“If an African government wants strong relations with Washington, including future development assistance, it must pay up in other ways — ranging from giving access to minerals to accepting deportees, Trump backers told me.”
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“Trump and his team are fast-tracking efforts to achieve a goal that other U.S. presidents, including his four immediate Democratic and Republican predecessors, articulated to varying degrees — to shift the nature of the U.S. relationship with Africa. Each saw some progress, but none was willing to slash aid so deeply and suddenly.
The overwhelming sense among African officials is that they need to pony up what they can to effectively buy Trump’s love — the transactionalism for which he’s well known.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is offering access to critical minerals in exchange for U.S. help battling rebel forces; Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, was named recently to a role looking into such potential deals in the DRC and other African countries. And Somalia has offered the U.S. operational control over certain ports.
Angola will likely keep U.S. backing for the Lobito Corridor, a rail project that can help the U.S. access minerals. Togo, which is touting its track record in quietly mediating some African conflicts, could also see continued U.S. support, according to a former U.S. official familiar with African diplomatic circles. (A Togo official did not respond to questions about the mediation pitch.)
Some African nations will have an easier time staying on the U.S. radar simply because of their political sway on the continent (hey there, Kenya and Ethiopia), importance to energy markets (Nigeria) or other one-off reasons. Some are more financially and politically able to absorb the shock of losing U.S. aid than others. But some will have little to offer for Washington’s benefit, and they may choose to side with U.S. adversaries on the global stage — whether at the United Nations or in a war.
At least one, South Africa, is likely to be in the cold for a long time under Trump. The president’s team is infuriated by South Africa’s foreign policy choices, especially its diplomatic attacks on Israel, and accuses South Africa’s government of persecuting white Afrikaners. Trump has recently kicked out South Africa’s ambassador in Washington and set up a refugee program for white Afrikaners. South African officials insist Trump is misrepresenting them, especially on the Afrikaner issue.”
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“Africans are already dying because of the U.S. aid cuts, and there’s been an outcry, mainly among Democrats, over the scaling down of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — aka PEPFAR, the George W. Bush-era health initiative that has funded HIV/AIDS treatments on the African continent.
Still, people in Trump’s orbit are not moved by such anecdotes or data, seeing them as parts of tired arguments that have prevented a needed, radical change in U.S. ties with Africa. One person pointed out that the “E” in PEPFAR stands for “emergency.” Yet the program is now more than two decades old.”
Trump removed the advocates general of the military and other military leaders. This is exactly what you would do if you wanted the military to do something illegal.
Reported: ‘Hegseth aids warned him before the strikes not to discuss sensitive operational details on Signal because the app is not considered as secure as government channels.’
“sanctions have never made the clerical regime abandon its nuclear ambitions. During Trump’s first term, his “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign did real damage to Iran’s economy. Iran didn’t, however, concede its atomic assets.”
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” Obama’s more friendly outreach only made progress after Washington made a key concession — Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium. The Americans also made a second key concession: allowing Iran to retain a substantial nuclear infrastructure, which could ramp back up at any time. Ali Salehi, the MIT-educated nuclear engineer who was probably the mastermind behind Iran’s dual-use import network, loved the Obama agreement because it would guarantee the Islamic Republic a more advanced, better-financed atomic program that it could grow in the open. It was Obama’s permissive terms much more than the promised financial relief that induced the theocracy to sign the 2015 accord.”
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” Along the way, the clerical regime might agree to dilute its stock of 60 percent-enriched uranium, which is near weapons-grade, or even cap enrichment at a lower level. It would be a flashy concession that won’t fundamentally affect the complexion or the trajectory of Tehran’s nuclear program. The mullahs know that what matters most are protecting its new generation of centrifuges. With much greater efficiency and speed, these machines can enrich uranium to bomb-grade and can be housed in small facilities that are harder to detect.”
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“Even a stringent inspection regime, unless supported by a well-placed human-intelligence network, would find locating these centrifuges an excruciatingly difficult task.”
