance to the Senate floor, given two US House special elections in Florida in districts that Trump easily won in 2024. Filling those vacant GOP seats would have allowed Stefanik to finally resign from the House and given Republicans, who currently hold 218 seats, a little more breathing room on passing legislation in a growingly divided Congress. Democrats hold 213 seats.But Democrats’ upset in a Tuesday special election for a Pennsylvania state Senate seat in Republican-leaning suburbs and farming communities surely gave the GOP pause.Stefanik is the fourth Trump administration nominee who didn’t make it through the confirmation process. Previously, former US House representative Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration for attorney general, Chad Chronister was pulled for the Drug Enforcement Administration and former Florida representative Dr David Weldon was yanked from contention to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Stefanik had been in a state of limbo for months, not able to engage in her official duties as a member of the 119th Congress or to participate in the action at the UN. The vacancy of a permanent US ambassador was happening at a critical moment for the international body as the world leaders had been discussing the two major wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas.In late February, the US mission, under Trump, split with its European allies by refusing to blame Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in votes on three U.N. resolutions seeking an end to the three-year war. Dorothy Shea, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, has been the face of America’s mission in New York during the transition. More

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      US allies worldwide decry Trump’s car tariffs and threaten retaliation

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      Governments from Tokyo to Berlin and Ottawa to Paris have voiced sharp criticism of Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with several of the US’s staunchest long-term allies threatening retaliatory action.Trump announced on Wednesday that he would impose a 25% tariff on cars and car parts shipped to the US from 3 April in a move experts have predicted is likely to depress production, drive up prices and fuel a global trade war.The US imported almost $475bn (£367bn) worth of cars last year, mostly from Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Germany. European carmakers alone sold more than 750,000 vehicles to American drivers.France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday he had told his US counterpart that tariffs were not a good idea. They “disrupt value chains, create an inflationary effect and destroy jobs. So it’s not good for the US or European economies,” he said.Paris would work with the European Commission on a response intended to get Trump to reconsider, he said. Officials in Berlin also stressed that the commission would defend free trade as the foundation of the EU’s prosperity.Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, bluntly described Trump’s decision as wrong, and said Washington appeared to have “chosen a path at whose end lie only losers, since tariffs and isolation hurt prosperity, for everyone”.France’s finance minister, Eric Lombard, called the US president’s plan “very bad news” and said the EU would be forced to raise its own tariffs. His German counterpart, Robert Habeck, promised a “firm EU response”. “We will not take this lying down,” he said.Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said Europe would approach the US with common sense but “not on our knees”. Good transatlantic relations are “a strategic matter” and must survive more than one prime minister and one president, he said.The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, described the move as “bad for businesses, worse for consumers” because “tariffs are taxes”. She said the bloc would continue to seek negotiated solutions while protecting its economic interests.The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the tariffs were “very concerning” and that his government would be “pragmatic and clear-eyed” in response. The UK “does not want a trade war, but it’s important we keep all options on the table”, he said.His Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, said on social media: “We will get through this crisis, and we will build a stronger, more resilient economy.”Carney later told a press conference that his administration would wait until next week to respond to the new US threat of tariffs, and that nothing was off the table regarding possible countermeasures.He would, he added, speak to provincial premiers and business leaders on Friday to discuss a coordinated response.“It doesn’t make sense when there’s a series of US initiatives that are going to come in relatively rapid succession to respond to each of them. We’re going to know a lot more in a week, and we will respond then,” he said.One option for Canada is to impose excise duties on exports of oil, potash and other commodities. “Nothing is off the table to defend our workers and our country,” said Carney, who added that the old economic and security relationship between Canada and the US was over.South Korea said it would put in place a full emergency response to Trump’s proposed measures by April.China’s foreign ministry said the US approach violated World Trade Organization rules and was “not conducive to solving its own problems”. Its spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said: “No country’s development and prosperity are achieved by imposing tariffs.”The Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, said Tokyo was putting “all options on the table”. Japan “makes the largest amount of investment to the US, so we wonder if it makes sense for [Washington] to apply uniform tariffs to all countries”, he said.Reuters and Agence-France Presse contributed to this report More

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      Friday essay: from Watergate to Zippergate to Pussygate – how a shameless Trump has reshaped the US presidential sex scandal

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      In modern times, who was the first presidential candidate to have their campaign almost destroyed by a sex scandal?

