Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      DoJ leader suggested defying courts over deportations, whistleblower says

      by

      Emil Bove, the Department of Justice’s principal associate deputy attorney general, who Donald Trump nominated for the US court of appeals for the third circuit, reportedly said the department “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’” when it came to orders blocking the deportation of undocumented people.Former attorney at the justice department, Erez Reuveni, claimed Bove said the agency should violate court orders. In a whistleblower letter to members of Congress first obtained by the New York Times, Reuveni painted the scene of a lawless justice department willingly to defy the courts and fire the people who stood in their way.“Mr. Reuveni was stunned by Bove’s statement because, to Mr. Reuveni’s knowledge, no one in DOJ leadership – in any Administration – had ever suggested the Department of Justice could blatantly ignore court orders, especially with a ‘fuck you,’” says the letter, written by his lawyers at the Government Accountability Project.The comments came in the context of Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport people on removal flights in mid-March, the letter contends, after Bove “stressed to all in attendance that the planes needed to take off no matter what”.At the time of Bove’s alleged comments, Reuveni, who was in the meeting, said he was in disbelief. But in the three weeks that followed, his disbelief became “a relic of a different time” as the department undermined the courts and rule of law. In three separate cases Reuveni was involved in, he found “internal efforts of DOJ and White House leadership to defy (court orders) through lack of candor, deliberate delay and disinformation”.Reuveni was a career attorney who had served across multiple administrations for 15 years in the department, including the first Trump administration.Reuveni says he directly witnessed and reported to his superiors a host of misconduct, including “DOJ officials undermining the rule of law by ignoring court orders; DOJ officials presenting ‘legal’ arguments with no basis in law; high-ranking DOJ and DHS officials misrepresenting facts presented before courts; and DOJ officials directing Mr. Reuveni to misrepresent facts in one of these cases in violation of Mr.Reuveni’s legal and ethical duties as an officer of the court”.Reuveni had notified the court in the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man erroneously deported to El Salvador who has since returned to the US, that Ábrego García’s deportation had been a “mistake”. He said he refused his superiors’ directive to file a brief to the court that would have misrepresented the facts of the case. He was subsequently put on administrative leave and then terminated on 11 April. Trump administration officials have said Reuveni didn’t “vigorously” or “zealously” defend his client, the United States.“Discouraging clients from engaging in illegal conduct is an important part of the role of lawyer,” the whistleblower letter says. “Mr. Reuveni tried to do so and was thwarted, threatened, fired, and publicly disparaged for both doing his job and telling the truth to the court.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBove is set for a confirmation hearing on his judicial nomination before the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, where the whistleblower’s claims are sure to enter into questioning.The White House and justice department have denied Reuveni’s claims, according to the New York Times. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general and Bove’s boss, called Reuveni’s accounts “falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee and then leaked to the press in violation of ethical obligations” and questioned the timing of its release ahead of Bove’s confirmation hearing. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump is not interested in listening to US experts on Iran’s nuclear program

      by

      When Donald Trump ordered the US military to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend, the debate among intelligence officials, outside experts and policymakers over the status of Tehran’s nuclear program had largely been frozen in place for nearly 20 years.That prolonged debate has repeatedly placed the relatively dovish US intelligence community at odds with Israel and neoconservative Iran hawks ever since the height of the global war on terror.For nearly two decades, the US intelligence agencies have concluded that while Iran has a program to enrich uranium, it has never actually built any atomic bombs. It is an assessment that has been at the core of its intelligence reporting on Iran since at least 2007. This has led to constant debates over the years over the significance of Iran’s uranium enrichment program versus “weaponization” or bomb-building.Israel and the Iran hawks have repeatedly said that the debate over enrichment versus weaponization is not significant, because Iran could build a bomb relatively quickly. But Iran suspended its weaponization program in 2003 and hasn’t tried to build a bomb since; it’s been clear for decades that the Iranian regime has seen that its own interests are better served by maintaining the threat of having a nuclear weapon rather than actually having one.Iran’s reluctance to build a bomb while still maintaining the threat of a nuclear program has clear parallels with the way that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein handled his supposed weapons of mass destruction program. Hussein got rid of his programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the 1990s, following the first Gulf War, but never divulged that to the United States or the United Nations.He wanted other countries, particularly his regional enemy Iran, to think that he still had the weapons. US officials couldn’t understand that kind of thinking, and so badly miscalculated by assuming that Hussein still had a WMD program. That mindset led to the intelligence community’s greatest debacle – its false pre-war reporting that Hussen still had a WMD program, flawed intelligence which helped the George W Bush administration justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.In the past, the US intelligence community’s assessments on the state of the Iranian nuclear program – developed in the aftermath of its failures on the Iraqi WMD issue – acted as a restraint on the actions of successive presidents, from Bush through Obama and Biden. All of them faced pressure from Israel to take action against Iran, or at least to let Israel bomb the country.The difference today is not that the intelligence reporting has significantly changed.It is that Trump is now more willing to listen to Israel than his predecessors and is also deeply suspicious of the Central Intelligence Agency. And by firing so many staffers at the National Security Council and conducting an ideological purge throughout the rest of the national security community since he returned to office, Trump has made it clear that he is not interested in listening to the experts on Iran and the Middle East. Trump underscored his skepticism of the experts when he recently told reporters that “I don’t care” about the US intelligence community’s latest assessment that Iran still wasn’t building a bomb.Without any evidence that Iran has actually been “weaponizing”, the arguments over Iran’s nuclear program have descended over the last two decades into a series of almost theological disputes over the significance of each change in the Iranian uranium enrichment program.This debate first flared into the headlines in 2007, at a time when the Bush administration – already mired in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan – was considering bombing Iran to halt its nuclear program. In the midst of this debate, the key findings of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program were made public. The NIE – a report designed to provide the consensus view of the US’s 18 spy agencies on a major subject – found that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and had never built a bomb. While it found that Iran could still develop a bomb by 2010, it determined that its commercial nuclear fuel cycle – its enrichment program – was not part of an ongoing nuclear weapons program.In 2011, the findings of another NIE were made public, which slightly altered the intelligence community’s assessment. It said that Iran’s uranium enrichment program was probably being upgraded and could eventually be used to create weapons grade uranium. But the NIE also found that Iran had still not tried to build a bomb. The 2011 NIE broke with the 2007 NIE by not making a distinction between Iran’s uranium enrichment for commercial purposes and potential nuclear weapons work. Still, the new NIE found that there was not enough evidence to show that Iran had made a decision to restart its nuclear weaponization program and build a bomb.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionToday, the US intelligence community is still basically in the same place: Iran has an enrichment program but has not built a bomb. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, testified to Congress in March that while Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was at its highest levels, the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and [Iran’s] supreme leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003”.(After Trump ordered the Iran bombing, Gabbard rushed to defend his actions, even though there had still been no change in the intelligence agencies’ assessments.)And while Israel and the hawks continue today to insist that Iran could build a bomb quickly, the US intelligence community has long maintained that it could detect the effort in its earliest stages, long before it succeeded.After the weekend strike, Congressional Democrats focused on the fact that there was no new intelligence to justify Trump’s action, and no new intelligence showing an imminent threat to the United States.Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia and the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Trump had bombed Iran “without regard to the consistent conclusions of the intelligence community”. More

