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    Musk’s Doge reportedly keeps attempting to push out federal workers despite judge blocking buyout deadline – live

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    Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” Bondi wrote in a memo to all Justice department employees after she was sworn in on Wednesday, “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded.”The FBI website explains that former director Christopher Wray established the taskforce in 2017 to combat “covert actions by foreign governments to influence US political sentiment or public discourse”.“The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values,” according to the FBI.As Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Verify report, Elon Musk shared a viral video with more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X that falsely claims the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) paid more than $40m to Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller to get them to visit Ukraine.The video, which carries the branding of the NBCUniversal outlet E! News, and follows the style of its celebrity reports, never appeared on any of that outlet’s social media accounts.The hoax, Robinson reports, “is extremely similar in style” to a Russian influence operation BBC Verify previously exposed that use fictional social media news reports to impersonate media outlets and push anti-Ukraine narratives.One of the named stars, Stiller, made an effort to combat the disinformation running rampant on Musk’s social-media platform by writing in a post there: “These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false”.Despite Stiller’s effort to halt the spread of the hoax news report, it was also shared by Donald Trump Jr and Sidney Powell, known for her leading role in spreading wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), the White House has confirmed.The text of the order, posted on the White House website, accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and abused its power by issuing “baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant”.According to the order:
    The United States will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the United States of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our Nation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.
    Our colleagues on the Middle East live blog are tracking reaction to the order.Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” Bondi wrote in a memo to all Justice department employees after she was sworn in on Wednesday, “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded.”The FBI website explains that former director Christopher Wray established the taskforce in 2017 to combat “covert actions by foreign governments to influence US political sentiment or public discourse”.“The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values,” according to the FBI.As Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Verify report, Elon Musk shared a viral video with more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X that falsely claims the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) paid more than $40m to Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller to get them to visit Ukraine.The video, which carries the branding of the NBCUniversal outlet E! News, and follows the style of its celebrity reports, never appeared on any of that outlet’s social media accounts.The hoax, Robinson reports, “is extremely similar in style” to a Russian influence operation BBC Verify previously exposed that use fictional social media news reports to impersonate media outlets and push anti-Ukraine narratives.One of the named stars, Stiller, made an effort to combat the disinformation running rampant on Musk’s social-media platform by writing in a post there: “These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false”.Despite Stiller’s effort to halt the spread of the hoax news report, it was also shared by Donald Trump Jr and Sidney Powell, known for her leading role in spreading wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.Doge staffer installed at treasury resigns after Wall Street Journal uncovers racist posts.Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer who obtained access to a treasury department payments system as part of his work for Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative, reportedly resigned on Thursday after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about a deleted social media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.According to the Journal, recent posts on an account that once used the handle @marko_elez called for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and supported a “eugenic immigration policy” just before Trump returned to office and empowered Musk to take a sledgehammer to federal agencies.
    ‘You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,’ the account wrote on X in September, according to a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts. ‘Normalize Indian hate,’ the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
    “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool”, the account holder posted in July.A lawyer for the government confirmed in federal court on Wednesday that Elez, who had previously worked for Musk at SpaceX, Starlink and X, had access to US treasury payment systems that contain the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.Sources told Wired earlier this week, that Elez had been granted the ability “not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.”Here’s what has been in the news this afternoon:

    A “DEI watch list” targeting federal employees who work in health equity-related positions spurred fear for the workers’ safety and jobs. Most of the workers included on the list are Black.

    A budget dispute among congressional Republicans could slow their efforts to enact Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump was scheduled to meet with Republican lawmakers on Thursday as they craft a spending bill that could avert a government shutdown in March.

    For the second time in two days, a judge moved Thursday to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The Seattle judge said Trump viewed the rule of law simply as an “impediment to his policy goals.”

    A judge also temporarily limited Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury’s payment system. The order allows for two of Musk’s associates to access the system – but on a read-only basis.

    Even after a judge delayed a buyout offer for federal employees, Musk’s self-styled Department of Government Accountability (DOGE), continued to pressure workers to quit. Agencies under Musk’s unofficial purview threatened workers with layoffs and implied their jobs could be replaced with artificial intelligence.