      The answer, surprisingly, is Jimmy Carter, probably the most pious of all recent presidents. In 1976, when ahead in the polls, Carter gave an interview to Playboy magazine. He said he had looked on a lot of women with lust, “committed adultery in [his] heart many times”, and he would not be condescending to someone who had “screwed” around.

      Jimmy Carter greets Cher in 1976.
      David F. Smith/AAP

      Support among evangelical Christians immediately eroded. Prominent Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell said, “four months ago most of the people I know were pro-Carter. Today that has totally reversed.” Fortunately for Carter, after an intense week or so, the scandal faded.

      Morality was much more explicitly an issue in the 1976 election than previously. It was the first election since the Watergate scandal had forced Richard Nixon to become the first president in American history to resign in 1974. It was also the year after America’s long and contentious war in Vietnam had finished in defeat, with many Americans feeling they had been lied to by presidents Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.

      An ironic after-effect of Watergate was belated attention to President John F. Kennedy’s sex scandals. Until then, for many decades, American presidents’ private lives had been off limits. Franklin D. Roosevelt had two long-term lovers and his wife Eleanor probably had a live-in lesbian lover. Roosevelt used a wheelchair, due to polio-related paralysis. Yet of 35,000 photos of him, only two showed his wheelchair. Most of the American public were ignorant of his condition.

      Neither Kennedy nor Johnson were probed during their presidencies. (One night on Johnson’s ranch a female aide was woken by a man standing at the foot of the bed: “Move over, this is your president.”)

      John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pictured in 1960.
      Anonymous/AAP

      One source of the new attention was a tragedy involving Senator Edward Kennedy. In July 1969, Kennedy drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. He swam to safety but his companion, young staffer Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. He immediately made many phone calls, but only called the police the next day. Many journalists knew of Kennedy’s affairs, drunkenness, tendency to speed and general recklessness, but nothing had been published.

      A few years later, a decade after his death, President John F. Kennedy himself was in the public spotlight. After Watergate and defeat in Vietnam, a Senate committee under Frank Church was tasked to investigate American security agencies’ involvement in the assassination and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders. This revealed that Kennedy and Chicago Mafia boss, Sam Giancana, had the same mistress, Judith Campbell. Moreover, Giancana had been hired by the CIA in an assassination plot against Cuban president Fidel Castro.

      Judith Campbell in 1960.
      AAP

      At first, Church, a Democrat and friend of the Kennedys, treated the revelations with as much discretion as he could. But a New York Times columnist, ex-Nixon speechwriter William Safire, waged a campaign that argued journalists were pro-Democrat and went softer on Democrat scandals than on Republican ones. It was the opening of the floodgates. Over many years, more and more revelations of Kennedy’s sexual exploits were revealed. Indeed his relentless promiscuity makes Bill Clinton look like a choirboy.

      The next time a sex scandal figured prominently was the 1988 presidential contest. Gary Hart already had a reputation for “womanising”, and at one stage challenged journalists to follow him. Unfortunately for him, they did. He and a young woman, Donna Rice, spent a night aboard the inauspiciously named yacht Monkey Business. Hart went from Democratic front runner to ex-candidate in less than a week.

      A Bush denial and ‘bimbo eruptions’

      Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign brought a huge escalation in attention to a candidate’s private life. It was the first time a person had publicly claimed to have had an affair with a presidential candidate. Gennifer Flowers said she had had a 12-years-long affair with Clinton. Flowers admitted she had been paid more than US$100,000 to go public, and her account included many lurid details.

      Gennifer Flowers in 1992.
      Alex Brandon/AAP

      Clinton denied the affair but his recall of events seemed uncharacteristically hazy. (And six years later, he would admit they had a sexual encounter.) He was greatly helped by the prominent role his wife Hillary played. They admitted without giving any specifics that there had been difficulties in their marriage but stressed how these were all in the past. Eventually, in the absence of new developments, the scandal ran out of steam.

      Nevertheless, throughout the campaign, the Clinton team had a “bimbo eruption watch”, and although several claims arose and Clinton often seemed evasive, he won the election relatively easily.

      Some Democrats in 1992 thought there had been a double standard with intense attention to Clinton’s sexual escapades contrasting with the lack of media attention to allegations of George H.W. Bush having had an affair, rumours that had been around since the early 1980s.