    • 200 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: Supreme court hands Trump immigration victory as president declares Iran-Israel ceasefire

      by

      The US supreme court on Monday paved the way for the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to countries they are not from, including to conflict-ridden places such as South Sudan.In a brief, unsigned order, the court’s conservative supermajority paused the ruling by a Boston-based federal judge who said immigrants deserved a “meaningful opportunity” to bring claims that they would face the risk of torture, persecution or even death if removed to certain countries that have agreed to take people deported from the US.The court ruling was handed down as Donald Trump claimed Israel and Iran had agreed to a “Complete and Total CEASEFIRE” and that in the future the conflict would be known as the “THE 12 DAY WAR”.Here are the key stories at a glance.US supreme court rules in favor of Trump in deportations caseThe US supreme court cleared the way on Monday for Donald Trump’s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show harms they could face, handing him another victory in his aggressive pursuit of mass deportations.The justices lifted a judicial order that required the government to give migrants set for deportation to so-called “third countries” a “meaningful opportunity” to tell officials they are at risk of torture at their new destination, while a legal challenge plays out.Read the full storyTrump says Israel and Iran have negotiated ‘complete’ ceasefireDonald Trump claimed that Israel and Iran had negotiated a ceasefire, halting a two-week war that has killed hundreds in tit-for-tat strikes by Israeli warplanes and Iranian ballistic missiles.The ceasefire was set to begin late on Monday, Trump said, with Iran halting its attacks first and then Israel set to cease offensive operations in the coming hours.Read the full storyHouse Democratic veterans back moves to limit Trump’s military authorityA group of 12 House Democratic military veterans have thrown their weight behind efforts to constrain Donald Trump’s military authority, announcing they will support a War Powers Act resolution in response to the US president’s go ahead for airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.The veterans – some of whom served in Iraq and Afghanistan – were strongly critical of Trump’s decision to launch what they called “preventive airstrikes” without US congressional approval, drawing explicit parallels to the run-up to some of America’s longest recent wars.Read the full storyGOP-proposed Medicaid cuts threaten red statesAdvocates are urging Senate Republicans to reject a proposal to cut billions from American healthcare to extend tax breaks that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations. The proposal would make historic cuts to Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people that covers 71 million Americans, and is the Senate version of the “big beautiful bill” act, which contains most of Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.Read the full storyWhatsApp banned on all US House devicesThe WhatsApp messaging service has been banned on all US House of Representatives devices, according to a memo sent to House staff on Monday.Read the full storyMamdani appears ahead of Cuomo in new pollZohran Mamdani, a Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, has drawn level with Andrew Cuomo in the city’s primary, according to a new poll, as voters brave record-breaking temperatures to cast their ballots.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      New York governor Kathy Hochul announced plans to build a nuclear-power plant, the first major US plant in over 15 years.

      Three years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the number of abortions performed in the US is still rising – including in some statesthat ban the procedure.