    DOGE reportedly accessed sensitive data from the Department of Education and used artificial intelligence to analyze it. The data reportedly included personal and financial information.

    The Trump administration has dropped efforts to sanction oligarchs close to Putin. The Joe Biden administration had implemented sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
    After Donald Trump issued an executive order to ban diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, dozens of workers have been fired from their positions in the civil service.In an attempt to aid in the purge, a Heritage Foundation-linked group published a list of employees who work in health equity, most of whom are Black, and asked Trump to fire them.The “DEI watch list,” created by the rightwing nonprofit American Accountability Foundation, included the photos and work history of the employees it targeted – causing the workers to fear for their safety.Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin, Reuters reports. A memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, issued on Wednesday during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.“This policy requires a fundamental change in mindset and approach,” Bondi wrote in the directive, adding that resources now devoted to enforcing sanctions and seizing the assets of oligarchs will be redirected to countering cartels.The effort, launched during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, was designed to strain the finances of wealthy associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and punish those facilitating sanctions and export control violations.In a statement, Politico’s CEO and editor-in-chief responded to rightwing claims, echoed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, that the outlet is bankrolled by the US government.The outlet clarified that Politico does not receive any government funding, while private companies, organizations and government agencies may pay to subscribe to Politico Pro for specialized reports.“They subscribe because it makes them better at their jobs — helping them track policy, legislation, and regulations in real-time with news, intelligence, and a suite of data products,” they wrote in the statement.Elon Musk’s associates at the tech billionaire’s self-styled Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have reportedly used artificial intelligence to process sensitive data from the Department of Education.According to the Washington Post, the operatives used AI to analyze spending by the Department of Education. Some of the information included sensitive employee and financial data.Meanwhile, Donald Trump is reportedly considering executive actions to dismantle the Department of Education, including one proposal to abolish the department entirely. Dozens of employees of the education department were reportedly put on leave following Trump’s orders to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programming in the federal government.Democratic lawmakers are seeking an inquiry into possible security breaches by Elon Musk and his operatives, reports the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe:Democrats are demanding an investigation into potential national security breaches created by Elon Musk’s takeover of certain federal agencies through his self-styled “department of government efficiency” (Doge).In a letter published on Thursday, the members of the House oversight committee say they are worried that Musk and his operatives have illegally accessed classified information and sensitive personal data at agencies including the office of personnel management (OPM), the US treasury and the US Agency for International Development (USAid).“There is no evidence that he, or any of his associates working under the ‘Doge team’ moniker, are entitled to access our government systems, nor is there any evidence that they have undergone the proper vetting to ensure the security of taxpayer and government data,” the letter said.Even as a judge blocked a buyout offer for federal employees, Elon Musk has continued his effort to push federal workers out of their jobs. According to a new report by Politico, officials at the agencies now overseen by Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have peppered employees with messages urging them to take the offer – or brace for layoffs. In one email, an official suggested the government would cut “redundant business functions and associated staffing” and was considering implementing artificial intelligence.Meanwhile, Musk has continued to regularly share posts throughout the day on X promoting DOGE and the idea that the civil service is rife with fraud.A judge has temporarily limited the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (Doge)’s ability to access the highly-sensitive payment system of the US Treasury that Musk’s associates reportedly attempted to use to block USAID payments.The ruling marks the first time that the courts have limited DOGE, which, in the last two weeks, has dug into the federal bureaucracy, pushing to shut down USAID and sowing chaos in the civil service.It comes in response to unions that represent federal employees accusing the Treasury of unlawfully sharing personal employee data with DOGE. The ruling named two DOGE associates who could be given access to the payment system – but on a read-only basis.A judge has moved to block Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the US, the second such ruling in two days.On Thursday, the Seattle judge, John Coughenour, told reporters, “It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals.”Wednesday, a judge temporarily paused Trump’s order, which sought to prevent the US-born children of undocumented immigrants from obtaining automatic citizenship. The fourteenth amendment protects birthright citizenship, a right that was recognized by the US supreme court in 1898.Donald Trump is meeting with congressional Republican leadership Thursday to discuss a budget bill that has generated conflict within the GOP caucus.The proposed spending bill will attempt to turn Trump’s agenda into legislation, touching on immigration, energy and taxes, and while the senate Republican leadership has signaled they are ready to move forward with a two-part piece of legislation, Trump has suggested he prefers a single measure to deliver his agenda.The conflict underscores how narrow the Republicans’ majority in the house is: with 218 Republicans to 215 Democrats, the Republicans need nearly every vote to pass legislation.The Heritage Foundation funded the group compiling a list of federal employees to be targeted for firing under the Trump administration, the Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports: A rightwing group that has created a series of blacklists to target federal workers it believes the Trump administration should fire has received funding for the project by the thinktank behind Project 2025.A recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation called the “DEI Watch List” includes mostly Black people with roles in government health roles alleged to have some tie to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees in career roles who “cannot be trusted to faithfully execute the agenda of the elected President of the United States”. One calls out the “most subversive immigration bureaucrats”.Tom Jones, the president of the American Accountability Foundation, said the organization had plans to add to its existing lists and create more. The group was designed to go after the “DC bureaucrats and leftist organizations” that had been allowed “to subvert, obstruct, and sabotage the America First agenda”, according to its website.Here’s a recap of developing news today so far:

    The Senate appears poised to confirm the nomination of Russell Vought to lead the powerful Office of Management and Budget, despite intense Democratic opposition. Senate Democrats held an overnight floor session in the senate to deliver speeches decrying Vought, an architect of Project 2025 who would likely attempt to further consolidate executive authority under Trump if confirmed.

    Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, an annual gala, where he said he had plans to create a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias” and floated possible changes to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

    The deadline for federal workers to accept offered buyouts approaches tonight, leaving federal employees to wonder whether the promised benefits are really on offer, and whether they will be laid off if they choose to stay – a possibility floated to the press by top Trump officials.

    CNN reported that top associates of Elon Musk sought to use the highly-sensitive Treasury payment system to block funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), sparking fears of overreach by the unelected government employee and his staff.

    Trump is expected to sanction the International Criminal Court in an executive order, accusing the court of improperly investigating the US and Israel. In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top Hamas leadership.

    A federal judge said he stood ready to enforce his order for the Trump administration to end its freeze on federal grant funding. States have reported programs like Head Start still struggling to access their funding despite the Trump administration rescinding its pause on such funding and a court order to do the same.
    A federal judge on Thursday said he stood ready to enforce an order he issued blocking Donald Trump’s administration from freezing federal grants, loans and other financial assistance after Democratic-led states said billions of dollars in funding was still being tied up, Reuters reports. US District Judge John McConnell in Providence, Rhode Island, during a virtual court hearing, said state agencies had a “rightful concern” that they were still not able to fully access money nearly a week after he issued his temporary restraining order.He issued that 31 January order at the behest of Democratic attorneys generals from 22 states and the District of Columbia, determining it was necessary even after the White House’s Office of Management and Budget rescinded its wide-ranging directive that had announced the funding freeze. More

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      Issa Lopez on Fear and Horror in Fiction and in Real Life

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      Fictional fear can be beautifully distracting from life’s real terrors.This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.Turning Point: The American horror film genre more than doubled its market share in the past decade.As a Mexican — specifically a Mexican child who had to face death early in my life — I learned a nifty trick pretty quickly: the way my culture transfigures fear of death into art. Into storytelling. Into music.Mexican identity is one and the same with death. It is a direct response to the fear of vanishing, yes. But it took some years of living in the United States and in several other countries to understand that this is not just a Mexican thing.All artistic endeavors throughout history, around the world, come from the same source. We tell stories to remain. To deny the void. To fight the void. We sing and dance and make movies and tell jokes to explain a bit of the unexplainable, to tame the endless darkness, all of the things that lurk beyond what we can see, the shadows beyond our tiny campfire.Our relationship with fear is fascinating. It is the feeling, other than pain, that we hate the most. We bottle fear to consume in tiny doses in the form of roller coasters, bungee jumping and our all-time favorite: horror movies.I love horror movies. I just adore them, and I am very much not alone in that. Unlike superheroes or musicals or westerns, the business of horror is perennial; it will never go away. Audiences show up for horror year-round, decade after decade. There are whole streaming services dedicated to horror, and they do well. A single genre, go figure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      If Trump’s tariffs start a trade war, it would be an economic disaster | Mark Weisbrot