      But the two were very different – there was no publicity-seeking by an ex-lover or admissions by the Bushes. When the rumours began to circulate in 1988, George Junior asked his father about them and then issued a short statement: “The answer to the Big A [ie adultery] question is NO”. Although his father was apparently angered by this public intervention, it effectively killed the issue.

      President George H. Bush and president-elect Bill Clinton at the White House in November 1992.
      Doug Mills/AAP

      Likewise later there were rumours that the Republican candidate in 1996, Bob Dole, had had an affair, but it was a long time in the past, and received minimal coverage.

      In 2008, it was known that John McCain, a war hero, and his wife lived largely separate lives. But his opponent Barack Obama did not seek to make it an issue, and again there was almost no coverage. While it is often argued that the media have salacious appetites for sex scandals, cases like these also show the media is reluctant to push allegations where there is not clear evidence, and no public interest or political dimension.

      Nothing thus far had prepared anyone for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Lewinsky had been an intern in the White House and had had consensual sexual relations with Clinton. She confided in a colleague, Linda Tripp, who then started taping their telephone calls.

      Later Tripp gave the tapes to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who was investigating Whitewater property deals by the Clintons in Arkansas. He found no evidence of wrongdoing in that case, and now broadened his scope to include perjury, finding that Clinton had lied about his relations with Lewinsky. Thanks to Tripp’s tape and Starr’s investigations, the public were treated to details such as Lewinsky’s stained dress.

      The story broke in early 1998 and the Zippergate scandal as it was dubbed, received intense news coverage for most of the year. Clinton gave a series of misleading denials, and eventually confessed. It led to an impeachment by the House of Representatives but the motion failed in the Senate, and Clinton survived.

      A video of Monica Lewinsky being sworn in for her deposition at the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1999.
      AAP

      The scandal may have had an effect on the extremely close 2000 presidential election. The Democrat candidate Al Gore, who had been Clinton’s vice-president, sought to distance himself from the Clintons. Even after all that had happened, though, the Clintons were still fairly popular, and were an electoral asset Gore could have used more.

      The two Obama elections were broadly scandal free, but this was the quiet before the storm.

      How Trump rewrote conventional wisdom

      Donald Trump has rewritten the conventional wisdom of American presidential sex scandals. Most importantly, Trump is the first president where sexual harassment and assault have been so central. Whereas Kennedy’s affairs, for instance, seem to have been overwhelmingly consensual, in a “hot mic” from 2005 (released during his 2016 presidential campaign), Trump was heard saying “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything […] Grab ‘em by the pussy.”

      What became known as Pussygate looked as if it might sink Trump’s candidacy, but for a variety of reasons, not least the FBI’s public announcement that it was investigating more possible email offences by Clinton, eventually Trump triumphed.

      The second notable feature of the Trump sex scandals is their sheer number. In October 2019, a book All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator by Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy contained allegations by 43 women of sexual misconduct by Trump.

      Trump is the first presidential candidate to be convicted in a civil court of sexual assault. The writer E. Jean Carroll testified – and a jury unanimously agreed – that Trump pushed her up against a wall and assaulted her.

      Writer E. Jean Carroll in May 2023: a New York jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in 1996.
      John Minchillo/AAP

      Trump is also the first presidential candidate in modern times to be associated with paying hush money to cover up sexual relationships, most famously to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and also to a lift attendant in the Trump Tower.

      Stormy Daniels departs the Supreme Court of the State of New York after testifying in the hush money trial of US President Donal Trump in May 2024.
      Justin Lane/AAP

      Finally – despite or because of all this – he is the first presidential candidate in modern times to directly accuse his opponents of immoral sexual behaviour. Speaking of his two female opponents, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, he said, “Funny how blow jobs impacted both their careers differently”. His supporters had banners saying “Say No to the Hoe”. (Earlier in 2024 Trump and his supporters had been spreading the claim that Biden was “all jacked up” on drugs, and demanded a drug test before the first debate.)

      Trump’s verbal attacks on women often have a particularly bitter edge, but they are part of the new coarseness and violence that mark his rhetoric from his predecessors, as are the vituperative personal attacks on whomever his opponent is – judge, prosecutor, journalist, bureaucrat or political opponent.

      Trump’s shamelessness was on display days after the “Pussygate” revelations in 2016. For the second presidential debate, he wanted to have in his “family box” three women who had made accusations against Bill Clinton, and one who was sexually assaulted as a 12-year-old, with Hillary Clinton as the public defender representing the suspect. The idea was to throw Hillary off her stride and damage her performance. The debate organisers stopped the move. As a fallback an hour before the debate, Trump had a media conference with the four, attacking the Clintons.

      Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the second presidential debate in 2016.
      Rick T. Wilking/AAP

      An evangelical about face

      What a wondrous trajectory America’s white evangelical Christians have been on. In 1976, they were shocked that a candidate had lust in his heart. In 2024, around 80% of them voted for a serial sexual predator, a liar and fraudster.

      At one rally, a donor told the crowd, “Donald J. Trump is the person that God has chosen.” The evangelicals have indeed shown Trump amazing grace.

      One reason Trump was able to survive this surfeit of potential scandals is because of the much more polarised media environment now. Much of Trump’s base consume media such as Fox News, which is willing to ignore or downplay his outrages.

      In addition, podcasts played a bigger role in 2024 than in any previous election, and some of these, such as Joe Rogan’s, have audiences that are overwhelmingly young males, perhaps helping Trump mobilise the “bro vote”. In 2000 against Biden, 41% of young men aged 18–29 voted for Trump; in 2024 against Harris, 49% did; an eight-point gain for Trump.

      Recently, Trump joked with an audience:

      you used to be able to say a young beautiful waitress but […] if you call a woman beautiful today, it is the end of your political career, so I will not do it.

      In fact, his career shows the exact opposite. He has survived all sorts of moral transgressions, which earlier would have been politically fatal.

      Given Trump’s invulnerability despite his multiple and serious transgressions, does this mark the end of presidential sexual scandals having a dramatic impact?

      There has never been a direct, simple or logical relationship in political scandals between the seriousness of the alleged offence, the amount of media attention and the severity of the political consequences. However, we’re now post-Trump: what might a presidential sex scandal look like in 2028 and beyond? More

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      Human rights groups rebuke Kristi Noem’s visit to El Salvador prison: ‘political theater’