      A federal judge on Monday blocked Donald Trump’s administration from implementing his plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard University.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 22 June 2025. More

    • 213 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      US supreme court allows Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their own – live

      by

      The US supreme court has ruled that the Trump administration can continue deporting migrants to countries that are not their homeland and without giving them an opportunity to share the dangers they might face.The decision ended an injunction on such deportations issued by US District Judge Brian Murphy, who ordered the Department of Homeland Security to provide written notice to migrants explaining where they would be sent and stop deporting migrants to countries like South Sudan where the state department warns of “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict”, Reuters reports.The court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented.House Speaker Mike Johnson says a war powers resolution is not necessary and dismissed efforts to advance such legislation, Reuters reports.Last week, Republican representative Thomas Massie and Democratic representative Ro Khanna introduced a war powers resolution, which would prohibit US armed forces from taking direct action against Iran without explicit authorization from Congress or a declaration of war. Democratic senator Tim Kaine introduced a similar resolution in the Senate.Massie and Khanna have both said the United States’ strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities this weekend require congressional authorization.“I don’t think this is an appropriate time for a war powers resolution, and I don’t think it’s necessary,” Johnson told Reuters.Florida has asked the Supreme Court to grant the state an emergency appeal to enforce a law making it illegal for undocumented immigrants to enter the state, Politico reports. The news comes as the New York Times reports Florida is also building a migrant detention facility nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz”.US District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a stay on the state law in April. Although Florida attorney general James Uthmeier has appealed her ruling, he filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to halt that stay while the case proceeds.At the same time, Florida is constructing a tent facility on a remote airfield in the Everglades to aid the Trump administration in its proposed mass deportations. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the New York Times that the facility will cost $450mn per year to operate, but that Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) funds could be directed to reduce those costs.The US supreme court has ruled that the Trump administration can continue deporting migrants to countries that are not their homeland and without giving them an opportunity to share the dangers they might face.The decision ended an injunction on such deportations issued by US District Judge Brian Murphy, who ordered the Department of Homeland Security to provide written notice to migrants explaining where they would be sent and stop deporting migrants to countries like South Sudan where the state department warns of “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict”, Reuters reports.The court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented.Top Democrats are calling for a classified briefing on Iran after the United States launched military strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities, the Washington Post reports. Democratic members of “the Gang of Eight” – eight congressmembers who the president must brief on classified intelligence – say they have not been briefed on the situation yet, although Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was briefed this morning.“I’ve asked the Trump administration to give me a classified briefing to lay out the full threat picture, the intelligence behind Iran’s retaliation, and the details, scope, and timeline of any U.S. response,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “Most importantly, I’ve demanded they lay out exactly what measures they’re taking — right now — to keep our servicemembers safe.”“I asked for a Gang of Eight briefing. It has yet to occur, and it’s not clear to me what the administration is hiding from the Congress and from the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also said Monday.All members of Congress will receive a classified briefing tomorrow.Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared open to investigating threats against lawmakers, but also called Democrats incompetent during an appearance before the House Appropriations Committee today.In the aftermath of shootings targeting two Minnesota state lawmakers, Bondi said she would be willing to provide more prosecutorial assistance to investigate similar threats against members of Congress, the New York Times reports.Yet, when pressed on other Department of Justice policies, including proposed funding cuts and January 6 pardons, by Democrats, Bondi was confrontational, the Associated Press reports.After Democratic congresswoman Madeleine Dean called the “three hallmarks” of the Trump administration “incompetence, corruption and cruelty”, Bondi responded: “You want to talk about in incompetence? You’re the one that said Joe Biden on PBS was competent. You had to retract those words. So don’t talk to me, don’t insult me publicly.”Trump has publicly addressed Iran’s strike on the US military base in Qatar, calling the response “very weak” and saying that it was “very effectively countered.” The president also thanked Iran for giving the US notice ahead of time of the attack, which Trump says “made it possible for no lives to be lost.”Trump wrote:“Iran has officially responded to our Obliteration of their Nuclear Facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered. There have been 14 missiles fired — 13 were knocked down, and 1 was “set free,” because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction. I am pleased to report that NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done. Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their “system,” and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE. I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”Trump added in another post that no Qataris were killed or wounded in addition to no Americans being harmed.CIA director John Ratcliffe and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will brief members of Congress tomorrow on US military action in Iran.General Dan Caine, Christopher Landau and Steve Feinberg will also attend. Both the House and Senate will receive classified briefings.The briefings will come as many lawmakers have demanded answers about the intelligence ahead of Trump’s decision over the weekend to strike Iranian sites.Robert F Kennedy Jr, known for pushing anti-vaccine conspiracies, is set to speak this week at a fundraising event for Gavi, a public-private partnership which helps buy vaccines for the world’s poorest children, Reuters reports.Trump reportedly asked the health secretary to represent the US at the conference in Brussels on Wednesday, where Gavi will secure funding for its operations for the next five years. The Trump administration has previously indicated that it planned to cut its funding for Gavi, representing around $300 million annually.The source told Reuters that it was unlikely Kennedy would commit any new US funding contribution and would most likely discuss “the restructuring of foreign assistance.”Trump has cut foreign aid programs by around 80% since taking office in January, as part of his “America First” policy agenda.Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr met with major health insurers today, extracting pledges that they will take additional measures to simplify their requirements for prior approval on medicines and medical services.Insurers including UnitedHealth Group Inc’s UnitedHealthcare, CVS Health Corp’s Aetna, Cigna Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and Kaiser Permanente met with Kennedy along with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Mehmet Oz.The insurers announced they plan to reduce the scope of health care claims subject to prior authorization, standardize parts of the process and expand responses done in real time.“There shouldn’t be paper, there shouldn’t be faxes, there shouldn’t be letters being sent. They should all be done digitally and automatically, and 90-day continuity should exist for authorizations when patients switch insurers, so you never fall through the cracks again,” Oz said.“If the insurance industry cannot address the needs of pre-authorization by themselves, there are government opportunities to get involved,” he added.Federal officials are increasingly concerned about the possibility of retaliation from Iran on American soil, the New York Times reports.In an internal email, top officials at the FBI warned that Iran and its proxies have “historically targeted US interests in response to geopolitical events, and they are likely to increase their efforts in the near term”.The email urged field offices to monitor their collection platforms and stay in close contact with the defense department, including the national guard, “who may be targeted for retaliation” while “specific attention should be paid to” US military facilities connected to the strikes in Iran.House speaker Mike Johnson dismissed efforts by lawmakers to advance a measure to check Trump’s use of military force against Iran, after Tehran said it carried out a missile attack on the al-Udeid US airbase in Qatar.When asked whether he would allow the House of Representatives to vote on a bipartisan resolution, Johnson told reporters: “I don’t think this is an appropriate time for war powers resolution, and I don’t think it’s necessary.”Republican representative Thomas Massie and Democratic representative Ro Khanna introduced their resolution days before Trump ordered US strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday and have since claimed that the president’s actions require congressional authorization.Iran’s military said today that it carried out a missile attack on US forces in Qatar, where explosions were heard across the capital.Democratic senator Tim Kaine has introduced a similar resolution in the Senate that he said lawmakers could vote on as early as this week.“Our War Powers Resolution has 57 cosponsors. Whether you like it or not, Congress will be voting on U.S. hostilities in Iran,” Massie said in a post on social media earlier today.Johnson and other Republicans insist that Trump had the authority to take unilateral action against Iran to eliminate a potential nuclear threat to the US and other countries.“The President made an evaluation that the danger was imminent enough to take his authority as commander in chief and make that happen,” the speaker said.Canada and the US could agree to a new economic and defense relationship soon but nothing is assured, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said today.“We’re working hard to get a deal, but we’ll only accept the right deal with the United States. The right deal is possible, but nothing’s assured,” he told a televised news conference in Brussels after talks with senior European Union officials.Last Monday, Carney said he had agreed with Trump that their two nations should try to wrap up talks on a new deal within 30 days.France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called for a return to diplomacy to end what he called “the spiral of chaos” after Iran targeted a US military base in Qatar.Macron wrote on X:“I express France’s solidarity with Qatar, which has been struck by Iran on its soil.I am in close contact with the country’s authorities and our partners in the region.I call on all parties to exercise the utmost restraint, de-escalate, and return to the negotiating table. This spiral of chaos must end.”Before Macron’s social media post, foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France 2 television that the missile strikes, which had not caused any casualties, were a “dangerous escalation” and he urged all sides to show restraint.Trump is attacking members of the media, several by name, on Truth Social. He appears angry over reports from several news outlets that the facilities struck in Iran may not have been completely destroyed by the US attacks.Trump wrote:“The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it. Only the Fake News would say anything different in order to try and demean, as much as possible — And even they say they were “pretty well destroyed!” Working especially hard on this falsehood is Allison Cooper of Fake News CNN, Dumb Brian L. Roberts, Chairman of “Con”cast, Jonny Karl of ABC Fake News, and always, the Losers of, again, Concast’s NBC Fake News. It never ends with the sleazebags in the Media, and that’s why their Ratings are at an ALL TIME LOW — ZERO CREDIBILITY!”Trump’s media company plans to buy back up to $400m of its stock, which is down 46% this year.Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, says that the acquisition will improve its financial flexibility. Trump is the largest stakeholder in Trump Media, with about 114m shares.The Florida-based company, which trades under the ticker DJT on both Nasdaq and NYSE Texas, saw shares rise just over 1%. But the shares appeared to peak about a month after the company went public in late March. Shares have been on a steady, downward trajectory since. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Canada and EU sign defense pact amid strained US relations and global instability