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      “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff, and it’s my favorite word,” said Donald Trump last month. Pundits, politicians and financial markets are trying to figure out why, since he announced a week ago that he would impose tariffs on the United States’s three biggest trading partners: 25% for Mexico and Canada, and 10% for China.One theory is that tariffs can be a beautiful distraction. Trump, more than any previous US president, has fed on distractions for years, both to campaign and to govern. He can move seamlessly from one distraction to the next, like a magician preparing for the opportune moment to pull a coin from where it appears to have been hidden behind your ear.Although he still has seven weeks before he takes office, he could use a distraction that can start sooner. He has run into problems with cabinet and other appointments that require Senate confirmation. Of course he could easily find people who would do his bidding and be acceptable to a Senate with a Republican majority. But that would defeat the main purpose of nominating people who seem indefensible: to force Republican senators to display the abject subservience that Trump needs to be public, in order to ensure his unwavering dominance within his party.This is no small part of his governing strategy; it involves a big takeaway from the failures of his first term, from his point of view. The lesson is: loyalty to Trump first. Violators will be banished. And with small margins in the Senate and the House, things could begin to unravel if this core imperative goes unenforced.But the days before Trump actually takes office could also be the best time for him to use the threat of tariffs to begin bullying foreign governments for things that might benefit his allies, donors or himself. Other governments besides the three that he named are trying to figure out what they can offer Trump to avoid the economic disruption of tariffs. Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, who does not see Trump as a friend, has urged the EU to negotiate with him, rather than adopt a retaliatory, eg tariff, response.Trump’s two offered pretexts for the tariff threat – migration and drugs, in this case fentanyl – are not credible. About 18% of the undocumented people encountered by border patrol over the past year have been from Venezuela and Cuba, two countries that have been devastated economically by sanctions imposed by the US government. If reducing immigration were really Trump’s concern, he would not have deployed sanctions that have driven millions of people from their homes to the US border; and he could end these sanctions in January by himself.Broad economic sanctions are a form of economic violence which targets civilians in order to achieve political ends, including regime change. US congressman Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, made this clear in a letter that he wrote to Joe Biden asking for the sanctions on Venezuela to be dropped. The Trump sanctions in Venezuela in 2017 killed tens of thousands of civilians during the first year, and many more in the years that followed, including under Biden.As for fentanyl, about 75,000 people died from overdoses of this drug in 2023. But it’s difficult to see how Trump’s tariffs could help solve this problem. It’s a glaring example of how more than four decades of a failed “war on drugs”, based on criminalization of use and supply-side intervention, have made things worse. In this case the drug war has led to an innovation – fentanyl – that is vastly more powerful than heroin, much cheaper to produce, more addictive and easier to transport, distribute and produce.There is general agreement in the economic research on the effects of Trump’s trade and tariff wars in his first term as president, in which he placed tariffs on about $380bn of US imports. The overall impact on living standards for US workers and most Americans is found to be negative, with the cost of the tariffs being absorbed by US consumers. Employment overall did not increase, and may have fallen due to the negative impact of retaliatory tariffs.The economic research looking at the expected impacts of tariffs that Trump has talked about going forward also finds the impact on the US economy to be negative. And there is potential for much more damage if other countries respond with more retaliatory tariffs than they did in 2018-2020.Meanwhile, the productivity of Trump’s tariff offensive in generating distractions remains high. On Sunday he took a shot at the so-called Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and other economic powers: “We require a commitment from these countries,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “that they will neither create a new Brics currency nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar or they will face 100% tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy.”None of these things will happen while Trump is in office. Nor will threats like this deter the majority of the world, when it is ready, from replacing a system of global governance that is overwhelmingly run by one country with help from the richest people in other rich countries. Our current system is one in which the “exorbitant privilege” that the dollar-based financial system bestows upon the US government gives the president the power to destroy whole economies with the stroke of a pen.But this is a longer story; for Trump it’s just another threat and another distraction in the post-truth world that he, as much as anyone, helped create. But he will need more than distractions to take this country further down the road toward de-democratization, which is what brought to him and his party the power that they now have.

      Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is the author of Failed: What the “Experts” Got Wrong About the Global Economy More

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      ‘He loves to divide and conquer’: Canada and Mexico brace for second Trump term

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      Stone-faced as he stared into a gaggle of cameras on Tuesday, the leader of Canada’s largest province laid bare how it feels to be America’s northern neighbour and closest ally this week.“It’s like a family member stabbing you right in the heart,” said Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford. A day before, president-elect Donald Trump had pledged hefty tariffs on Mexico and Canada, the US’s two largest trading partners. “It’s the biggest threat we’ve ever seen … It’s unfortunate. It’s very, very hurtful.”For both Mexico and Canada, whose economic successes are enmeshed in their multibillion-dollar trade relationships with the United States, the forecasted chaos and disruption of a second Trump term has arrived. And the first salvo from Trump has already forced leaders from Mexico and Canada to revisit their relationship with the US – and with each other.Both have maxims to describe living in the shadow of the world’s largest economic and military superpower, which sees nearly $2tn worth of goods and services pass through its two land borders.“Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant,” the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau told then US president Richard Nixon. “No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”For Mexicans, it is the words of the 19th-century dictator Porfirio Díaz: “Poor Mexico: so far from God, so close to the United States.”The vagaries of the relationship were tested again this week when Trump threatened in a social media post to apply devastating levies of 25% on all goods and services from both countries, and to keep them in place until “such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”Although in 2018 the US, Canada and Mexico renegotiated the Nafta trade pact that Trump had long blamed for gutting US manufacturing, the three countries still have deeply intertwined supply chains – especially an automotive industry that spans the continent – making a levy of that magnitude potentially devastating to all.In Canada, Trump’s demands have left the government scrambling to make sense of the threat – and how seriously to take it.“‘Good-faith negotiator’ is not usually a descriptor of Donald Trump. He loves to disrupt it. He loves to divide and conquer,” said Colin Robertson, a former senior Canadian diplomat who has had numerous postings in the US. “Trump is determined to truly make his mark. Last time he was disorganized. This time, he’s certainly started off demonstrating a high degree of organization.”Even before Trump’s announcement, the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and a handful of provincial premiers had mused openly about cutting Mexico out of future trade talks, instead pivoting towards a Canada-US trade pact – a move that Mexico’s lead negotiator called a “betrayal”.On Wednesday, Trudeau held an emergency meeting with all 10 premiers to push a “Team Canada” approach to the confrontation, pledging hours later to invest more in border security – a nod to Trump’s criticism of Canada’s patrolling of its border.A challenge for Canada is a need to approach Trump with skepticism, but also to take the threats seriously, says Robertson, adding that Canada’s trade relationship with the US is immensely lopsided. “The reality is, we need them. They’re big, we’re small.”Still, Trump’s demands “are perverse, but unfortunately predictable”, says Roland Paris, director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and former foreign affairs adviser to Trudeau.He notes that only a sliver of the fentanyl entering the US comes from Canada, a figure so small the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) does not even mention Canada in a report from 2020. As for migrants entering the US, Canada’s federal minister says yearly interceptions are similar to a “significant weekend” at the Mexico border.“This is [Trump’s] modus operandi,” said Paris. “He’s not wasting any time throwing America’s principal trading partners off balance, before he even enters office.”Ottawa’s efforts to smooth things over with Trump are also hampered by domestic politics. Trudeau remains immensely unpopular in polls, and the rival Conservatives have cast the prime minister as weak and ill-equipped to both preserve what Nixon called Canada’s “special relationship” with the US and to face off against a mercurial president.Paris imagines the prime minister’s cabinet, especially veterans of bruising negotiations with Trump during his first term, as “determined” to manage relations with a country that for decades has remained a staunch ally. He says years of close work has produced a significant overlap in policy goals for the two nations, including skepticism of China and a need to secure critical mineral and energy supply chains.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Canada is going to need resolve, patience and the most far-reaching advocacy campaign this country has ever conducted in the United States,” he said. “But everybody knows that Trump is so unpredictable that there’s no saying what he might do this time.”For Mexico, which has long borne the brunt of Trump’s ire, Monday’s tariff threat comes amid already tense relations, including a reform to elect almost all judges by popular vote that has drawn sharp criticism from the US. At the same time, the arrest in July of two top Sinaloa cartel bosses in Texas, a move that surprised Mexican officials, has triggered a bloody gang war that the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, blames on the US.On Wednesday, Sheinbaum spoke with Trump, a conversation which the US president-elect characterised as “wonderful” after he claimed the Mexican president pledged to “stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border”. Sheinbaum later gently clarified that she wouldn’t close the border, but that the call was “very kind” and had convinced her that no tariffs would happen.Martha Bárcena, a former Mexican ambassador to the US, said Trump’s tariff suggestion has kicked off “panic” in the Mexican community living in the US. “How can you hit your partners in a free trade agreement with tariffs 25% higher than what you put on the rest of the world? It’s crazy,” she said.“What was his ceiling is now his floor,” she said of his previous negotiating position on trade. “The lesson? Never yield to a bully.”Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, a Mexican diplomat who oversaw migration when Trump first came to power, says the bombast of the next US president can be easier to work with than more traditional allies.“The Biden administration is a little more diplomatic, but this can actually make the discussion more complicated, because you don’t know what the terms of negotiation are,” he said. “Maybe it’s just my style of negotiation. It’s simpler when it’s more open. They put the cards on the table: ‘This is what we want.’ Then you can respond.”Both Mexico and Canada have scores of diplomats already experienced with Trump, but both sides also expressed concern that many of the key figures in Trump’s first term, who acted as a “check” on the president’s whim-based policy decisions, will be absent from the second administration, replaced by loyalists and idealogues who will do whatever he says.Still, for Mexican officials, there is a glimmer of hope that those in positions of power are more reasonable when they’re not in the media spotlight. Alcántara noted that “border czar” Tom Homan, who recently pledged to carry out a “mass deportation’, is known for his controversial positions, “but if you take the facts to him and explain them, he understands. He has a certain discourse in the media that’s very aggressive, but when you sit down together, you can talk.”For Mexico and Canada, a recognition that their fates remain tied to the US has forced them to redouble their efforts, not to reconsider their relationship.“In the end, we need to bet on a strong North America,” said Alcántara. It’s simple: make North America great again. As a region, not just the United States.” More

