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      Pentagon Is Reviewing Deal to Equip Australia With Nuclear Submarines

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      The 2021 pact, meant to help counter China’s ambitions in the Asia Pacific, will be examined to ensure that it meets “America First criteria,” a U.S. official said.The Trump administration is reviewing whether a security pact between the United States, Britain and Australia meant to equip Australia with nuclear submarines is “aligned with the president’s America First agenda,” a U.S. defense official said on Wednesday.When the deal was reached under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration in 2021, it was billed as crucial for countering China’s growing military influence in the Asia Pacific. Now, its review appears to reinforce President Trump’s skeptical and transactional approach to longstanding alliances, including demands that allies spend more on their own defense.The Pentagon official said the review would ensure that the pact, known as Aukus, met “common-sense, America First criteria,” including ensuring that U.S. forces are at “the highest readiness,” that allies are doing their part, and that “the defense industrial base is meeting our needs.” The review was first reported by The Financial Times.Australia’s defense minister, Richard Marles, said both Australia and Britain had been notified about the review and that all three nations were still committed to the deal.“We’ve been aware of this for some time. We welcome it,” Mr. Marles said in a radio interview with ABC Melbourne on Thursday, Australia time. “It’s something which is perfectly natural for an incoming administration to do.”Australia sees the Aukus agreement as central to its defense strategy in the coming decades in a region increasingly shaped by China’s assertive military posturing. Nuclear submarines can travel much farther without detection than conventional ones can and would enable the Australian Navy to greatly extend its reach.Under the pact, Australia is scheduled to receive secondhand Virginia-class nuclear submarines from the United States in the 2030s while scaling up the capacity to build its own, using a British design. But there has been concern in both Washington and Canberra about whether the United States can build new submarines to replenish its fleet quickly enough for the older ones to be transferred to Australia.Elbridge Colby, the U.S. under secretary of defense for policy, said during his Senate confirmation hearing in March that he was skeptical about the pragmatic feasibility of the deal. The Financial Times reported that Mr. Colby was heading up the Pentagon review.“So if we can produce the attack submarines in sufficient number and sufficient speed, then great,” Mr. Colby said at the hearing. “But if we can’t, that becomes a very difficult problem.”Even before the review was announced, concern and anxiety had been building in Australia over whether it could continue to depend on its longstanding relationship with the United States, given the Trump administration’s treatment of allies.Mr. Marles, the Australian defense minister, said in the radio interview that he was confident the Aukus deal would proceed because “it’s in the interests of the United States to continue to work with Australia.”Michael D. Shear More

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      Trump is Pushing Allies Away and Closer Into Each Other’s Arms

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      Important U.S. allies are trying to bolster their ties as the Trump administration shifts priorities and reshapes the world order.New trade deals. Joint sanctions against Israel. Military agreements.America’s closest allies are increasingly turning to each other to advance their interests, deepening their ties as the Trump administration challenges them with tariffs and other measures that are upending trade, diplomacy and defense.Concerned by shifting U.S. priorities under President Trump, some of America’s traditional partners on the world stage have spent the turbulent months since Mr. Trump’s January inauguration focusing on building up their direct relationships, flexing diplomatic muscles and leaving the United States aside.This emerging dynamic involves countries such as Britain, France, Canada and Japan — often referred to by international relations experts as “middle powers” to distinguish them from superpowers like the United States and China.“These are industrialized democracies, allies of the United States, supporting multilateral rules and institutions,” said Roland Paris, a professor of international relations and the director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.“And as the international order has been disintegrating, and the United States has been indicating that it’s less willing to underwrite it, what we’ve seen is a shift in the role of middle powers,” he added.That role, Professor Paris said, is characterized by the pursuit of “opportunistic and self-interested initiatives that are still collaborative,” including a slew of smaller agreements over trade and defense involving European countries and Canada.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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      Macron Will Visit Greenland This Month, Defying Trump

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      President Emmanuel Macron of France plans to travel to the island nation, which President Trump has vowed to take control of, on the way to Canada for a Group of 7 meeting.In a challenge to President’s Trump’s vow to take control of Greenland, President Emmanuel Macron of France will visit the enormous Arctic island on June 15 with the aim of “contributing to the reinforcement of European sovereignty.”The French presidency announced the visit on Saturday, saying that Mr. Macron had accepted an invitation from Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, and Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, with whom it said Mr. Macron would discuss “security in the North Atlantic and the Arctic.”Greenland, a semiautonomous island that is a territory of Denmark, a NATO ally, has been thrust in recent months from a remote, uneventful existence to the center of a geostrategic storm by Mr. Trump’s repeated demands that it become part of the United States, one way or another.“I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force,” Mr. Trump told NBC in March, but added that he would not “take anything off the table.”Mr. Macron, who has seen in the various provocations directed at Europe by the Trump administration an opportunity for European assertion of its power, will be the first foreign head of state to go to Greenland since Mr. Trump embarked on his annexation campaign this year.JD Vance, the American vice president, visited Greenland in March. The trip was drastically scaled back and confined to a remote military base after the threat of local protests.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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      Hope After Trump