      by

      Canada has signed a wide-ranging defence pact with the EU, as Donald Trump and global instability prompt traditional US allies to deepen their alliances.Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, on Monday joined European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and head of the European Council, António Costa, in Brussels, where they signed a security and defence partnership, pledged more support for Ukraine, as well as joint work on issues from the climate crisis to artificial intelligence.At a cordial press conference, Carney described Canada as “the most European of the non-European countries” that “looks first to the European Union to build a better world”.Costa spoke in kind: “The European Union and Canada are among the closest allies in the transatlantic space. We see the world through the same lens. We stand for the same values.”Not mentioned was another leader in the transatlantic space: Donald Trump, whose disrespect for old allies appears to have galvanised what was an already healthy EU-Canada relationship.The US president is expected at the two-day Nato summit in the Hague starting on Tuesday, when members of the transatlantic alliance are called to pledge to spend 5% of GDP on defence.Carney, a veteran central banker turned politician, won a stunning victory in April pledging that Canada would not become the 51st US state, a proposal often floated by Trump.He said he had a mandate “to diversify and strengthen our international partnerships” and find new means of co-operation and co-ordination. The summit took place, Carney told reporters, “we might say in a hinge moment of history, a world that is more dangerous and divided, a time where the rules-based international global order is under threat”.The EU-Canada security and defence partnership opens the door to increased Canadian participation in the EU’s fledgling €150bn defence fund, known as Safe. Von der Leyen said the defence partnership meant working on joint capabilities, interoperability and joint procurement, referencing air defence. “The access of Canada to our joint procurement in the European Union, the door is open,” she said.The security pact is a Canadian version of the agreement the EU signed with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, last month. The bloc already had similar arrangements with six other countries including Norway and Japan, but this is the first with any country in the Americas. The defence pact includes joint work on cyber, maritime and space security, arms control and support for Ukraine.Countries that have a defence and security pact with the EU can take part in joint procurement of weapons funded by the €150bn (£128bn, $173bn) Safe programme, although must negotiate a further technical agreement. Von der Leyen pledged both sides would “swiftly launch talks” on Canadian access to the joint procurement scheme.Carney said the agreement with the EU would help Canada “deliver on our new capabilities more rapidly and more effectively”. Canada has been one of the laggards of the Nato alliance: in 2024 it spent just 1.37% of GDP on defence, well below the 2% set in 2014.The two sides have a €125bn trading relationship, underpinned by the Ceta pact signed in 2016 that abolished 98% of tariffs. The agreement, however, has yet to be ratified by national parliaments in 10 EU member states, including Belgium, France, Italy and Poland, meaning elements of the deal have yet to enter into force.In advance of the meeting Carney and his wife, Diana Fox, Carney visited Schoonselhof military cemetery in Antwerp, where 348 Canadians are buried, “brave young soldiers who ventured across the Atlantic to defend the freedom of Europe”, Carney wrote on social media.The Carneys were accompanied by Belgium’s prime minister, formerly a long-serving Antwerp mayor, Bart De Wever, where they were given a tour of the ceremony and laid wreaths on behalf of Belgium and Canada. The last post was played by one of De Wever’s sons, according to local paper Het Nieuwsblad. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Militarized LA: troops here to stay as Trump doubles down on deployments