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      Why Mexico Is Eliminating Independent Watchdog Agencies

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      A vote in the country’s Senate has cleared the way to abolish seven independent organizations that provided oversight on issues such as public information and price fixing.Mexico’s Senate on Thursday night passed a sweeping proposal to dissolve several government-financed yet independent watchdog organizations, a move the president and her supporters said would help reduce corruption and waste. Critics have called it a step backward for transparency and regulation.The duties of most of the seven agencies, which provided oversight on a host of issues, such as public information requests and price fixing in the telecommunications, pharmaceutical and energy sectors, would be absorbed by other parts of the federal government, overseen by the president.Perhaps the most noteworthy of the agencies — the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data, known as INAI — would have its responsibilities divided among a handful of existing federal agencies.“The disappearance of these autonomous bodies represents a democratic setback,” the Mexican Association for the Right to Information, a nongovernmental group, said in a statement. The move, the group added, “weakens the mechanisms of control, transparency and protection of rights that have been built with great effort in our country.”The constitutional amendment dissolving the agencies is part of a series of far-reaching proposals pushed by the former Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that are supported by his successor and mentee, Claudia Sheinbaum, and by their political party, Morena.In September, Mexico passed an amendment overhauling the country’s judiciary, which supporters of the proposal said was riddled with graft, influence-peddling and nepotism. Critics warned that the move, which will see nearly all Mexican judges elected rather than appointed, undermines judicial independence and politicizes the courts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mexican president claims ‘no potential tariff war’ with US after call with Trump

