Why Trump Is Making It Easier for One Group—and One Group Only—to Come to the United States
The “Mission South Africa” program has been a long time coming.
Israel has chosen military occupation over a ceasefire in Gaza. Where does this end? | Sanam Vakil
The latest escalation and attempts to dismantle the Palestinian leadership are utterly at odds with peace negotiations
- Sanam Vakil is a senior research fellow in the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House
Against the pleas and protests of hostage families desperate to secure the release of their loved ones, the Israeli government is moving ahead with the military occupation of the Gaza Strip. On 2 April, the defence minister, Israel Katz, announced plans to seize large areas of Gaza with the aim of eliminating Hamas’s remaining infrastructure and establishing new security zones that will split Gaza in two. This escalation, which began in mid-March with intensified airstrikes, is intended to encourage a mass exodus of the local population, and has led to substantial civilian casualties.
Despite the international outcry over more than 50,000 deaths, 110,000 civilian injuries and significant displacement of Palestinians, the Israeli government rationalises and justifies these moves as necessary for security against an undefeated Hamas. Ultimately, though, Israel’s actions imperil the fragile ceasefire negotiations, its broader credibility and wider hopes for a political process to end the conflict. In reality, this would be the only viable path to stability and security.
4 GOP senators join Democrats to attack Trump’s tariffs on Canada
The Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday issued a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, when four GOP lawmakers joined every Democrat to cancel the national emergency that Trump declared to justify putting punishing 25% tariffs on Canadian imports .
In February, Trump announced he was putting a blanket 25% tariff on Canadian imports, saying the tariffs are a punishment for the country supposedly allowing fentanyl to cross the border into the United States. On March 6, Trump paused those tariffs. But Canada is now subjected to tariffs on cars, aluminum, and steel—which Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said will negatively impact its economy and has vowed to announce retaliatory tariffs.
Of course, fentanyl isn’t coming into the United States from Canada, one of our biggest trading partners and strongest allies.
It’s why Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell, and Rand Paul, both of Kentucky, voted for a resolution introduced by Democrats that terminates the bullshit national emergency and thus the justification for Trump’s tariffs.
“As I have always warned, tariffs are bad policy, and trade wars with our partners hurt working people most,” McConnell said in a statement, continuing his trend of opposing Trump now that he’s no longer a GOP leader and isn’t running for reelection. “Tariffs drive up the cost of goods and services. They are a tax on everyday working Americans. Preserving the long-term prosperity of American industry and workers requires working with our allies, not against them. With so much at stake globally, the last thing we need is to pick fights with the very friends with whom we should be working with to protect against China’s predatory and unfair trade practices.”
And Paul, who has also slammed Trump’s tariffs, said that this policy will hurt Republicans politically.
“When [then-President William] McKinley, most famously, put tariffs on in 1890, they lost 50% of their seats in the next election,” Paul said Wednesday, according to HuffPost. “When [Sen. Reed Smoot and Rep. Willis C. Hawley] put on their tariff in the early 1930s, we lost the House and the Senate for 60 years.”
Kentucky will be hit particularly hard from Trump’s tariffs, with countries Trump has targeted announcing they will retaliate by placing their own tariffs on Kentucky’s bourbon industry .
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Mark Warner, and Tim Kaine, both of Virginia, jointly filed the resolution and called Trump’s tariffs “deranged ” and said they will “not stand idly by while President Trump launches a needless trade war with Canada that will raise costs for families, hurt American businesses, and damage our relationship with one of our closest trading partners and allies.”
“The president has justified the imposition of these tariffs on, in my view, a made-up emergency,” Kaine told The New York Times. “The fentanyl emergency is from Mexico and China. It’s not from Canada.”
Trump, for his part, attacked the GOP senators who voted for the resolution.
“Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul, also of Kentucky, will hopefully get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, insanely suggesting that putting a tariff on Canada will somehow stop the country’s supposed fentanyl smugglers. After all, smugglers wouldn’t go through legal means of trade, anyway, if they were bringing it into the U.S.
Of course, the Republican-controlled House is unlikely to take up the resolution. And even if House Speaker Mike Johnson did put it up for a vote, it’s unclear if there would even be enough House Republican votes to pass it.
Trump said as much in his batshit crazy Truth Social post.
“The Senate Bill is just a ploy of the Dems to show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, in that it is not going anywhere because the House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it,” Trump said. “Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS?”
Apparently, Republicans are fine with Trump’s tariffs tanking the stock market and sending the world into a recession because their madman leader doesn’t understand economics.
Conservative Wisconsin justice throws fit over her new colleague
Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley launched a hypocrisy-laden attack against fellow Justice Susan Crawford, who had a sweeping victory over conservative Judge Brad Schimel on Tuesday.
Bradley called Crawford’s campaign “disgusting” and accused the Democratic Party of “buying another justice.”
“I think the way Judge Crawford ran her race was disgusting. When you see $100 million plus being spent on one state Supreme Court race, that is telling you that the Democratic Party is buying another justice, just like they did with justice prior,” she said.
Bradley’s hypocrisy is stunning but not surprising. Billionaire egomaniac Elon Musk spent a purported $25 million in a spectacularly failed attempt to buy the election. Musk even handed out $1 million checks to get voters to vote for Schimel.
According to the Brennan Center of Justice , more than half of the money spent in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race—EXCLUDING Musk’s $25 million—was spent on Schimel, not Crawford.
Unsurprisingly, Bradley’s career in Wisconsin is marked by classic government welfare cronyism.
In 2012, after working for years at a private tech law firm , Bradley was appointed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. He then appointed her to District I Court of Appeals a couple of years later before placing her in the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Neil Patrick Crooks’ death in 2015.
Wisconsin’s conservative justices have been publicly melting down since losing their majority control over the state’s highest court. With Crawford’s win, Democrats retain a 4-3 majority.
“I’m not looking forward to working with [Crawford],” Bradley said.
The results of Tuesday’s election saw all 72 counties in Wisconsin swing left , and with Bradley’s seat up for reelection in 2026, she may not need to worry about serving alongside Crawford for much longer. And over the next four years , all three conservative judges on the Wisconsin Supreme Court are up for reelection.
With higher voter turnout expected in 2026, Republicans are a lot less likely to fare well. No wonder Bradley’s such a wreck.
‘Fundamentally wrong’: European leaders condemn Trump’s tariffs
Tariffs will cause ‘immense difficulty for Europe’ and catastrophe for US citizens, says French prime minister
European leaders have condemned Donald Trump’s tariffs as “fundamentally wrong” and creating an “immense difficulty for Europe”, while appealing for last-ditch negotiations to avert an all-out trade war.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, lambasted Donald Trump’s “protectionist” tariffs against EU products, saying they run “contrary to the interests of millions of citizens on this side of the Atlantic and in the US, who will unfortunately see their businesses and their purchase power” affected by the measures.