      by

      Shortly before last November’s presidential election, before anyone could envision him defying his “America first” political base and launching a bombing raid on Iran, Donald Trump offered a preview of how and why he would want to deploy the military on US soil.It was, the president said, to deal with “the enemy within”.“We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics,” he said in a Fox News interview that prompted widespread condemnation at the time. “I think it should be very easily handled by … national guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”Trump did not specify what it was he didn’t want to let happen – only that while he promised to put an end to America’s “forever wars” overseas, he regarded domestic political adversaries, perhaps like the ones who have been protesting in massive numbers in Los Angeles and across the US this month, as a national security threat worthy of a military response.When thousands of protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles earlier this month to protest against his administration’s heavy-handed immigration sweeps targeting workers in factories and car washes, he wasted little time making good on what he had promised.The reality of Trump sending thousands of national guard troops and US marines into LA earlier this month has not matched his rhetoric – yet the shock of it may have been dulled by the headlines coming out of the Middle East. The troops have largely kept a low profile, their duties restricted to guarding federal buildings and, at least according to the administration, accompanying immigration enforcement agents and other federal officials as they go about their business.Still, as the dust settles on two weeks of impassioned street protests and occasional vandalism and violence in downtown Los Angeles, the deployment continues to unnerve California’s political leaders, national Democratic party figures worried about who might be next, as well as many ordinary citizens and influential figures within the military itself.“The US military exists to defend the nation from foreign threats, not to police American streets or intervene in political disputes at home,” a group of retired four-star generals and admirals and high-profile former Pentagon officials said in a statement, signalling just how far Trump has strayed from precedent.The group, including a former secretary of the army, a former secretary of the navy, and Michael Hayden, a retired air force general who led the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency under presidents of both parties, are part of a lawsuit seeking to reverse the deployment, which they say “puts both service members and civilians at risk of harm and violates longstanding constitutional limits on government power”.Some observers have gone further, seeing a direct link between Trump’s willingness to send troops into American city streets and his decision to involve the United States in the growing conflict between Israel and Iran. “That kind of authoritarian aggression [rarely] stays inside the country’s borders,” Julia Ioffe, a national security expert and founding editor of Puck News, said of the California deployment on 11 June. “Didn’t think I’d be right so soon,” she wrote on Friday, as Trump’s war plans for Iran were ramping up.The Trump administration has vowed to keep the troops in place for at least 60 days, to ensure – as Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, told a House defense appropriations subcommittee – “that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we’re not going anywhere”.The threat of a more muscular military confrontation with “the enemy within” has not gone away, either, though one of the questions remaining is whether the military or the many agencies under the control of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – immigration enforcement, border patrol, FBI – are more likely to take the lead.Two days before the No Kings rallies, Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, was in Los Angeles and said the federal government’s goal was not just to maintain order on the streets but “to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country”. Seconds after delivering these lines at a news conference, FBI agents under Noem’s authority manhandled and handcuffed Alex Padilla, a California senator who interrupted her to ask a question.Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, has threatened to arrest the governor, Gavin Newsom, and LA’s mayor, Karen Bass, if they stand in the way of the immigration sweeps. At least two elected officials, the New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver and New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, have indeed been arrested for alleged interference in Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.The military has so far stayed out of these headline-grabbing events, their role largely eclipsed by continuing immigration raids conducted by masked federal agents refusing to disclose their names or badge numbers, but experts and constitutional scholars say their very presence risks destabilizing what is already a volatile and politically charged situation. “The risk of escalation, or of someone making a mistake, is always present and in these situations actually quite high,” said Chris Mirasola, a national security expert at the University of Houston Law Center. “Just the deployment itself is escalatory.”View image in fullscreenIn deciding to take charge of the California national guard, over Newsom’s objections, Trump stopped short of invoking the Insurrection Act used by past presidents to help quell civil unrest, most recently during the 1992 LA riots when marines rode alongside southern California police patrols in burning neighborhoods.Rather, he invoked a rarely used power to mobilize the military to “temporarily protect” federal property and personnel. Lyndon Johnson used the same protection power to guarantee the safety of civil rights demonstrators in Alabama in 1965, in defiance of the state’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon used it in an ill-fated attempt to get the national guard to deliver the mail during a postal strike in 1970. But scholars said they were not aware of it being used any time since.Mirasola said he was a little perplexed, given the vehemence of Trump’s rhetoric about “violent, insurrectionist mobs”, that the president opted for this softer approach. “Maybe he just wanted the theatrics of getting the military on the streets,” Mirasola said. “This is a way of doing that while still preserving some space to continue to escalate.”It was also possible, he suggested, that Trump could not talk his military commanders into taking a more aggressive approach. “The military establishment is extremely allergic to the Insurrection Act,” he said. “It’s one of the few things bred into every single officer.”According to veterans and advocacy groups for service members being deployed to Los Angeles, the military also prides itself on being entirely apolitical and has no appetite to be drawn into a political conflict involving Trump or anyone else. Perhaps for this reason, the national guard and the marines have been barely visible in Los Angeles.At the first big downtown protest, on 8 June, the Los Angeles police moved protesters away from the national guard’s staging area at a federal courthouse complex and parked their patrol cruisers in such a way that the guardsmen could not come out and intervene.Six days later, in the final stages of the No Kings protest, a hard core of protesters briefly faced off against a line of marines stationed on the front steps of the downtown federal building. “Leave LA!” the crowd chanted, prompting the marines to deploy riot shields and push the protesters away from the building. The Los Angeles police quickly issued a dispersal order, sent in officers on horseback, and fired volleys of teargas to send most of the crowd scattering.Otherwise, the only reported incident has involved a military veteran who inadvertently crossed a line of police tape outside a federal building in west Los Angeles. One of the marines on guard wrestled him to the ground and cuffed him, but he was released shortly after and told reporters he was treated “very fairly”.California has sued the Trump administration over the military deployment and seemed to score an early win in court last week when a district judge said the president had exceeded his authority and needed to return control of the state national guard immediately. An appeals panel has since reversed that ruling, however.Part of California’s problem in arguing its case is that the national guard has been pressed into non-traditional activities with increasing frequency in recent years, undermining the notion of a strict separation between military and civilian activities.Several states, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, have drafted the guard into border patrol duties despite severe morale issues among the troops and opposition from the military brass. New Mexico has asked its national guard to work as substitute teachers in understaffed schools. Florida has had them filling in as prison guards, and New York has seconded its guard to police the New York City subway.Supporters of California’s lawsuit argue that none of these scenarios are appropriate. And deploying the national guard for non-military purposes is even more inappropriate, they say, when it happens for an overtly partisan purpose over the objections of the state governor. “The military shouldn’t be in the business of domestic law enforcement. That’s not what they’re trained to do,” said Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, an advocacy group supporting the suit.“If Americans weren’t aware of the risks posed by politicized domestic deployments by the military before the events in Los Angeles, they certainly are now. Healthy and respectful civil-military relations are yet another bulwark of US democracy that the president is trying to erode. We’re all on notice.” More

    • 238 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘I’m scared to death to leave my house’: immigrants are disappearing from the streets – can US cities survive?