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      Claudia Sheinbaum has said her “very kind” phone conversation with Donald Trump, in which they discussed immigration and fentanyl, means “there will not be a potential tariff war” between the US and Mexico.The president of Mexico spoke to reporters on Thursday following Trump’s threat earlier in the week to apply a 25% tariff against Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% tariff against China, when he takes office in January if the countries did not stop all illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling into the US.Trump, in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, claimed that during the phone call with Sheinbaum she had “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border”.During her Thursday address Sheinbaum clarified she did not agree to shut down the border.“Each person has their own way of communicating,” Sheinbaum said. “But I can assure you, I guarantee you, that we never – additionally, we would be incapable of doing so – proposed that we would close the border in the north [of Mexico], or in the south of the United States. It has never been our idea and, of course, we are not in agreement with that.”She added that the two did not discuss tariffs, but that the conversation with Trump had reassured her that no tit-for-tat tariff battle would be needed in future.On Monday this week, Trump threatened to impose a 25% percent tariff on Mexico until drugs, including fentanyl, and undocumented immigrants “stop this Invasion of our Country”. He declared that Mexico and Canada should use their power to address drug trafficking and migration and, until they do, “it is time for them to pay a very big price!”The following day, Sheinbaum suggested Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own.On Wednesday, however, the conversation between Sheinbaum and Trump was “very kind”, the Mexican president said. She said she told Trump of the various migration initiatives her government has undertaken, including providing resources and support to central American countries and to migrants arriving in Mexico. Potential immigrants “will not reach the northern border, because Mexico has a strategy”, Sheinbaum said.Trump “recognized this effort” by the Mexican government, Sheinbaum added.She also said Trump expressed interest in the government-driven programs to address fentanyl addiction and overdoses in Mexico. And she raised the problem of American-made weapons entering Mexico from the US to be used by drug cartels.Sheinbaum further added that she encouraged Trump to stop the blockades against Cuba and Venezuela, since “people suffer and it leads to the phenomenon of migration”.Asked by a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine that quoted anonymous Trump-aligned sources discussing a “soft invasion” of Mexico by deploying the US military inside the country against drug trafficking groups, Sheinbaum dismissed the idea, calling it “entirely a movie”.“What I base myself on is the conversation – the two conversations – that I had with President Trump, and then, at the moment, the communication we will have with his work team and when he takes office,” Sheinbaum said. “We will always defend our sovereignty. Mexico is a free, independent, sovereign country – and that is above everything else.” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump and Mexican president offer differing accounts of migration talks amid tariff threats