“First, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to tax and impose tariffs. Congress has delegated that authority to the executive branch in a handful of trade laws passed over the course of the last century, but the president’s power in this area is a function of the particular language contained in those statutes. (The likely reason that Trump invoked IEEPA is that, unlike the more commonly invoked trade laws, IEEPA does not require administrative investigations or consultations with Congress.)
Second, the relevant provision of the IEEPA contains a bunch of words, but none of those words is “tariffs” or “taxes.”
Indeed, no president before Trump has ever used the IEEPA to impose tariffs. The law has typically been deployed to impose economic sanctions, such as prohibitions on transactions with designated foreign governments or businesses.
In theory, these facts should resonate with the Republican appointees on the court, who typically hold themselves out as committed textualists, eager to adhere only to the words on the page.
Third, even if the IEEPA granted the president the authority to impose tariffs, there are no actual “emergencies” here that would support them (though we will return to this notion).
The law authorizes the president to act when there is “an unusual and extraordinary threat … to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States,” and the Trump administration has claimed that there are several different emergencies. They include the opioid crisis and illegal immigration, which Trump has invoked to support tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China. To support other global tariffs, Trump has claimed that the country’s “trade deficits” constitute the emergency.
At least as a factual matter, credible independent analysts have generally rejected these claims. Take the country’s trade deficits. “They’re not actually harmful any more than it’s somehow harmful if I have a trade deficit with my local supermarket,” Somin said. “I buy a lot of things from them, but they virtually never buy anything from me.”
Fourth, as the California complaint correctly notes, IEEPA was passed as part of an effort in the 1970s to limit the president’s emergency economic powers. Congress did not intend to expand the president’s powers or to give him carte blanche to overhaul the global trading system.
That fact may not move the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court if the issue gets to them — they generally oppose the use of legislative history in statutory interpretation — but it is likely to prove relevant to the three Democratic appointees.”
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” The Supreme Court might also side with the Trump administration given that the court is generally deferential to the president’s handling of foreign policy and his assessment of what constitutes a national emergency. We may not have had any national emergencies before Trump returned to office, but ironically, his tariffs may themselves have caused a global emergency — one that could give the justices reason to pause before coming in against the president in a way that could now severely constrain his powers on the global stage and diminish his international diplomatic standing.”
“Ullyot, who resigned from the Pentagon last week, described a department in collapse. He accused Hegseth’s team of “falsehoods” about why three top officials were fired last week, saying they hadn’t leaked sensitive information to the media. He chastised Pentagon officials for how they handled revelations that Hegseth shared sensitive military information in a Signal chat, and he pointed to other leaks that caused embarrassment to the administration.
The remarkable accusations by a former official — who left only two days ago and insists he still supports the Trump administration’s national security policies — underscores the infighting and upheaval that has turned increasingly public in recent weeks.
But he also found himself in the center of several controversies that added to that chaos.”
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“The Pentagon on Friday fired top staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy Defense secretary. Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff will also leave his role in the coming days for a new position at the agency, according to a senior administration official.”
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“The three fired staff backed up some of Ullyot’s claims in a Saturday post on X, saying they didn’t know why they were terminated. The trio wrote that they “have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”
They charged that “unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.” They expressed support for the “Trump-Vance Administration’s mission to make the Pentagon great again,” but did not mention Hegseth, with whom they’d worked closely.
The terminations follow a purge of top military officers in February, including former Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, and Air Force second in command, Gen. James Slife.”
“The New York Times reported that Hegseth shared sensitive information about military operations in Yemen in a private chat on the Signal app that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer — the second reported instance of the secretary sharing operational plans in an unclassified chat. The revelations have reignited the so-called Signalgate scandal and deepened scrutiny over Hegseth’s judgment and leadership.”
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“Ullyot — once a vocal supporter of the Defense secretary — accused Hegseth’s team of spreading unverified claims about three top officials who were fired last week, falsely accusing them of leaking sensitive information to media outlets.”