      by

      At Hector’s Mariscos restaurant in the heavily Latino and immigrant city of Santa Ana, California, sales of Mexican seafood have slid. Seven tables would normally be full, but diners sit at only two this Tuesday afternoon.“I haven’t seen it like this since Covid,” manager Lorena Marin said in Spanish as cumbia music played on loudspeakers. A US citizen, Marin even texted customers she was friendly with, encouraging them to come in.“No, I’m staying home,” a customer texted back. “It’s really screwed up out there with all of those immigration agents.”Increasing immigrant arrests in California have begun to gut-punch the economy and wallets of immigrant families and beyond. In some cases, immigrants with legal status and even US citizens have been swept into Donald Trump’s dragnet.The 2004 fantasy film A Day Without a Mexican – chronicling what would happen to California if Mexican immigrants disappeared – is fast becoming a reality, weeks without Mexicans and many other immigrants. The implications are stark for many, both economically and personally.“We are now seeing a very significant shift toward enforcement at labor sites where people are working,’ said Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “Not a focus on people with criminal records, but a focus on people who are deeply integrated in the American economy.”In California, immigrant workers comprise bigger shares of certain industries than they do for the nation overall. Here, the foreign-born make up 62% of agriculture labor and 42% of construction workers, according to the American Immigration Council. About 85% of sewing machine operators in garment factories are foreign-born. Fully 40% of entrepreneurs are foreign-born.Nationally, about a quarter of workers are foreign-born in agriculture and construction, according to the American Immigration Council. More than half of drywall hangers, plasterers and stucco masons are foreign-born. And in science, technology, engineering and math – the so-called Stem fields – nearly a quarter of workers are foreign-born, said the council.The current enforcement trend, Selee said, will “lead to a strategy that will have big economic implications if they continue to go after people who are active in the labor force rather than those who have criminal records”.In both California and across an ageing nation, about half of the foreign-born are naturalized US citizens – a crucial defense in immigration raids and arrests.View image in fullscreenSelee said the current strategy was launched when “the Trump administration realized they weren’t getting large numbers by following traditional approaches to pursuing people who are priority targets for deportation”.Now the threat and chilling effect from immigration raids can be felt in disparate communities from Dallas to El Paso to rural Wisconsin – among migrants and, in some cases, the employers who hire them.In the small town of Waumandee in Wisconsin, dairy farmer John Rosenow said he can’t find US citizens who can withstand the rigors of dairy work.“Fact of the matter is if you want to eat or drink milk you are going to need immigrant workers,” he said.“Yes, we want to get rid of the people who are bad actors,” Rosenow said. “But the people I know, people who are working in the dairy farms, are just hard-working people, getting things done, doing jobs Americans don’t want to do.”In California’s San Joaquin valley, rancher and melon-grower Joe Del Bosque has heard reports of US agents chasing workers in the strawberry fields south of his operation.The San Joaquin valley, known as the food basket of the world, is heavily dependent upon foreign-born workers, especially at harvest time, Del Bosque said. He currently has 100 people working for him and that number will double as the harvest picks up in the coming weeks.“They’re going to disrupt the harvest and food chain. This will hurt the American consumer,” Del Bosque said. “These people are hard workers. They come to work, especially if they have families here or in Mexico.”In a surprise pivot late last week, Trump said there would be an easing of the crackdown in agriculture and the hospitality industries. The New York Times first reported that new guidance from a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official called for a “hold on worksite enforcement investigations/operations” in the agriculture sector and restaurants and hotels. The Ice guidance, issued in an email, also said agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals”, a key point for those who note that many detained immigrants have had no criminal record. However, the Department of Homeland Security told staff it was reversing that guidance on Monday.Some business leaders and immigrants remain scared and confused.View image in fullscreenRaids, or the threat of them, are also taking an emotional toll on families and generating protests in Chicago, Seattle, Spokane, New York, San Antonio, Dallas and elsewhere. Bigger protests are expected in days to come.In El Paso, protesters flipped the White House script that undocumented immigrants were “criminals”. They waved mostly US flags and shouted “No justice, no peace. Shame on Ice.”Among the protesters was Alejandra, a US citizen and a junior at the University of Texas at El Paso. She asked for partial anonymity for fear of reprisal against her mixed-status family.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe said she took to this border city’s streets to honor the sacrifice of her grandparents who migrated from Ciudad Juárez. “All it takes is for you to look at who took that first step to bring you the life you have currently,” Alejandra said.In the Dallas area, a Guatemalan worker said he had been absent from construction sites for days.“There’s too much fear, too much to risk,” said Gustavo, 34, requesting his surname be withheld because he is undocumented. “I fear tomorrow, tonight. I may be deported, and who loses? My family back in Guatemala.”Tough immigration enforcement has been the top-polling issue for Trump. But favor may be slipping. A poll released this week by Quinnipiac University showed Trump had a 43% approval rating on immigration and a 54% disapproval rating. That poll was conducted between 5 and 9 June – after several days of protests.Meantime, back in Santa Ana, a city of about 316,000 in southern California, shop owner Alexa Vargas said foot traffic had slowed around her store, Vibes Boutique, with sales plummeting about 30% in recent days.On a recent day, the shop’s jeans and glitzy T-shirts remained un-browsed. Metered parking spots on the usually busy street sat empty. A fruit and snow cone vendor whom Vargas usually frequents had been missing for days.“It shouldn’t be this dead right now,” Vargas, 26, said on a Tuesday afternoon. “People are too scared to go out. Even if you’re a citizen but you look a certain way. Some people don’t want to risk it.”Reyna, a restaurant cook, told her boss she didn’t feel safe going to work after she heard about the immigration detentions at Home Depot stores in the city.The 40-year-old, who is in the US without legal status, said she fears becoming an Ice target. Current immigration laws and policies don’t provide a way to obtain legal status even though she’s been living in the US for more than 20 years.“I need to work but, honestly, I’m scared to death to leave my house,” she said.For now her life is on hold, Reyna said.She canceled a party for her son’s high school graduation. She no longer drives her younger children to summer school. She even stopped attending behavioral therapy sessions for her seven-year-old autistic son.Reyna said she can’t sleep. She suffers headaches every day.Early on Tuesday, she said, immigration agents in an unmarked vehicle swept up her husband’s 20-year-old nephew, who is a Mexican national without legal status. The scene unreeled across from her home.Her autistic son, a US-born citizen, has begged her to allow him to play on the front yard swing set.“No, honey. We can’t go outside,” Reyna told him.“Why?” he asked.“The police are taking people away,” she explained. “They are taking away people who were not born here.”This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual non-profit newsroom, convener and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the US-Mexico border. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s war with Iran signals perilous shift from showman to strongman