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      US president-elect Donald Trump declared a win on stopping illegal immigration through Mexico on Wednesday after talking with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum. But Sheinbaum suggested Mexico was already doing its part and would not close its borders.The two spoke just days after Trump threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs on Canada and Mexico as part of his effort to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs.Trump said Sheinbaum “agreed to stop migration through Mexico.” Sheinbaum indicated separately on social media that she told Trump that Mexico is already “taking care of” migrant caravans, calling it an “excellent conversation.”“We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples,” Sheinbaum added.While the state of the proposed tariffs remained unclear, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social account that this was “effectively closing our southern border.” He called it a “very productive conversation.”The exchange between the two leaders appeared to confirm for Trump the value of threatening to disrupt trade with import taxes. His initial social media post moved financial markets and gave him a response he was quick to describe as a win. Even if the proposed tariffs fail to materialise, Trump can tell supporters that the mere possibility of them is an effective policy tool and continue to rely on tariff threats.Sheinbaum wrote on social media that the leaders “discussed Mexico’s strategy on migration issues, and I told him the caravans are not reaching the northern [US] border, because Mexico is taking care of them.”“We also talked about reinforcing cooperation on security issues, within the framework of our sovereignty, and the campaign we are carrying out to prevent fentanyl consumption,” she said.Illegal migration across the Mexico border is down in part because the Biden administration secured some stepped-up cooperation from Mexico – the sort Trump seems to be celebrating.Arrivals at the US-Mexico border have dropped 40% from an all-time high in December. US officials mostly credit Mexican vigilance around rail yards and highway checkpoints.Driven by mounting pressure from the US to block migrants going north, in the past few years Mexican authorities have turned to rounding them up across the country and sending them to southern Mexico, in a strategy seen by experts as an attempt to wear migrants out until they give up.Neither side clarified the status of the tariffs. But their implementation could fuel higher prices and slow economic growth, potentially blowing up the trade agreement among the US, Canada and Mexico that was finalized in 2020 during Trump’s previous time in the White House.Trump on Monday said he would impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico as one of his first executive orders upon taking office on 20 January. He also proposed an additional 10% tariff on China tied to its exporting of materials used in the production of fentanyl.In announcing his plans, he railed against the flow of fentanyl and migrants crossing into the US illegally, even though southern border apprehensions have been hovering near four-year lows.On Wednesday, Trump also posted that he plans a large scale ad campaign to explain “how bad fentanyl is for people to use,” predicting it would educate people on “how really bad the horror of this drug is.”The dangerously powerful opioid was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer but has increasingly been mixed with other drugs in the illicit drug supply.Through September, the United States has imported $378.9bn in goods from Mexico, $322.2bn from China and $309.3bn from Canada. More

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      in Elections

      Mexico’s President and Trump Describe a Positive Talk but Differ on Migration Details

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      Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, spoke to President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday afternoon, and both later characterized their discussion as positive while providing different descriptions of what Mexico is doing to stave off a potential tariff war.While Mr. Trump posted on social media that Mexico had agreed to stop migration to the United States through Mexico, “effectively closing our Southern Border,” Ms. Sheinbaum limited her description of the migration-related issues they had discussed to migrant caravans no longer reaching the border with the United States.Still, Ms. Sheinbaum, who earlier in the day had made clear that Mexico would impose retaliatory tariffs in response to similar measures threatened by Mr. Trump, seemed to ease tensions by saying the exchange was “excellent.”“I had an excellent conversation with President Donald Trump,” she wrote on social media. “We addressed Mexico’s strategy regarding the migration phenomenon, and I shared that caravans are no longer reaching the northern border as they are being addressed within Mexico.”That update from Ms. Sheinbaum came after Mr. Trump jolted trade relations with Mexico by saying earlier in the week that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all goods from the country unless Mexican authorities stopped migrants and drugs, such as fentanyl, from coming across the border. The proposed move raised concerns over the potential impact on Mexico’s economy, which relies on trade with the United States.Mr. Trump also posted on social media about the conversation with Ms. Sheinbaum, calling it “wonderful” and “productive.”“She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border,” Mr. Trump said, though Ms. Sheinbaum referred only to the caravans. “We also talked about what can be done to stop the massive drug inflow into the United States, and also, U.S. consumption of these drugs,” he added.Ms. Sheinbaum said earlier on Wednesday, “If there are U.S. tariffs, Mexico would also raise tariffs” — making clear her stance on Mexico’s potential response.Senior officials in her government and leading figures in Mexico’s governing party, Morena, also expressed support for retaliatory tariffs. Mexico’s economy minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said that about 400,000 jobs could be lost in the United States if Mr. Trump imposed the tariffs, calling the measure a “shot in the foot” while speaking alongside Ms. Sheinbaum at a morning news conference.Mexico’s president did not refer to tariffs, or trade tensions in general, in her post about her conversation with Mr. Trump. Instead, she said she and Mr. Trump had “discussed strengthening collaboration on security issues within the framework of our sovereignty and the campaign we are conducting in Mexico to prevent fentanyl consumption.” More