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      Human rights organizations on Thursday denounced the visit by the US homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to the notorious prison in El Salvador that is holding hundreds of Venezuelans deported from the US earlier this month without a hearing, calling her actions “political theater”.Critics condemned Noem’s visit as just the latest example of the Trump administration’s aim to spread fear among immigrant communities, as the cabinet member stood in a baseball hat in front of a line of caged men bare from the waist up.Noem visited the so-called Cecot, or Terrorism Confinement Center, an infamous maximum-security prison. The prison, built in 2022 during a brutal government crackdown on organized crime, is where nearly 300 migrants, previously in US custody, were recently expelled and are currently detained.They have been accused of being violent gang members, despite family members of several of the men asserting that they are not.“The Department of Homeland Security secretary’s visit is an example of the fear that Trump’s government wants to instill in immigrants,” attorney Ivania Cruz said on Thursday. Cruz works with the Committee to Defend Human and Community Rights (Unidehc), a human rights organization in El Salvador. “This is precisely what Noem has done — use the Cecot as a cinematographic space,” she added.Noem’s visit to the prison “was a typical gross and cruel display of political theater that we have come to expect from the Trump administration,” Vicki Gass said. Gass is the executive director of the Latin America Working Group (LAWG), a human rights organization based in Washington DC. “That the Trump administration is flouting judicial orders and denying due process to people within the US borders is outrageous and frightening.”Earlier this month, Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime provision that allows the executive to detain and deport people coming from an “enemy” nation. Despite a federal judge blocking the invocation of the act, shortly after, planes from the US landed in El Salvador, filled with men and women in immigration custody. More than 250 men, mostly from Venezuela, were quickly and forcibly shuffled into the Cecot, where officials shaved their heads and placed them in cells.Trump and his administration have repeatedly claimed that the men were members of transnational gangs. When invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Trump – without proof – accused the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua of having “infiltrated” the US at the behest of the Venezuelan government. US intelligence agencies contradict Trump’s claims about ties between the gang and the Venezuelan government, the New York Times has reported, and the Venezuelan government has also denied it is connected.News reports across various publications have emerged revealing the identity of the Venezuelan men expelled to El Salvador, with family members saying some of the men are innocent. When pressed, the DHS has not provided proof of those men’s purported ties to the gang and they were flown out of the US without a hearing, raising questions about violations of constitutional due process rights.The federal judge in Washington who blocked the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act has repeatedly pressed the Trump administration to provide information about their process to conduct the operation, also ordering “individualized hearings” for people Trump wants to expel under the act. In response, the Trump administration invoked “state secrets” privilege, to avoid disclosing any information about the operation.The Salvadorian prison that Noem visited was constructed in 2022, during El Salvador’s “state of exception”, a move by the president, Nayib Bukele, that rounded up thousands of people in an attempt to crack down on criminal gangs. According to Cruz, the human rights attorney, and other organizations, the state of exception violated due process rights, with thousands being caught up in arrests and detention without proof of gang membership.Cruz has been targeted for her work denouncing conditions in the Salvadorian prisons. During the state of exception, her brother was arrested and imprisoned by the Bukele government. Cruz fought for his release and since then, she has taken on a role as a key spokesperson for people who have been wrongfully detained in the prisons.“It is not by chance that the expelled immigrants are from Venezuela, when we know there is a political conflict between the two countries,” Cruz said. “Today it is Venezuelans – tomorrow may be Chileans, then Colombians. It’s an international problem that is provoking conflict.”Noem’s visit came one day before a protest organized by a Salvadorian rights organization, opposing the Central American government’s “arbitrary detentions”.“I also want everybody to know, if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you can face,” Noem said in a video posted on X from the Cecot prison. “Know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”The use of another country’s vast, maximum-security prison to detain immigrants from a third country is unprecedented, especially considering the grave allegations of abuses at this and other Salvadorian prisons.“Amnesty International has extensively documented the inhumane conditions within detentions centers in El Salvador, including the Cecot, where those removed are now being held,” the organization said in a statement on Wednesday. “Reports indicate extreme overcrowding, lack of access to adequate medical care, and widespread ill-treatment amounting to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”According to Ana María Méndez Dardón, the Central America director for the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights non-profit in DC, there are two or three huge prisons in El Salvador where the mass incarceration of people has been concentrated. The detention centers in the country have faced extreme allegations of human rights abuses.“The Cecot has a capacity for 40,000 people, that is to say only 30% of the current prison population, the rest of the population is located in other centers, such as the one in Mariona, where torture and other human rights violations have been documented,” Méndez Dardón said.She added: “Unlike the videos edited and produced about Cecot, President Bukele is not showing the world the true reality within the other detention centers, where the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has stated that they have committed torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment.”Reports have described bare metal bunks stacked high like shelving and with no bedding whatsoever.The Trump administration’s practice of denying due process and defying judicial orders “is outrageous and frightening”, Gass, from LAWG, added. “So is forcibly disappearing them to Cecot where prisoners are not allowed to meet with lawyers or their family members, are jammed into overcrowded cells, and never see the light of day.” More

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      Rubio boasts of canceling more than 300 visas over pro-Palestine protests

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      The US state department is undertaking a widespread visa-review process, revoking hundreds of visas and placing hundreds more under scrutiny, targeting mostly foreign nationals engaged in pro-Palestine activism, according to official statements.The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, confirmed the scale of the crackdown, announcing that he has canceled visas for more than 300 people he called “lunatics” connected to campus pro-Palestine protests in the US, with promises of action to continue daily.Asked by reporters during a visit to Guyana in South America to confirm reports of 300 visas stripped, Rubio said: “Maybe more than 300 at this point. We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics.”One recent example of the policy’s implementation has been US immigration authorities detaining Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University on a Fulbright scholarship, in broad daylight by masked agents in plainclothes.Her arrest and visa revocation came after she voiced support for Palestinians in Gaza in an op-ed she co-authored in her student newspaper. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas”, a justification being denounced as a direct assault on academic freedom and the erosion of free speech and personal liberties.In addressing her case specifically, Rubio said: “We revoked her visa … once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States … if you come into the US as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country.”But the visa-revocation campaign is just part of a broader, more aggressive deportation enforcement strategy that extends far beyond protest-related actions.The Trump administration has simultaneously implemented other restrictive measures, including pausing green card processing for certain refugees and asylum seekers and issuing a global directive instructing visa officers to deny entry to transgender athletes, of which there are very few.In a statement to Fox News, the state department claimed that it had “revoked the visas of more than 20 individuals”, and said hundreds more were under consideration under the banner of what they call “national security concerns”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Overall, we continue to process hundreds of visa reviews to ensure visitors are not violating terms of their visas and do not pose a threat to the United States and our citizens,” the statement said.The state department did not return a request for comment on whether these revocations were student visas, work visas or otherwise. More