      by

      So the military parade that brought tanks to the streets of Washington on Donald Trump’s birthday was more than just an authoritarian ego trip. It was a show of strength and statement of intent.Exactly a week later, sporting a “Make America great again” (Maga) cap in the situation room, the American president ordered the biggest US military intervention in decades as more than 125 aircraft and 75 weapons – including 14 bunker-busting bombs – struck three Iranian nuclear sites. Trump called it a “spectacular military success” – but it remains unclear how much damage had actually been inflicted.Trump’s gamble was cheered by Israel and Republican hawks. It alarmed some in his Maga base who fell for his rhetoric promising to be an isolationist who would end forever wars. It left egg on the face of Pakistan, which only a day earlier had said it would nominate Trump for the Nobel peace prize.But there was no inconsistency for those paying close attention to the president’s war on democracy, which since January has included a draconian crackdown on immigration – including masked government agents grabbing people off the street and deporting them without due process – and the deployment of marines and national guard troops against protesters in Los Angeles.Trump’s strike on Iran was another example of both his disregard for public opinion – six in 10 Americans opposed US military involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran, according to an Economist/ YouGov poll released on 17 June – and his contempt for Congress.Democrats were quick to point out that his actions were a clear violation of the constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war on foreign countries. There was no evidence of an imminent threat to the US that might have provided grounds for Trump to act unilaterally.Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the bipartisan Senate national security working group, noted there was no intelligence showing Iran had made the decision to build a nuclear bomb or was constructing the mechanism of a bomb. And in a breach of protocol, leading national security Democrats were not informed of the strikes until after Trump announced them on social media.But once again, Democrats find themselves shut out of power and shouting into the void. Many called for Congress to pass a measure based on the War Powers Act that seeks to block “unauthorized hostilities” in Iran. Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania called it a necessary step to “rein in this out-of-control, wannabe dictator”. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called for Trump’s impeachment.Fat chance. Republicans, who control the majorities of both chambers, are willing accomplices in their own subjugation. They remained mostly silent as Trump unleashed Elon Musk’s Doge on the federal bureaucracy, gutting USAID and other agencies under Congress’s purview. In the House of Representatives, they buried their differences to pass Trump’s signature “one big beautiful bill”.Therefore, do not expect Republicans to pull the emergency brake on a Trump train that might be hurtling towards world war three. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and John Thune, the Senate majority leader, led a chorus of praise for the attack. Frequent Trump dissenters such as Nikki Haley and Mitch McConnell joined the commendation.Perversely, this most unconventional of presidents who ruined the party brand had reverted to Republican Original, taking the kind of action that would meet approval from George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and John McCain.The America First wing, meanwhile, was mostly muted and subdued. Trump’s cult of personality typically trumps differences over policy – and that is not likely to change over a military operation that took place more than 7,000 miles away with apparent success. (A damaging Iranian retaliation, or any suggested of a need for US boots on the ground, could of course change that narrative.)After all, Trump’s isolationism has always been selective: there is Dove Trump and Hawk Trump. Last year, Dove Trump falsely claimed to be the only president in 72 years to have no wars; in fact, Jimmy Carter never declared war or lost a single soldier to hostile action. In his inaugural address in January, he said: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”Yet Hawk Trump looks familiar enough to any student of US foreign adventurism. In his first term, he ordered cruise missile strikes in Syria, expanded military operations in Somalia, intensified the campaign against the Islamic State, dropped a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb in Afghanistan and ordered a drone strike that killed the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani. In his second term, Trump’s bombing campaign in Yemen has led to the deaths of almost as many civilians in two months as in the previous 23 years of US attacks on Islamists and militants in the country.View image in fullscreenThese contradictions are where JD Vance, the vice-president, becomes a useful foil. He has been an outspoken isolationist, openly questioning why the US should care about Ukraine’s borders rather than its own. During the Iran crisis he has remained staunchly supportive of Trump, standing beside the president during Saturday night’s televised address and defending the intervention on Sunday’s Meet the Press programme on the NBC network.“We’re not at war with Iran; we’re at war with Iran’s nuclear programme,” Vance said, using the type of doublespeak that the Bush administration specialised in to conjure phantom weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.He added in the same interview: “I certainly empathise with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objective.”Trump has called on Iran to “agree to end this war”, saying that “now is the time for peace”. It remains to be seen whether the strikes will push Tehran to de-escalate the conflict or widen it further.The former would allow Trump and his army of loyalists to declare victory. The latter would give him potential for a “rally around the flag” effect that puts Democrats in a bind. Nothing suits an authoritarian better than an external threat.The Trump who threw a birthday parade and used the military like a prop invited ridicule. The Trump who deploys troops to the streets of Los Angeles and drops bombs on Iran is altogether more dangerous.Exit the showman. Enter the strongman. More