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      Is President Trump irrecoverably damaging America?I’ve been pondering that lately, partly because several of my friends have been so traumatized by Trump that they are wondering whether to give up on America and move to Canada to rebuild their lives there. I’ve tried to reassure them that this is not 1938 Germany.They shrug and note that 1935 Germany wasn’t 1938 Germany, either — but that’s what it became.Yet in the post-Cold War era, the typical authoritarian model isn’t the police state conjured by Hitlerian nightmares. Rather, it’s more nuanced. It’s one in which a charismatic leader is elected and then uses a democratic mandate to rig democratic institutions.In such states, there are elections that aren’t entirely fair, news organizations that aren’t free but also aren’t Pravda, a repressive apparatus that may not torture dissidents but does audit and impoverish them. The rough model is Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or the Law and Justice party’s Poland, or President Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines or Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India. You can call this competitive authoritarianism or a rigged democracy or something else, but a key feature is that elections still matter even if the playing field is tilted — and most important, such authoritarians are periodically ousted.These 21st-century authoritarians have gained ground in many countries, partly in reaction to surging migration. But the longer trend runs against autocrats, I think.That’s partly structural. Authoritarians surround themselves with sycophants, so that no one warns them when they proclaim dumb policies that tank the economy. Free from oversight, they yield to dissolution and corruption.I’ve been covering authoritarians around the world my entire career, and so often they seemed unassailable as they banned me “for life.” But it usually turned out to be the dictator’s life, not mine.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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      Trump Travel Order Bans People From 12 Countries From Entering U.S.

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      The president’s proclamation barred travel from countries including Afghanistan, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.President Trump on Wednesday signed a travel ban on 12 countries, primarily in Africa and the Middle East, resurrecting an effort from his first term to prevent large numbers of immigrants and visitors from entering the United States.The ban, which goes into effect on Monday, bars travel to the United States by citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.Mr. Trump also imposed restrictions — but stopped short of a full ban — on travel from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. People from those countries cannot come to the United States permanently or get tourist or student visas.The travel ban is the latest move in Mr. Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration, including blocking asylum at the southern border and barring international students from Harvard University. His administration has also conducted immigration raids across the country.The decision came just days after an Egyptian man in Colorado was arrested and charged with carrying out an attack on a group honoring hostages being held in Gaza. Trump administration officials had warned that there would be a crackdown after that attack.“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colo., has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Mr. Trump said in a video message announcing the travel ban. “We don’t want them.”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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      Chinese Students Rattled by Trump Plan to ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas

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      Students said the latest move had upended their plans and intensified their fears.It had been all figured out, Cici Wang said. Summer at home in China, then back to get her master’s degree in Chicago. After that, if she was lucky, a job in the United States.Now all of that is up in the air, she said, a potential casualty of a crackdown that has upended the future for more than 277,000 Chinese nationals studying in this country.“Hopefully, I’ll be fine,” said Ms. Wang, a 22-year-old aspiring computer scientist, sitting with her parents in the stately main quad of the University of Chicago on Thursday. “But I’m not sure.”Across the country, Chinese students reeled Thursday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that the Trump administration would begin “aggressively” revoking visas for Chinese students studying in the United States. More than two dozen students studying in the United States, most of whom did not want their names published for fear of retaliation, told The New York Times that they worried they could lose their academic opportunities in an instant, with little explanation.In a statement late Wednesday, the State Department announced it was focusing on those who were studying in “critical fields” or who had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The vague parameters had a chilling effect on Thursday as students wondered how broadly the Trump administration would apply its new criteria. Mr. Rubio did not define “critical fields,” but science students felt particularly vulnerable because American officials have expressed concerns about the recruiting of U.S.-trained scientists by China. Nor was it clear how American officials would determine which students had ties to the Communist Party.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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      U.S. Will ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Rubio Says

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      Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the students who will have their visas canceled include people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying in “critical fields.”Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.”He added that the State Department was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The move was certain to send ripples of anxiety across university campuses in the United States and was likely to lead to reprisal from China, the country of origin for the second-largest group of international students in the United States.Mr. Rubio’s brief statement announcing the visa crackdown did not define “critical fields” of study, but the phrase most likely refers to research in the physical sciences. In recent years, American officials have expressed concerns about the Chinese government recruiting U.S.-trained scientists, though there is no evidence of such scientists working for China in large numbers.Similarly, it is unclear how U.S. officials will determine which students have ties to the Communist Party. The lack of detail on the scope of the directive will no doubt fuel worries among the roughly 275,000 Chinese students in the United States, as well as professors and university administrators who depend on their research skills and financial support.American universities and research laboratories have benefited over many decades by drawing some of the most talented students from China and other countries, and many universities rely on international students paying full tuition for a substantial part of their annual revenue.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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      Judge Criticizes Government Inaction in Case of Migrants Held in Djibouti

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      Judge Brian E. Murphy had ordered the Trump administration to offer due process to a group of men whom the government was trying to send to South Sudan.A federal judge expressed frustration on Monday night with the government’s failure to give due process to a group of deportees the administration is trying to send to South Sudan but is now holding in Djibouti, as he had mandated last week.“It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than defendants anticipated,” the judge, Brian E. Murphy of Federal District Court in Massachusetts, wrote in his 17-page order. He added that if giving deportees remote proceedings proved too difficult, the government could still return the men to the United States.Judge Murphy’s earlier order, issued on Wednesday, mandated that six of the eight men be given a “reasonable fear interview,” or a chance to express fear of persecution or torture if they were sent on to South Sudan. At a hearing that day, he found that the government had violated another order that the deportees be given notice in a language they could understand, and at least 15 days to challenge their removal. Instead, the judge found they were given “fewer than 16 hours’ notice.”On Monday night, Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the migrants in the case, confirmed that her team had not been given phone access to them. The Homeland Security Department’s public affairs office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The substance of Judge Murphy’s order was not surprising, as he rejected a motion from the government that he pause one of his earlier orders. But his criticism of the government’s delay in offering due process appeared to reflect his growing frustration in another contentious case in the back-and-forth between the Trump administration and federal courts.The day after Judge Murphy ordered that the migrants remain in U.S. custody, the White House called them “monsters” and the judge “a far-left activist.” Then, on Friday night, Judge Murphy ordered the government to “facilitate” the return from Guatemala of a man known as O.C.G., one of the original plaintiffs in the case.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